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.
The punks salaamed and saluted. Nick Ray ran to the Chevy van. Raus mit uns!!!!! Mach schnell!!!!! All subalterns and B-boys to the Chevy van now!!!!!
The crew cringed and complied, toot-fucking-sweet. The van U-turned and booked west on Sunset. I U-turned and tailed it.
We struck off down the Strip and bombed through Beverly Hills. My Packard pimpmobile hovered three car lengths back. Beverly Hills to Holmby Hills to the East Bel-Air gate. Up to Westwood and the UCLA campus.
The van cut south on Hilgard. It decelerated down to a crawl. I crawled and kept perfect pace. We were on Sorority Row now. Note the big Tudor and sparkle-Spanish houses. Note the Greek symbols embossed by the doors.
It was midnite. It was quiet and moon-muzzled dark. The driver rolled down his window and pointed across the street. Somebody said, “Establishing shot.” A back window slid down. Nick Ray held his camera out and rolled film. I decelerated and pulled to the curb. The Führer van U-turned and parked in front of a faux-château sorority house.
The Desert Korps decamped. That’s the B-Boys, Nick Ray, Jimmy, and Nick Adams. A B-boy held Ray’s camera cord and a spotlight gizmo. Ray gave the high sign. They walked six abreast. They crossed the sidewalk and trampled the front lawn. They hit the porch. Nick Adams pulled a set of picks and unlocked the door. It’s soooooo sinister — the six sickos slide and slither inside.
I heard nothing. I saw nothing. No light went on. I got out and jogged up to the door. It stood ajar. I heard wicked whispers and sssshhh, sssshhh upstairs.
The camera light snapped on. A beam bounced across upstairs walls and closed doors. I heard a door open. A girl said, “What’s that?” A girl said, “Who’s there?”
Then door kicks/shrill shrieks/light beams on dorm doors and double sets of bunk beds—
Then college girls in nightgowns and pajamas. They’re kicking off their covers and tumbling out of bed. They’re running straight into bright light and the Desert Korps with their hands out to GRAB.
Nick Ray yelled, “Chickie run!!!”
Jimmy yelled, “Panty raid!!!!!”
Spotlight beams bounced. I saw short shots of grabs at pajama tops and nightgowns. I saw panties pulled down to the knees. I heard screams overlap.
I ran upstairs. Half-nude girls dodged grabbing hands and bouncing light and ran from der Desert Korps demons. I pile-pounded into them. I dumped the fucko Führer’s camera and smashed the bouncing-light machine. I got a fade-out shot. It’s Jimmy Dean with pink panties pulled over his face.
I saw a fire-alarm switch wired to a wall mount. I swatted the switch and instigated deep darkness. A siren shrieked shrill. The girls screamed into it. They ran left and hit the back stairs. The Desert Korps ran to the main stairway. They couldn’t see me. I couldn’t see them. I pulled my belt sap and sapped black leather and coarse khaki. They made with the motivation and bitch-bleated. I might have sapped my pal Jimmy. So what if I did?
My Boss Bachelor Pad
West Hollyweird
5/12/55
I ran the radio. KKXZ — le jazz hot levied with listless bop ballads that blew blue and nodded off to nothingness. A low-watt/storefront station. Above Sultan Sam’s Sandbox and Rae’s Rugburn Room.
I was laid low, bent bare, and stripped to striation on the Isle of Deep Despair. The Westwood caper cornholed me. I humped Hilgard to Sunset. I ripped rubber just as the fuzz and fire engines arrived. The Afrika Korps beat it southbound. Their goofy getaway masked their insidious intent. A moment to maul my memory: Jimmy Dean, with pink panties stretched eyeballs to neck.
Nasty Nat’s Soul Patrol popped the airwaves. Nat read local news spots before he samba’d back to his soporific sounds of the nite. He kicked off with his “Cutie.”
UCLA. Sorority row. Panty raid at Chi Beta Gamma. The fuzz arrive. There’s a garland of girls, wrapped in robes and issuing indignation. Four girls put it off on the SAE boys or USC football studs. One girl called it “more evil than that. These guys were older. One guy carried a camera. They ripped our robes, and tried to shoot a nudie film right there.”
Nasty Nat put down some pooh-pooh patter. “UCLA ain’t the ghetto, sisters. And I’m sure those young buck cops will be back to ask you to stage in-the-buff reenactments.”
Ouch.
Nasty Nat said, “It’s crime on the dime, tonite. The some might say infamous LAPD Hat Squad shot it out with those two steakhouse rapist-robbers. It went down at Tommy Tucker’s Playroom on Washington and La Brea. One man escaped in the mad melee. Muerto at the scene: Richie ‘The Dutchman’ Van Duesen/white male American/age thirty-eight. Still at large: George ‘Fat Boy’ Mazmanian/white male American/age forty-two. The Fat Boy is purportedly armed and dangerous, so watch out.”
Nasty Nat mimicked the Confidential style. It gored my goat. He cut from crime on the dime to bleak blues from the Synagogue Sid Trio. Dig: Sid on bass sax, Bobby Horvitz on flügelhorn, Aaron Adelman on drums. The piece: “Premature Funeral March for Gamal Abdel Nasser and King Farouk.” Nat laid down the intro. He closed with “These cats run long.” One, two, three — shalom, cats.
Synagogue Sid blatted his sax. Bobby Horvitz flaunted his flügelhorn. Aaron Adelman drilled his drums. I doused the volume. I got imperiously impatient. Where’s Miss Blind Item? Where’s her cruel critique of Confidential’s Caryl Chessman piece??? Where’s her fry-the-cocksucker rebuttal???
I was itchy/antsy/fraught/fragged and dexie-ditzed out of my gourd. I got out my notepad and skimmed ’52 to ’55 Confidentials. I’m a snitch, a rat fink, a stool pigeon, a squealer, a quisling, a rogue dog who bites the hand that feeds him. Let’s do legal prep work for Chief William H. Parker.
Bill Parker and me. We’re like that now. Let’s take down Confidential.
Back issues. Clipped-on legal files. Lawyers’ notes and field reports. Look for loopholes. Dippy depositions to dice and deep-six. The mag hired ace legal beagles. The mag had Freddy O. for strongarm vetting and verification. All our slurs and slander slams are true. We stand by our shit. Yeah, but if anybody’s prone to fuck it all up, it’s yammeringly yours truly.
I skimmed back issues. I read legal briefs and my own notes. I muddled through mellifluous memories.
December ’52: “Showgirl Sells Shares in Self!!!”
Bland, by and large. A stock-market spoof. Vetted by a kid clerk. No slander slams or libel loops here.
December ’52: “Exposed: Love in the UN!!!!”
Tattle text. The Multinational March of Miscegenation. Minor minions j’accused. I’m bored already. No vetting notes. Doofus diplomats never sue.
November ’53: “Marked for Death: Walter Winchell, Bishop Fulton Sheen!!!”
Anti-Commie pap. Lawyers cite unnamed sources. Snoresville, U.S.A.
March ’54: “Why Orson Welles Bit the Lip of Eartha Kitt.”
Miscegenation — Confidential’s merry mainstay. Orson was boning irksome Eartha. A Vegas stringer fed us the bit. Eartha said goons broke down her door. She was right. I hired the goons. Eartha demanded cold compensation. I slid her ten thou. Orson said, “You’re a shit, Freddy.” I bitch-slapped him.
This piece was bad juju and a potential Parker payoff. It exposed the mag’s strong-arm methods and exposed ME. I put it in my secret Parker dirt file.