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.
“Tell Bob I saw his first wife at a Scottsboro Boys rally, back in ’30-something. She was holding hands with a shvoogie and Pete Seeger’s Filipina girlfriend. They were singing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ — off-key, no less.”
I stuffed a fifty in Jack’s shirt pocket. Jack reyodeled Jim Beam. He hummed “Lili Marlene” and the love-death bit from Tristan und Isolde.
“Freddy the O. wants something. He never comes just to schmooze.”
I said, “The Actors Studio. The late ’40s. I know you go back to the Group Theatre, so I thought you might be able to help me.”
“The Actors Studio. Oy. Not a revolutionary organ, susceptible to takeover by Comrade John Howard Lawson and the hundreds of young Red Guard majorettes eager to suck his big dialectical cock.”
I said, “Come on, Jack. I was thinking you could give me some names.”
Jack went mucho outraged. “Me? Name names? You think the apparatchik to end all apparatchiks would name names and betray the Fourth Apparatus of the Central Soviet?”
I said, “Jack, you’re a pisser.”
Jack stumbled into Casa Comrade. He left the door open. I saw him banging bookshelves and tossing tomes on the floor.
I lit a cigarette. Jack barged back outside. He passed me a school-type yearbook. It was buckram-bound and gilt-embossed. The cover read: The Actors Studio/1946–47.
“Thanks, Jack.”
Jack hummed “The Internationale.” “I know about the bug, Freddy. My schvartze cleaning lady discovered it when I first moved in.”
I was floored and flat-flabbergasted. I grabbed Jack’s jug and jammed down the juice. The world rippled and revised itself right before my eyes.
“You could have pulled it. You’d have saved some comrades of yours a whole lot of grief.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to. Maybe they deserved what they got. Maybe I thought I’d fuck with History and roll the dice for a while.”
I traveled Trans-Jack Airways. The Lawson-Kennedy loop. It flew Casa Comrade to Beverly Hills. I buzzed by the Beverly Wilshire Pharmacy and filled Jack the K.’s order. Spaceman Jack would orbit tonite.
I hit the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was a back-bungalow bash. I lit through the lobby and landed right on cue. Women outnumbered men six to one. It was all stacked starlets and porko politicians. DA Ernie Roll and AG Pat Brown. Both quash-Confidential conspirators. Governor Goodie Knight. Colored congressman Adam Clayton Powell. Note his “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” campaign button.
I crashed the crowd. I popped out to a poolside porch and straddled a deck chair. A brisk breeze induced aaahhhs. I studied the Actors Studio book.
I poured through picture-packed pages. No-name kids built sets. Lee Strasberg made like Moses and laid down the law. I noted name actors and nudniks I’d seen on TV. I hit a section marked “1946–47 class.” Kids congregated on bleachers and smiled, heartbreak hopeful. Page twenty-two popped out at me. I thought I saw—
Some names and no-names mingled. Kim Hunter, Ralph Meeker. Two no-name males. I recognized Reed Hadley of Racket Squad. There’s Julie Harris and boss Barbara Bel Geddes. There’s the wounded waif I saw at Hollywood Station during the Red Light Bandit’s rampage.
She’s hopeful here. She’s heartfelt. She’s wearing a paint-smeared smock and saddle shoes. She’s standing beside a lissome light-haired woman I’d never seen before.
A name list laid out the players. Miss Third Victim was Shirley Tutler. The light-haired woman was Lois Nettleton.
Jack the K. walked up. I tossed him the pharmacy bag. Pill vials vibrated and did the shimmy-shimmy shake.
“Dare I ask what it cost?”
I said, “Zilch. The pharmacist’s a defrocked physician. He owes me numerous favors.”
Jack relit his cigar. “I’ll be a defrocked U.S. senator, if I can’t raise a whole lot of money tonight.”
“There’s not a lot of money in the next room. The girls don’t have it, and the political guys never give it away.”
Jack chortled. “Give me a good one, Freddy. My sisters like dish on handsome young actors and their secret lives. And don’t give me Rock Hudson, because that’s yesterday’s news.”
I said, “James Dean is known as the ‘Human Ashtray.’ ”
“That’s fairly unsavory.”
“Barbara Payton’s on the skids. She’s car-hopping at Stan’s Drive-In, across from Hollywood High.”
Jack said, “Old news. You set me up with Babs when you were a cop and I was a congressman.”
I said, “Katharine Hepburn is really a man. Whisper’s running the story next month. She underwent hormone therapy in the Soviet Union.”
“I’ll live with it. As long as she’s not a Commie or a Republican.”
My time was up. Jack’s eyes wiggled and wandered. He’s Two-Minute Jack with his minions. He’s Ten-Minute Jack in the sack.
“It was good seeing you, Freddy.”
“Always a pleasure, Jack.”
The sun salved me. The breeze went warm and bid me to bask. I dipped and dozed. The bungalow behind me went muffled and mute. I saw Shirley Tutler’s picture and heard Miss Blind Item’s voice. Soft sounds soothed me. Reverie. I’m rapt and reverential. I’m a kid back in church.
Wheels popped over pavement. Dishes rattled. Somebody said, “I didn’t know you knew Jack.”
I opened my eyes. Oh shit — it’s Rodent Robbie Molette. A hairnet hid his fried hair. He’s Busboy Robbie today. He’s rolling a room-service cart.
“Everybody knows Jack. He exemplifies our new egalitarian society. It’s why he talks to guys like you and me.”
Robbie scratched his balls. “Be that as it may, I should take advantage of running into you, and tell you the latest scuttlebutt from the shoot.”
I said, “I’m listening.”
“You should listen, given the gist of what I’m about to tell you.”
“Robbie, don’t draw this—”
“Okay, here’s the latest and greatest, which ain’t so great in my view. A, Nick Ray’s talking ‘escalation.’ He wants ‘the kids’ to ‘plumb their motivation’ and ‘escalate their mischief.’ B, he’s talking hot-prowl 459’s, liquor-store robberies, and making some sort of ‘radical alternative movie,’ that will ‘complement and enlarge the meaning of,’ this lox Rebel Without a Cause, which in my view is headed for the drive-in circuit in Dogdick, Arkansas.”
I pondered the poop. Robbie futzed with his hairnet.
“You burned me, fucker. You messed with my good looks, because you’re jealous of me.”
Stood up, stiffed, dropped dry, and jilted. Dumped for some psycho Film Führer. Bereft like some left-behind belle at the ball.
Jimmy no-showed. I waited at Googie’s. No Jimmy. I called my answering service. No messages. I called Jimmy’s pad. No answer. I went by Jimmy’s pad. No lights lit, no Jimmy. I cruised by the Chateau Marmont and bopped back to bungalow row. I peeped Nick Ray’s bungalow. I saw Nazi Nick pour the pork to Natalie Wood while Sal Mineo snapped snapshots.
I bolted back to my sled and slipped southbound. I was whip-wigged and wound up waaaaaaay tight. A new notion nudged me. It pertained to Miss Blind Item. I stopped at a pay phone and called crime lab rajah Ray Pinker.
I outlined my plan. I pledged five yards. Rajah Ray said, “Sure — I’ll do it.” I ran back to my Packard pimpmobile and pointed it southbound. I dove into darktown. Vermont to Slauson, eastbound and doooooooown.