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.
Confidential survived. It cooled down its content. It now publishes pap for a reduced readership. Our circulation circled downward. Bondage Bob pledged to publish “only wholesome stories.” He went on a cost-cutting binge. Listening posts were abandoned. I’m on my way out. My goon squad squared up tall and went back in the Marine Corps. I’m a full-time private eye now. I work divorce gigs out of the wheelman lot and snitch to Bill Parker. A snitch fund pays me five yards per month. I make out okay. Robbie Molette and Nasty Nat Denkins work the wheelman lot with me. I’m their faux daddy who used to be hot shit.
I’m alone most nights. I talk to women who aren’t in the room with me. I think about Janey Blaine and Shirley Tutler. Rumination to revelation. A click clicked in my broiled-to-burnout brain, much belatedly.
January ’48. Shirley Tutler is abducted and assaulted. Near Mulholland and Beverly Glen. May ’55. Janey Blaine is raped and murdered. Near Mulholland and Beverly Glen.
Rumination to revelation. I now see replication at work here. Movie madness. The Rebel shoot. Craaaazy crisscrosses at play. Robbie Molette and Janey. Robbie and the Rebel crew.
The Rebel remnants remain in L.A. Nick Ray’s prepping a preachy lox at Fox. Nick Adams shows up on TV. The Nick’s Knights Kar Klub is surely making mischief. It poses a What-Will-You-Do-About-It? dilemma.
I’m bored. I’m underemployed. I may be ramping up to do something bold, brave, and stupid.
Bondage Bob Harrison’s Suite
The Downtown Statler
10/14/57
The useless eulogy. The dippy de-brief. The rip-snorting ride is over, Sahib.
We took chairs. Bondage Bob poured mid-morning martinis. He wore a pink-puce toga. Note the lash marks on his legs.
“It’s the end of an era, Freddy. And you’re savvy enough to know why I’ve called you in.”
I lit a cigarette. “You’re ‘Mr. Wholesome’ now. I’m redundant. You’ve got no need for a strongarm corps, so you’re cutting me loose.”
Bob sipped bum Beefeaters. The suite was bargain basement. The booze was bottom shelf. His toga resembled a reclaimed Klan sheet.
“That’s the long and short of it, son. There’s a few clean-up jobs you can take care of — but that’s it, over and out.”
I went nix. “You’ve got qualms about the trial. The prosecutors came in, armed to the teeth. Somebody fed them a shitload of inside dirt. It was either me, or one of my guys. You’re getting up the juice to ask me. You’re sitting there in your toga, and you look like Julius Caesar at a drag ball. You’re getting ready to lay some sort of ‘et tu, Freddy’ number on me.”
Bob went te salud. I went so ask. Bob scratched the whip scars on his ankles.
“I see Bill Parker behind the whole magillah. He ran the show and fed the dope to the AG’s boys. He recruited informants, took depositions, the whole schmear.”
I said, “Ask me, Bob. Accuse me and ask me, and I’ll say yes or no.”
Bob shook his head. “This is not the Freddy Otash of yore I’m seeing here today. This is some new kamikaze version, that I find disconcerting.”
I drained my drink. “You’re asking me to feed you cues. Okay, here’s the first one. The shit I pulled for you and the magazine was wrong. You take it from there.”
Bob made the jackoff sign. “You’re jerking my chain, son. You don’t get to take my money for as long as you did, and make me the bad guy.”
I said, “I’m the bad guy. I knew it when I put the hurt on Johnnie Ray.”
Bob shrugged. “I’m not going to ask you, and you’re not going to volunteer. I’ll tell you what gets me, though.”
I went so?
“Here’s what gets me, son. Whoever it was was some sort of insider, and that fucker sided with that pious son-of-a-bitch Parker, against me.”
I stood up. “Here’s a cue, dad. I’d rather be him than be you.”
Shell Gas Station
Beverly and Hayworth
10/15/57
The wheelman lot. Legions of the lost light and live here. We scrounge for scraps. We dive for divorce dough. I’m El Daddy-O by default and decree. I’m a licensed PI. I’m a DA’s Bureau special deputy. My ex-Confidential status still stamps me a stud. Bondage Bob fired me. I’ve still got my Ranch Market gig. Bob’s got me doing clean-up jobs on a per diem basis. I’m closing out listening posts, tomorrow. Taps, bugs — they’ve got to go. Bob’s divesting and dumping his properties. His profits have dipped looooooow.
He’s Mr. Wholesome now. He told the judge and prosecutors that. Call him Messrs. Bland and Blasé.
I slid low in my sled. I yawned and yodeled Old Crow. I popped two biphetamine and lashed the late-morning blahs. I shared my shit with Robbie Molette. He’s my new sidekick, thus my new Jimmy D. Nasty Nat Denkins dozed in the backseat. He crossed the wheelman color line. He’s now Mr. Darktown Divorce. He’s still got his gig at KKXZ. Confidential still subsidizes the station.
Robbie said, “What’s the deal today?”
I lit a cigarette. “France’s Parisian Room, over on Washington and La Brea. The mark’s an ofay stiff. The girl’s colored. She hops cars at the Parisian and peddles it part-time. The mark’s terrified of exposure. He’s a preacher at a drive-in church in Van Nuys. The wife wants a divorce. Nat’s playing a kitchen cook and bringing lunch over. The pad’s right behind the Parisian. We’ll take down the door and take the pictures. The girl’s in on it. There’s three of us and one of him. We’ll kick his ass and take him to Wilshire Station. The wife and her lawyer want criminal charges filed.”
Robbie yaaawned. He cricked and uncricked his neck. He slept on the lot. He slept in his ’49 Ford. He left his mom and dad’s house. He’s now Mr. Apostasy. He quit boning his kid sister and peddling her beaver pix. The Janey Blaine job tested and torqued him. He cleaned house and wound up here.
I said, “I’ve been teething on Janey. Who she knew, who she tricked with, who she might have met in Beverly Hills that nite.”
Robbie picked his nose. “We’ve been through all that. I’ve been through it with you and the Hats, and Max and Red braced my dad at Metro and polygraphed him. He came up kosher, and you and the Hats made Fat Boy for the snuff. I don’t want to keep on plowing up this old dirt.”
Nasty Nat stirred. “Fat Boy was framed. He’s Emmet Till and the Scottsboro Boys, reborn. I’m referencing him on my ‘Cutie’ tonight.”
I said, “Tell me why.”
“Those Chicom space suits the PD bought spontaneously combusted, in this Police Academy storeroom. Whoosh, they go up in flames. They were defective from the jump. No bad deed goes unpunished.”
Robbie said, “I never thought Fat Boy did it. He always worked with a partner, and he robbed the women first.”
I laffed. The pay phone rang. Nat reached out his window and wrapped the receiver.
He said, “Yeah, we’re here.” He listened. He hung up.
“It’s on. The girl says she’s afraid of the mark. He’s gone kinky on her.”