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.
I passed Mumar’s Mosque, Mama Mattie’s Massage Paradise, and the Mad Monk Klub. I hustled by Happytime Liquor, Happy Hal’s Liquor, Hillhaven Liquor, and liquor lockers lit by signs that said liquor and no more. I saw the signs for Sultan Sam’s Sandbox and Rae’s Rugburn Room. There’s my dizzy destination: KKXZ Radio.
A wino weaved by. I curb-parked my pimpmobile right by the Rugburn Room door. The wino whistled and gassed on the tritone paint job. I tossed him a ten-spot and told him to watchdog my baby.
Back stairs ran me past the Rugburn Room and up to Radioland. It was beat-to-shit bohemian and cultivatedly cut-rate.
A wastified waiting room. Album covers stud-stapled to bare walls. They were all Bird. Bird bought the farm and bid us bye-bye in March. Bird beamed beatific now — I’m muerto, muchachos. A myriad of mourners scrawled up the white walls. It was all adios, Big Daddy and Hail to the King.
“Write something, Mr. Otash. He won’t mind.”
I swift-swiveled. Nasty Nat stood there. I recognized his radio voice. He was tall and a fit forty. He dressed cool-cat insurrectionist. I dug his fez/combat fatigues/fruit-boot ensemble.
I pulled my pen and scrawled on the wall. Nasty Nat said, “You’re pissed, right? I mean, the magazine’s pissed.”
“I’m not pissed. I’m intrigued more than anything else. I was thinking you could record a message for me, and make sure that Miss Blind Item hears it the next time she calls in.”
“How about a message for Bird? ‘Sorry I popped your ass for junk outside the Club Alabam in March of ’49.’ ”
I said, “How do you know I didn’t write that on the wall just now?”
Nasty Nat pointed to the sound booth. I followed him over and in. We took the two chairs. The booth boxed us up. We were nudged knee-to-knee.
The Synagogue Sid Trio trickled and trilled. Nasty Nat killed the sound and moved his microphone my way. I excavated my bold bass-baritone.
“Miss Item, my name is Fred Otash. I work for Confidential, and I’m a former Los Angeles policeman. I was there at Hollywood Station the night your friend Shirley came in. I agree with your assessment of Caryl Chessman’s guilt, and I’d like to discuss with you a second Chessman piece that might serve to set the record straight.”
Voilà. That was gooooooood. I was cool-cat commanding and concise. Nasty Nat smiled and hit the kill switch.
“I’m pretty sure she’ll call in tonight, and I’ll make sure she hears your message. And, before you ask, I don’t know her righteous name, or anything more about her than you do.”
I scoped the bare-bones booth. It’s got that rat resort/proud poor folks gestalt.
“You get by on donations, right? Making the rent’s a stretch, and you’re always running on fumes.”
Nasty Nat said, “That’s right.”
I said, “Confidential’s a sucker for good jazz, and we’re in business to make friends, regardless of what you might have heard about me, or the magazine itself. I need a favor that only you can perform, and if you do perform it, the magazine will drop five hundred clams a month on KKXZ, indefinitely.”
Nasty Nat lit a cigarette. “She’s calling from a pay phone. I can hear her feed the coins in. Does this favor pertain to that?”
I smiled. “That’s right. I need a trace. I need you to call a cop pal of mine within two minutes from the time she gets on the horn with you. It might not work the first time, but it should work sooner or later.”
“She might leave town. This whole deal could go poof.”
“You still get the bread.”
“Well then, okay.”
I winked. “I’m going home, to sit by my radio.”
“Tell me something before you go?”
“Sure.”
“What did you write on the wall?”
“I wrote ‘Dear Bird: Thanx for the sounds. Best wishes, Fred Otash.’ ”
Nasty Nat said, “You’re caustic, but you’ll never be hip.”
Synagogue Sid serenaded me. I ran my radio low and laid low on my couch. Nasty Nat cut to commercials for Sultan Sam’s Sandbox, Kool Kings, and the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. Then dimes dipped and nickels nudged and slid down a slot. I knew that noise now. I knew it was microphone-magnified.
Silence socked me. I knew why. Nasty Nat put Miss Blind Item on hold and buzzed Ray Pinker.
It’s Tap Try #1. It’s logged in at 1:16 a.m.
I heard fuzz, buzz, radio rasp, and dissonant dial tones. I knew why. Nasty Nat’s playing my plea. I held my breath. Now, she’s back in ripping rejoinder.
“I don’t know, Nat. Is our Mr. Otash looking for a date, or justice for my friend Shirley?”
“It could be both, you know. One don’t exclude the other.”
I heard tap-taps. Tension taps. Miss Blind Item’s crammed in a phone booth. She’s drumming the wall. It’s stagecraft. She’s buying time to rig a response. That means she’s tweaked, that means she cares.
“Mr. Otash has a reputation, Nat. It precedes him, you might say. I read a piece in the L.A. Mirror — last year, I think it was. It described his illegal surveillance methods and alleged that he resorted to physical force in order to quash lawsuits levied against Confidential.”
“Well, you know that old saw, right? ‘If you want to make an omelet, you’ve got to break a few eggs.’ ”
Miss Blind Item laffed. “Not that Confidential magazine is much of an omelet, right?”
“You sure got me there, baby.”
Silence settled in. Silken, sullen, sickened — who knows? Ardent or artificial — who knows that? She’s amply ambiguous. It’s cold-calculated. She’s leading me, she’s playing me, there’s something she wants.
“A casting director I know told me he beat up Johnnie Ray. Really, Nat — Johnnie Ray? I met him once, after his gig at the Copa in New York. He was certainly one of the nicest, and certainly the least offensive young man that I’ve ever met. Nothing that I can think of could ever justify that sort of behavior.”
Baby, I know just how you feel.
Nasty Nat said, “Yeah, I dig on Johnnie Ray. I spin his discs on the show, every so often.”
“Handsome is as handsome does, Nat. I saw Mr. Otash on Paul Coates’ show, the last time I passed through L.A. I remember thinking, My, that surely is a most presentable man, which made me doubly sad to have heard the Johnnie Ray story.”
Miss Blind Item. I’ve got you under my skin.
Security Office
The Sleazoid Hollywood Ranch Market
5/14/55
A.M. shitwork. Phone work and field reports. Two per Rebel Without a Cause. Mendacious memos to Bondage Bob Harrison and Bill Parker.
I called Nasty Nat at KKXZ. Pathos pounded me. He lived at the station. His noxious news: last nite’s trace went blooey. Nat said he’d try again tonite. I bid the big bopster bon voyage.
Miss Blind Item. You’ve got me torched and scorched.
I wrote my report to Bondage Bob. I delivered the dish on Nick Ray’s Afrika Korps and described the pustulant panty raid in delirious detail. I omitted Jimmy Dean’s presence. I owed Jimmy that. I exorbitantly expanded my memo to Bill Parker. I reported Robbie Molette’s dish per Führer Nick’s “escalation” escapades. Dig, Chief: He’s planning hot-prowl 459’s and liquor-store 211’s. He’s the maladroit mastermind of the “motivation” crime. Addled actors bow to his bidding. Nazi Nick’s applied the Stanislavskiesque stamp.