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.
“You’ve been saying ‘we,’ Freddy. I find that encouraging.”
“I’m starting to think like a cop again, sir.”
“Anything else before you go?”
“Yes, sir. Tell Red and Harry to give Jimmy a good thumping.”
I soloed out to Culver City. My peeper penchant popped me out there. Pervdog, peeper, priapic pad prowler. You’re a clue clown on a biiiiiiiig case. Let’s toss Janey Blaine’s pad. Let’s lay it low and look for leads. Let’s sniff her panties while we’re at it.
It was 1:00 p.m. I stopped at a pay phone and called my service. I had one message: “Call Mr. Kennedy at his hotel.”
I did it. A stooge picked up. He asked me to drop by at 3:00 today. I said I’d be there.
To extort your boss, fucker. Ring-a-ding-ding!!!!
I found chez Janey. It was a peach stucco cube job off of Motor Avenue. Her ’50 Buick was gone. The West L.A. dicks impounded it, posthomicide. A first-rate forensic revealed zero and zilch. West L.A. left the case then. The Otash-Hats combine caught the duty. The pad was pristine to prowl.
I pinned my badge to my suit coat. It added official ooomph. I walked up and keestered the keyhole. Pick #6 worked. The door popped. I locked myself in.
The living room was squaresville meets hipsville. Persnickety Persian carpets and nifty Naugahyde chairs. The kitchen featured a gas range/Frigidaire combo. The fridge featured TV dinners and Tovarich vodka. Tovarich was high-test and cut-rate. Janey was jacked on the juice. She was a secret sauce hound. That’s Clue #1.
I hit the bathroom. It was tidy, turquoise-tiled, and crawl-in cramped. I checked the medicine cabinet. Aaahhh — here’s some good shit.
A diaphragm. A big box of cornstarch. Vivid vials of biphetamine and Nembutal. I popped two of Janey’s biphetamine. Let’s bond, baby doll.
I hit the bedroom. It was squaresville squared. The de rigueur ratty carpets. The small slipcovered bed. A small four-drawer desk. A matching four-door dresser. Cheap Picasso prints on the walls.
The desk blotter. It’s a clue clown/pad-toss classic. Check it out. Catch some light and look low.
Jawohl. It’s crisscross indented. There’s cursive marks all over it. Janey wrote loose-leaf letters and pressed her pen hard. Shit — no legible words leaped out.
I rifled the desk drawers. An inconsistency inflamed me. They were all bare-bones empty. No pens, no paper, no envelopes. The wood had been washcloth-wiped. That meant print eradication. The gradations of grain gave it away. The light grain was dry, the dark grain was damp.
The desk had been tossed. The contents were picked clean. The thief carried off correspondence and/or personal pen-to-paper musings. He stole some called-up calculus of Janey Blaine’s life.
I checked the one window. I saw tool marks sawed into the sash. He leaped off the lawn and let himself in, presto chango.
That left the dresser. Women’s dressers always draw me. I’m a peeper and a sniffer. I’ve been one since puberty pulsed. Women’s dressers drew me in 1936. Women’s dressers draw me NOW.
I opened the top drawer. I saw the panties I sought. I pulled away, cold concurrent.
They were white. They were decorous-demure. There was one row, fetchingly folded. It was everything I liked.
BUT—
They were jizz-juiced, semenized, spurt-spattered, and sicko soiled. The B and E bastard laid his load on lace and cool cotton. It enraged me.
And it was evidence. I ran out to the car and grabbed my evidence kit.
The Jack-Freddy Summit. It’s been set for 3:00 p.m. It gave me time to run the panties downtown to the crime lab. Ray Pinker promised results by 6:00. I whipped back west and made the meet on time.
I buzzed the buzzer. Jack opened up. He wore seersucker shorts and a Harvard Crew T-shirt. He was drawn dry. He was too thin. He had stick legs. His raw rib bones showed. He was still strikingly Jack the K.
He pointed to a chair. He said, “Sit.”
I sat. He sat facing me. He lit a cigar. It was Cuban. I recalled Jefe Batista. His pet shark noshed dissidents.
“I need a promise, Freddy.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s no publicity of any kind on the girl. No sandbag job in your magazine. No shakedown attempts by any bent cops who might know the story — which, of course, includes you.”
I said, “I have some questions about ‘the girl,’ as you describe her. I’m wondering what she told you about herself, during that brief amount of time you spent talking.”
Jack flushed. “No. We’re not discussing it. I’m not telling you, and this is the last time this matter will ever come up between us.”
I called up some cool. “I set you up with Ernie Roll and Bill Parker. You own them now. I overheard you guardedly state that you would like to see the girl’s killer put down. There are five of us who intend to find him and kill him, which will surely save you grave embarrassment somewhere down the line. I expect to be compensated for this, and the price is fifty thousand dollars.”
Jack flinched. “The price is way high, and your manner is entirely too brusque. You’re not saying, ‘Jack, I’m stretched,’ or ‘Jack, I need a touch,’ or ‘Jack, we go back a long time.’ You’re too brusque, Freddy — and you’re rather out of touch with reality, given who I already am and where I’m going. So let’s end this conversation and remain friends while we still can.”
I said, “No. I expect to be compensated for what I’ve done already and what I’m going to do, and the price is nonnegotiable, and a bargain.”
Jack fondled his cigar. “It’s a shakedown. You’re shaking me down.”
“No, it’s not. I’ve levied no threat of exposure. I’m presenting you with a bill for services rendered and services to come. Read whatever you like into it. I’ll expect a call from one of your inbred Irish flunkies, sometime within the near future. We’ll discuss the mode of payment and the time and place, and this is the last time you and I will ever discuss it.”
Jack said, “I’ll pay, Freddy. And this is the last time we’ll ever discuss anything. You’ve just made an impetuous and small-time move — but then, you’ve always been that kind of guy.”
It was fifty paces to the Polo Lounge. My legs quake-quivered and held. I ducked by some dowagers and dumped one on her ass. I helped her up and sent drinks to her table. She waved and went Yoo-hoo!
I boozed. I watched a wall clock. Ray Pinker promised semen-stain results by 6:00 p.m. I conjured Montego Bay, Manhattan, the mountains on the moon. I spent the fifty grand fifty million ways. I saw Lois naked by a wild waterfall and Lois naked at the Chapman Park Hotel. Belfast-born hoods killed me all the standard ways. I died by garrote, gun, brass-knuckle blows to the brain. Flags flew. Jack took the oath of office. I saw Caryl Chessman in Hell. He said, “Hey, baby doll.”
6:00 p.m. boded and bopped close. A radio riffed near my booth. The Hat Squad closed in on fiendish Fat Boy Mazmanian. The cocksucker was doomed. I knew it. Nobody said it.
I found a phone and stiffed the call. Ray Pinker got the goods. The jizz-juiced panties matched the Janey Blaine autopsy discharge. Ray said shit like “identical cellular componentry” and “exudate cell formation.” Ray said the sample was six to eight days old. That meant this: the killer left his load before he killed Janey.
I bolted. I drove straight to the Chapman Park Hotel and Lois. We got naked and tumbled into bed. We didn’t do it. We held each other tight-tight and talked.