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.
November ’54: “Christine Jorgensen’s Romance with a Vanderbilt Stepson.”
He-she hijinx. Ex-man Christine set Vanderbilt up and had me shoot sneak pix. She wanted the publicity — to goose her dead-stalled film career. I shook down Vanderbilt for twenty thou. Christine and I split the gelt. Confidential published a pablum-packed piece that went pffft. Christine was pissed. She wanted to see some wild and wet woof-woof. This piece could mulch the magazine, baaaaaad. Ditto, Fred Otash. It was goooood Parker file fodder.
January ’55: “Eartha Kitt and her ‘Santa Baby’ Arthur Loew, Jr.”
Miscegenation marches on. The old colored canary/white sugar daddy bit. It’s Irksome Eartha again. Eartha threatens to sue. I’m the bagman. Confidential coughs up cold cash.
Synagogue Sid blatted on. I yawned. Where’s Miss Blind Item? It’s almost 2:00 a.m.
March ’55: “The Wife Clark Gable Forgot.” Yawn. “The Girl in Gregory Peck’s Bathtub.” Man, it’s sacked-out soporific.
Synagogue Sid bleated bleak and deep diminuendoed. I heard the mike-magnified cough of coins dropped in a pay phone. I kicked the volume. Nasty Nat said, “Miss Blind Item’s back — so I know we’re going to be talking Confidential magazine and the infamous Caryl Chessman case.”
Miss Blind Item said, “Hey, Nat. What’s shaking?”
I dug her voice. It was cool contralto and mucho Midwest.
“Nothing but the leaves on the tree, baby.”
“Locate me, Nat. Where did we leave off last time?”
“Well, we did the long-range overview of Confidential, and we both commented on how atypically liberal their coverage of the Chessman case was, given that Confidential’s been a Red-baiting and race-baiting rag from jump street.”
Nasty Nat told it true. August ’52. The cheesy Chessman piece. The mag was naïvely new then. I didn’t sign on till fall ’53.
Miss Blind Item laffed. “Confidential’s got style, baby. You’re starting to alliterate already.”
Nasty Nat wolf-whistled. “And you’ve got cojones, as our Mex cousins say, calling a Negro man ‘baby.’ ”
Miss Blind Item relaffed. Phone-booth sounds went mike-magnified. There’s a match strike and exhale. She’s smoking a cigarette.
“I’m an actress, Nat. You can always count on me to go for a provocative effect.”
“Disc jockeys go the same route. Our sponsors here encourage it. Come on, Sultan Sam’s Sandbox and Rae’s Rugburn Room? They ain’t paying me for bland.”
“Talk about alliteration, baby.”
Nasty Nat said, “You ain’t Miss Blind Item, you the sexy succubus. Now, moving along, before you get me in trouble with the Klan, the Catholic Legion of Decency, and Chief Parker his own self, why don’t you drop the basic lowdown on the Chessman case on all the folks out in Radioland.”
Miss Blind Item refed the pay phone. Dimes dipped, nickels notched down the slot.
“It’s early ’48. Chessman’s fresh out of Folsom. He’s stealing cars and committing armed robberies. He’s utilizing a hot ’46 Ford as his rape vehicle, and he’s affixed a phony red light to it, so he can pass himself off as a policeman. Now, he’s prowling lovers’ lanes in Pasadena and up above Hollywood. He’s robbing young couples making out. On two legally affirmed occasions, he forcibly removes young women from their cars, and places them in his car. That legally constitutes kidnapping. Once they’re in his car, he sexually assaults them, which constitutes a second, specific set of felony charges. His two certified victims conclusively identified him. He was convicted at trial and sentenced to death. Much has been made of the fact that Chessman did not kill anyone. C’est la guerre, sweetie. The Little Lindbergh Law applies. Now, that evil no-goodnik has become an ace jailhouse lawyer, and he’s beaten back a slew of attempts to send him to the green room, where he most devoutly belongs. He wrote a book, which was published last year, called Cell 2455, San Quentin. In it, he fatuously asserts his innocence of the Red Light Bandit crimes and demands a redress of the entire American legal system.”
Nasty Nat went whew! “I’m renaming you, and it ain’t ‘baby’ or ‘sweetie.’ And you ain’t really Miss Blind Item, you more the ‘Vindictive Vixen,’ which prompts me to ask you why you so het up on this case, when just about everybody I know thinks Chessman got railroaded, and these justice-minded folks I know are all doing their darnedest to make sure he don’t go to that green room.”
Go, Nasty Nat. You snagged it on the snout. Baby, sweetie, Miss Item — why you calling in to my radio show?
“It’s dawning on me, sugar. You got a personal stake in this whole Chessman hullabaloo. That means there’s something you haven’t told us.”
Miss Blind Item lit a cigarette. I heard the match flare and exhale.
“There was a third victim. She came forth and identified Chessman, but the DA chose not to have her testify at trial. The sexual assault that Chessman perpetrated against her was especially vile and vicious. Bluntly put, she went insane, and has spent the past seven years in Camarillo. The young woman was a friend of mine. We studied at a prestigious acting school in New York together, back in late ’47. That’s the long and short of it, Nat. I’m on leave from a gig in New York now, so I thought I’d make a little ruckus in my friend’s hometown, and maybe take a little drive up to Camarillo.”
Es la verdad. I was at Hollywood Station that night. I saw Miss Third Victim walk in and collapse on the squadroom floor.
Griffith Park
Above the Rebel Without a Cause Shoot
5/13/55
Ouch!!!!!
Outdoor surveillance. The withering worst. Dirt on my duds and briar bristles brushing my ass. I’m up some hellhole hiking trail. There’s a noxious noonday sun singeing me. I’ve got binoculars trenchantly trained on the Observatory lot.
It’s lunchtime. The lot’s cordoned off for cast and crew, exclusive. It’s loaded with hot rod heaps and kool kat kids couched within. Robbie Molette’s hopping, heap to heap. He’s pushing pills and reefers. I’m peeping the transactions. It’s a rippling replay of last nite’s panty raid/chickie run.
There’s Nick Ray, Nick Adams, my putz pal Jimmy Dean. The gang’s got up in street threads. There’s no Afrika Korps kouture and Sieg Heil today. There’s the three B-boys. They’re still dressed in blasphemous black. I memorized the Chevy van plate stats last nite. They came back to one Chester Alan Voldrich/white male American/age twenty-six. Dig: he bossed the nabobically noted Hollywood High Rat Pack, circa ’49. They rolled elderly fruits and Mickey Finn’d Marymount girls and got in their pants.
That was goooooood derogatory dish. Bill Parker would crap-his-pants cream. And — per Nick Adams/real name Adamshock/DOB 7-10-31/Nanticote, Pennsylvania:
No arrests/eight rousts on suspicion: GTA, flimflam, malicious mischief, Stat Rape, Peeping Tom, pushing pornographic snapshots. Plus: gay-bar roust sheets on Jimmy Dean and Nick Ray. Confirmed per Jimmy: Robbie Molette’s “Human Ashtray” shtick. Confirmed per Nick Ray: rousted at the Saints and Sinners Drag Ball. Whoa, Nellie — Nick was a knockout in his Red Guard empire gown. Plus: Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, popped at the “Jailbait Jamboree” at Linda’s Little Log Cabin.