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.
It’s all Kids Run Wild/Kids Led Astray. It summoned me to serve Bill Parker and my meshugenah magazine. It summoned me to save Jimmy D. from himself.
I binocularized the big parking lot. Robbie pushed pills. Jimmy and Nick Adams shot craps on a Nazi-flag blanket. Jimmy called my service and left a message: “See you at Googie’s tonite.” That meant this: he didn’t make me at the panty raid/chickie run.
I binocularized. Chester Voldrich and his B-boy buddies sniffed a glue-soaked rag. Natalie Wood basked in a bikini. She reclined on the roof of a ’52 Eldo. Nick Ray walked by and kissed her thighs on the sly.
I walked into Hollywood Station. The desk sergeant moaned. Oh shit — it’s Freddy O.
I walked up to the squadroom. A meter maid tagging tickets sighed. Oh shit — it’s Freddy O. The squad lieutenant saw me. He rolled his eyes and slammed his door. Oh shit — it’s Freddy O.
I looked for Colin Forbes and Al Goossen. They bossed the Chessman case, back in ’48. There they are. They’re Hollywood Squad lifers — they’ve still got the same two desks. They’re workhorses worn weary. They’re working. The squadroom was otherwise dead.
They saw me. They shared a look. Oh shit — it’s Freddy—
I pulled a chair over. Forbes said, “Hi, Freddy.” Goossen said, “Freddy’s slumming. That means he wants something.”
I said, “Chessman. The magazine wants to atone for that boo-hoo piece they published three years ago. There’s some rumors percolating on the third victim. I was here when she came in, if you recall.”
Forbes lit a cigarette. “That’s right. You called Queen of Angels when she fainted.”
Goossen lit a cigarette. “Chessman bit her forty-three times. You’d faint, too. She went straight from Queen of Angels to Camarillo, and the last I heard, she was still in shock. Don’t put her in the magazine, Freddy. Show some class for once in your life.”
I let it go. “Do you recall her name?”
Forbes shook his head nein. Goossen shook his head nyet. They revealed zilch. My reptile rep rubbed them raw.
“What’s the story on her? Can you give me that, without naming names?”
Goossen kicked his chair back. “She was an L.A. girl, home for a visit. She was studying at the Actors Studio in New York, which is some sort of hotshot deal. So, she’s home, and she’s staying with her folks. She’s also a lezzie, which her folks know nothing about. On the night in question, she picks up a girl at Rhonda’s Rendezvous, and they parked on the shoulder at Mulholland and Beverly Glen. Chessman pulls his red light number, sees the girls making out and flips his lid. He throws the pickup girl out of the car, escorts the victim girl to his car, does what he does to her, and she makes her way here, under her own power. She never testified in court, and she didn’t need to. Judge Fricke heard the story, and that’s what convinced him that Chessman should burn. And he will burn, sooner or later, despite all his books and legal appeals, and Marlon Brando and all the other Hollywood geeks waving placards.”
Forbes said, “Shove your ‘rumors percolating’ up your ass, Freddy. You’ve got your own perv-o agenda going on this deal, so take it with you when you walk out the door, sometime in the next five seconds.”
Perv-o agenda.” Oh shit — it’s Freddy O. My old cop colleagues lay on the love. Freddy O’s the Shakedown King. He’s the Shaman of Shame. He’s the Pervdog of the Nite. Where’s the payoff here, Freddy? There’s got to be a payoff with you.
Why mince words? Cherchez la femme. It’s Miss Blind Item. She’s scorched herself under my skin.
I drove by the Ranch Market. I checked my phone slips. Jack the K. called. “I’m at the hotel. Come by at six. I’m having people up for drinks.”
I’ll be there, Jack. Fetch, Pervdog, fetch. I’ll go by your favorite pharmacy first. I know what you like. Why mince words? I like it, too.
Miss Blind Item. She studied with Miss Third Victim. They were New York friends. A “prestigious acting school.” Late ’47.
Al Goossen. The Actors Studio. “Some sort of hotshot deal.”
So—
Quo vadis, Freddy? Where to now?
I know. Let’s slam Mr. Blacklist. He always gives up the goods.
Jack Lawson. John Howard Lawson. Anglicized from Levy or some such. One studly Stalinist. He tramples Trotskyites and hexes HUAC to hell. Folks hate Jack. It’s that perennial politics and personality parlay. Jack’s determinedly dyspeptic. He’s a schmuck, a schlemiel, a schmendrick, and a schlimazel. The PD and DA Ernie Roll own him covertly. Let’s bop back to ’40. Jack’s the Party’s Kultural Kommissar and hard-hearted hatchet man.
Enter Budd Schulberg. He’s a ripsnorting writer and a marvelous mensch. He’s writing What Makes Sammy Run? The Party demands rafts of revisions. Budd’s a Party man maimed by mucho misgivings. Like Studly Stalin’s purges that mowed millions dead. Jack mediates a meet and sets the spot. It’s some comrade’s casa off Hollywood and Fairfax. Budd is suddenly summoned. Jumpy Jack’s there. Likewise the viperish V. J. Jerome. V.J.’s Jack’s Ko-Kultural Kommissar. V.J. and Jack pack the Party’s one-two punch.
V.J. and Jack. They berate Budd for two days, stridently straight. You will rewrite your bourgeois book. It must be proudly proletarian. You’re a revisionist, a refusenik, a deviationist delinquent. You’re a passive pawn of the fascist elite.
Here’s the punch line. The comrade’s casa is bugged, rugs to rafters. The comrade called in the cops. The Hitler-Stalin pact did it. The comrade ain’t no Commie no more.
Jack berates Budd. Jack reads him the ripe riot act. Jack motormouths on many topics. Jack pounds popular front groups and takes them to task. Jack jacks off à la idiot ideologues worldwide. The PD shoots the bug tapes to State HUAC. Fourteen Smith Act indictments result.
The bug’s still in place. Jack’s sublet the comrade’s casa since ’48. Ex-Commies visit Jack. They juke him with jungle juice and get him to jaw. Jack jaws on overdrive. He’s every Red Squad cop and dirt digger’s dream. ’48 to ’55. That’s seven years. The bugs remain in place. Jack don’t know shit.
I drove over and parked outside Casa Comrade. I brought Jack a jug of Jim Beam. Jack sat on his front steps. I saw him. He saw me. It was Oh shit — Freddy Otash, redux.
I got out and walked up. Jack went Sieg Heil and hummed “Das Horst Wessel Lied.” I yukked and tossed Jack his jug. He yanked the cap and yodeled a big blast.
“Freddy the O. Gauleiter for the occupation forces of Chief William H. Parker.”
“You know who I work for, Jack. I’m a free-speech man, just like you.”
Jack grabbed his crotch. “Free speech is a shuck. It’s a smoke screen to cosmeticize the fascist agenda. Confidential riles up the schvarzers and faygeles. In that sense, it’s an organ of revolutionary intent.”
I laffed. “I’ll tell Bob Harrison that.”