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 popped to the porte cochere. I’d conked Jack comatose. I should call Parker and Ernie Roll and jump-start this. The valet saw me. I saw my Packard pimpmobile. Four big men lounged upside it.
Ever yours — the Hat Squad.
I walked up, slooooooow. The Giant Ant ankles, acquiescent.
Max Herman said, “Hi, Freddy.”
Red Stromwall said, “How’s Senator Jack, Freddy?”
Harry Crowder said, “Too bad about Miss Blaine, Freddy.”
Eddie Benson said, “We found your prints on Miss Blaine’s purse, Freddy. The Chief would like to discuss that with you.”
City Hall. The Demon DB. Sweatbox #3. The Hats held me hostage in the hot seat. We’ve been here before.
The bolted-down table. The bolted-down chair. The ashtray. The fat phone book. It’s the you-will-confess confessional.
The Hats straddled chairs. I kicked my chair back. Max passed out cigarettes. Red revealed his flask. It made the rounds. We took two pops each.
Red went aaahhh. “Breakfast of champions.”
Max said, “Explain your prints on Miss Blaine’s purse.”
“I had drinks with her last night, but I left early. I moved her purse out of the way.”
Harry said, “Where, when, and who else was there?”
I said, “Frascati, in Beverly Hills. It was a ten p.m. wingding. The other guests were Rock Hudson and his fiancée, Phyllis Gates.”
Eddie said, “Rock’s a fag. Don’t tell me — you were cooking up some ruse for the magazine.”
“That’s right. I brought the Blaine girl in as the bait.”
Max said, “Why’d you leave early?”
“I had a date.”
Harry said, “Where, when, and who with?”
“About eleven-thirty. The Chapman Park Hotel. A woman named Lois Nettleton.”
“How long were you with Miss Nettleton?”
“Until two a.m.”
Harry sighed. “If the alibi is kosher, it clears you.”
Max sighed. “We should bring Freddy up to date.”
Red sighed. “Freddy deserves to be updated.”
Harry lit a cigarette. “We’ve had you spot-tailed from the moment the Chief signed you up for his Confidential caper.”
Eddie twirled the flask. “For example, I saw your outburst at Googie’s last night. Voldrich lost two pints of blood and went into shock. I stiffed the call to Queen of Angels. Voldrich is a noted sack of shit, so I told the dispatcher to dawdle.”
I laffed. “Give me the particulars on Janey.”
Red checked his notebook. “It’s rape and manual strangulation. The TOD is one a.m. She was dumped on Lindell Street, at the foot of the Mulholland embankment, right off Beverly Glen. It looks like she was killed in the bushes and dumped from there. A dog walker found her at four-fifteen. It made the a.m. Herald by a rat’s snatch-hair margin. Doc Curphey’s doing the autopsy now.”
I point-by-point parsed it. She might have stayed late with Rock and Phyllis. She cabbed to Frascati or took her own car. She knew the guy. She tricked with the guy. It all went bitching baaaad.
“Vehicle at the scene? Did she have a car? Tracks in the dirt up on Mulholland or down at the dump site?”
Harry checked his notebook. “No vehicle at the scene, that we know of. We’ll be running the canvass in an hour or so. She owned a ’50 Buick Super, which is parked in the driveway of this little house she rented in Culver City. We’ve run the cab logs already. There were no drop-offs or pickups at Frascati from eight p.m. on.”
I pondered it. Harry said, “You were spot-tailed the night of the fund-raiser. In case you didn’t know, the public places at the hotel are riddled with surveillance ports, so I was able to observe you, Senator Kennedy, and Miss Blaine — which, in retrospect, looks like a staged-date sort of deal. BHPD, by the way, has a roust sheet on Miss Blaine. She was soliciting at the bar at the Beverly Wilshire.”
Max sighed. “You see what we’ve got, Freddy. The big question is, who hipped you to the Blaine girl and got this whole thing going?”
Eddie slid the flask over. I glug-glugged, deep-deep.
“You won’t believe it, but I’ll tell you anyway. It was that little dipshit, Robbie Molette, that you rousted on my Art Pepper gig. He’s a busboy at the hotel, and his old man’s a wage slave at Metro. He’s recruited some contract girls at the studio, and Robbie’s peddling them to the guests at the hotel, along with his other jive criminal enterprises.”
Max said, “Holy shit. That jerkoff.”
Red said, “Nice family. Daddy and junior peddle poon, and Robbie sells nudie pix of his own sister.”
Harry said, “And, he sells maryjane to all the hophead kids working on film shoots. Remember? He revealed that when we were squeezing him, last week.”
Eddie said, “Including Rebel Without a Cause, which Freddy knows all about, because the Chief’s got him working up a derogatory profile on that lox, and I myself saw him bird-dogging the parking lot by the observatory, while they were shooting there.”
Spot tails. Enterprising entrapment. I’m keestered every which way. Chief William H. Parker. Accept no substitutes.
I said, “Here’s a word to the wise. Anything pertaining to that movie should go from the Chief, to me, and me to you. Robbie’s dirty, sure — and dirty as far as that flick goes. I’m just making sure that this work I’m doing for the Chief doesn’t get trampled on.”
Max sneered. “And I’m sure the same goes for Senator Kennedy, when and if we clear him on the Blaine job.”
Harry scoffed. “The Molette kid is pushing ass to a U.S. senator. I still find it hard to believe.”
Red moaned. “We’re buried on Fat Boy Mazmanian, and now we get reburied on this Blaine deal. Give us a ray of hope, Freddy. Tell us she confided in you, and you know all about her private life.”
I sucked the flask. “Nix. Robbie set the senator up with her, and I just met her last night. It’s a big canvass and known-associates job, when you’d rather be putting that Mazmanian shit in the ground.”
Red laffed. “Es la verdad, junior.”
I buzzed Harry. “Okay, you spot-tailed me at the fund-raiser. You were on the premises at the hotel. You observed the senator and Janey, so you kept your eyes open. I’m wondering if you noted anything inconsistent while you were there.”
Harry shrugged. “Some unruly news photographers, outside the main lobby. At least one guy got loose and started shooting pictures through that big window that looks out on the porte cochere. A BHPD guy told me there were a couple of dozen dumped flashbulbs on the ground where he was standing.”
Somebody knock-knocked the door. The Hats stood up, rapidamente. Bill Parker walked in. The Hats walked out. It took point-one-two fucking seconds.
Parker straddled a chair. “The senator brought in Jerry Geisler. Jerry called Ernie Roll. Ernie sent Miller Leavy over to take the senator’s deposition. It appears as if the senator was indisposed with a second call girl while the first call girl was being raped and murdered, which clears him for Doc Curphey’s presumed time of death. The second call girl has confirmed the senator’s assertion that they were together at the senator’s bungalow from eleven p.m. to four a.m., which handily covers all possible estimated times of death. Inexplicably, the senator wants you on this job. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. I am acceding to the senator’s request, and I forbid you to utilize your dubious influence with the senator to in any way derail my incursion against Confidential. You will also deploy your goon squad and have them make every effort to dissuade newspaper, TV, and radio reporters from publicizing the murder of Miss Janey Blaine. Per that purported homicide, Doc Curphey has revised his first estimate of Miss Blaine’s cause of death. He has officially announced that Miss Blaine died of injuries sustained by a fall from the Mulholland Drive embankment. Are you following me so far?”