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 full-circled the shit show and shot back to Spring. I saw a solo college boy by the bus stop. He looked bored.
Heh, heh. I had the antidote for that.
I pulled up. He saw me. I waved him up to the car. He ambled on over. Man — this kid’s entrenched in ennui.
I said, “Hey, junior. How’d you like to make a C-note for a half hour’s work?”
He said, “Doing what?”
I held up a stack of my Marlon Brando fotos. They’re a cool cultural touchstone and define our time and place. It’s Mr. Mumbles, gobbling schvantz.
Junior perused the pix. Junior’s jaw jerked and dropped to his drawers. He filched the fotos. I laid out the loot.
He said, “Gee, thanks.”
I said, “Distribute these to your pals. What’s a protest without some smut? Maybe he’ll autograph them.”
I went back to work. I had four more listening posts to dismantle and disencumber. The microbe moved within me. Lois lived within me. Janey Blaine bloomed off by herself. Justice for Caryl Chessman? Fuck that shit. Justice for Janey and Shirley Tutler.
Left brain/right brain. My paid work boded boring. That protest prodded me proactive. I felt radicalized and detectivized. My brain quadrants melded and merged. I realized this:
The Sweetzer listening post. It’s Bug-and-Tap Central. We kept the master bug-and-tap logs for all the posts there. That meant all the typed transcripts. Going aaaaalll the way back to Confidential’s first issue. It’s got aaaalll the callers’ and callees’ names and fone numbers. It’s nothing but names, names, and names. It’s the ripe repository of L.A. vice.
It’s still a long long shot. But confluence causes coincidence. It’s who you know and who you blow. L.A. vice. That wicked world. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody talks. And Confidential had that wicked world wired.
I drove over and let myself in. It was midday musty. I kicked on the air-conditioning and cooled the place off. The master logs ran to eighty-eight volumes. Twelve for ’52/seventeen for ’53/eleven for ’54/eighteen for ’55/twenty-one for ’56/nine for ’57. My confluence was Chessman/Blaine/the Rebel Without a Cause connection.
The convergence culminated in ’55. The Rebel shoot ran from March to May. Nick’s Knights escalated in May. The loose Chessman chatter escalated in May. Janey was murdered in May. I knew of no bug-and-tap mounts at the Marmont. That might or might not mean they weren’t there. Bernie Spindel installed independent of me. The Marmont was a mother lode of L.A. vice. Certain units had to have been bugged and tapped.
I didn’t need to hear voices. I needed typed transcripts and named names. I pulled Log #9/May — June ’55. I noted a Marmont bug-and-tap listed. I finger-walked to page 483.
I noticed the names first. “Voices ID’d as actors Nick Adams and Dennis Hopper.” I noted the listed location: “Bungalow 21 D/Chateau Marmont.” I knew who lived there in May ’55. It was Nabob Nick Ray. I’m a bug-and-tap pro. I know the work. This talk reads like a living room conversation.
I get it. Nick and Dennis Hopper. They’re alone in Big Nick’s boss bungalow suite. It’s 5/14/55. Something Robbie Molette said tweaked me.
Nick Ray’s “alternative movie.” It refracts Rebel and then some.
The bug’s laid in a lamp or wired to a wall. The transcriber typed out bursts of static, dead air, and this:
Adams: “The boss has got some more escalation shit he’s concocting. He’s calling it the ‘final filmic thrust.’ ”
Hopper: “I think he’s a fucking psycho. That’s why I’ve kept my distance with him.”
Adams: “All geniuses are psycho. Look at Bird and Lucretia Borgia. You don’t get one without the other.”
Hopper: “Nick’s out of his gourd. He keeps hopping around the set, asking everyone from the camera guys to the grips, ‘Can you spell the word rape?’ ”
That was it. The conversation coughed to static and dead air. I found the work order and the transcriber’s signature at the bottom. Bernie Spindel ran the gig.
We met at Googie’s. I’d read the rest of the May transcripts. Nothing else slammed me. “Final filmic thrust.” “Can you spell the word rape?” The conversation occurred 5/14/55. Janey Blaine was raped and killed 5/18. Confluence abets consequence. I grokked a cause and effect.
We sipped coffee. Bernie said, “I remember the job, but it wasn’t for the magazine. Whatever you’re looking at, this conversation plays sideways to.”
I lit a cigarette. “Who put in the work order?”
“The security chief at Warner’s. He didn’t trust Nick Ray not to go over budget, and he didn’t trust him with all that young pulchritude around. He was just keeping tabs for the studio execs. It was a nothing kind of Hollywood job. I did all the transcriptions, and nothing I ever heard was worth a shit.”
I said, “Shit.”
Bernie said, “Yeah, ‘Shit.’ Just what I said. One thing you should check, though. One of my guys misfiled a bunch of the May transcripts in the July log. Since the gig never came to anything, I just let it lie.”
Lois Nettleton at thirty. The second time I saw her for the first time.
Gaunt subsumes goooood-looking. She’s winsome and wary, all wound up. She’s much more of whatever made her. She’s a runner stirred in the starting blocks. She’ll run from you but not herself.
Once again. Lois the Lithe. My midnight caller. We’re outside Dale’s Secret Harbor. She’s boxed in a booth. She’s haloed in a heathered crewneck sweater and cord slacks.
I walked up. She saw me. She closed her eyes and probably prayed. It was a whew!!! prayer. We worked through conduits and cupids. Her sudden summons worked.
She talked to the phone. I pulled out the Chessman/Jimmy D. letter and placed it flat on the booth glass. Chessman rags Shirley Tutler. He adamantly admits the assault.
I gripped the door hinge. Lois laid her hand there and laced up our fingers. I heard the phone drop.
We got naked and tumbled to bed. We didn’t do it. We conjured a rainstorm, like last time. It time-machined two years away. It rained hard and hurled hailstones. We sealed our circuit of time lost. ’55 to ’57 — our window view’s a wonderland by nite.
It was now. We did what we did then. We kicked the sheets off and burrowed deep-deep. I told her how I found the letters. I forgave her Janey Blaine blurts to the press. She winced and wept at that. I put it off to pillow talk. I didn’t tell her I killed a man to spare her exposure.
Lois talked. She said Chessman’s L.A. court date had been moved up. We had forty-eight hours to make the meet and no more. I talked. I said Ernie Roll retired. Bill McKesson had his job now. He was a tough piece of goods. Bill Parker would have to persuade him. Lois said, The Chief should see the letters. I said, He should. She said, I want to read every one.