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.
The bedroom spun. It arced on an axis in sync with the rain. It rendered me reluctant and muzzled me mute. I wanted to riff, ramble, and laff. I wanted to predict our prosaic future beyond this sacred cause. I stayed still. Our future ended at the green room. We both knew that.
Lois grabbed my briefcase and walked to the kitchen. She left the door open. She chain-smoked and drank coffee and read Chessman’s letters. I watched her. She wept and kept her sobs as mute as me.
I hid in her heartbeats. Her silent sobs put me to sleep. Time hurtled haywire. She slid into bed and moved me to murmurs. I said, “Do you love me?”
She said, “I’ll think about it.”
The Sweetzer Listening Post
West Hollyweird
10/18/57
“Escalation.”
“Final filmic thrust.”
“Can you spell the word rape?”
All synced to Janey Blaine’s date of death.
I popped into the post. Bernie’s boys misfiled some May ’55 transcripts. They were master-filed here. I felt moon-mad in broad daylight. Lois was back. I was raking in righteous results.
I’d messengered a missive to Bill Parker. It included photostats of four Caryl Chessman to Jimmy Dean letters. Ernie’s out, Chief. Bill McKesson’s in. Remember that favor I asked? Twenty minutes with the Fiend?
Parker called McKesson and messengered me back. We got ten minutes with the Fiend.
I blew out of my pad then. I hopped to Hollywood and blitzkrieged Hollywood Station. I blew into the records room and cruised crime-scene pix. I found Shirley Tutler and Janey Blaine. ’48 meets ’55. Mulholland meets Beverly Glen. The abduction spot for Shirley. The probable dump spot for Janey. Five fotos total. They were point-by-point duplicates.
Here’s what’s hair-raising. The ’55 foliage had been trimmed back to ’48 dimensions. I did not imagine this. I saw tree and leaf clippings on the ground.
Escalation meets replication.
I locked myself up in the listening post. I pulled the July ’55 book and skimmed for misfiles. I found the Nick Ray/Chateau Marmont work order. The room-bug transcripts preceded the fone taps. The room bugs revealed jack shit.
Neuter Nick blathers and bloviates. Jimmy D. and Nick A. blather back. Nick pokes Nifty Natalie and Sassy Sal on the couch. Bernie’s notes note “low and high-pitched grunts and sounds of sexual frenzy.” Fourteen pages of garbled-voice overlap follow that.
I hit the phone-tap transcripts. The section ran sixty-two pages. A separate column listed callers. It got boring, fast.
Nick Ray calls Googie’s forty-three times. Cal the counter man picks up. Nick calls Jimmy/Nick A./Natalie and Sal. They discuss movie motivation. Nick promotes underage woof-woof.
Nick calls his agent. Nick calls twenty-nine unknown men and women. Forty-one unknown men and women call Nick. Bad-boring to languorous and long-winded. No ripe revelation. No talk worth jack shit.
I hit twenty-six pages of fone static. Bernie marked it as such. I hit a noodle-nudging non sequitur: Nick calls NO-65832 nineteen times.
It’s a pay phone in Silver Lake. It’s by the Black Cat Bar at Sunset and Vendome. Bernie lists it as a “known bookie drop.”
Nick and Unknown Man #21 talk. It’s 99.9 percent voice voids and static crunch. Yeah — but there’s nuggets in with the dross.
Nick, 5/11/55. Bookie Call #8: “Setups,” “lights,” “the girl.” Interlaced static throughout. Eleven minutes of line static follow.
Unknown Man #21, 5/13/55. Bookie Call #9: “Props,” “the ’46 Ford,” “some sort of real-life location.” Interlaced static throughout. Sixteen minutes of line static follow.
Nick, 5/14/55. Bookie Call #16: “Of course, Jimmy wants to play the Bandit.” Interlaced static throughout. Four minutes of line static follow.
Three more pay-phone calls follow. There’s no transcribed talk. So what? Calls 8, 9, and 16 dumped the dirt.
The calls precede the Janey Blaine snuff. It’s movie talk. “Props,” “lights,” “setups.” Janey’s “the girl.” Caryl Chessman drove a “ ’46 Ford” on his rape jobs. Mulholland and Beverly Glen is the “real-life location.” Jimmy wants to play the (Red Light) Bandit? If the shitbird weren’t dead, he could do just that.
The booth calls belatedly bugged me. I considered them conclusive. They surged circumstantial. The “ ’46 Ford” cinched the whole deal. I wanted more. I wanted to place Janey Blaine’s killer in that phone booth.
I called Al Wilhite at Headquarters Vice. He knew that booth and the bookie-drop gestalt. He said, “Freddy, it’s just a run-of-the-mill pay phone. Yeah, it sees a lot of bookie traffic — because bookies book a lot of action at the Black Cat. But what’s to stop some neighborhood denizen with no phone from making calls there? Or your two callers arranging calls there, because the callee lives in the neighborhood, and he doesn’t want his number listed on any calls-received list?”
It made sense. I drove by Sunset and Vendome and eyeballed the booth. I saw bookie types exit the Black Cat and enter the booth. I saw them take and make calls and fill out bet slips. I got half gassed at the Cat. I called up concepts and threaded theories through my head. One stuck stern and held.
Phone calls. Letters. Codes of communiqué. Caryl Chessman writes to Jimmy Dean. Jimmy probably writes back. It’s Nick Ray’s repugnant replication film. Wouldn’t Neuter Nick want to talk to Caryl Chessman — at least once?
I whipped west. The concept coursed through me. I ran by the Ranch Market. I kept my Rebel cast and crew records check paper there. I ran through the address index. Nein and nyet. Nobody lived near Sunset and Vendome/the Black Cat.
Nick Ray called Chessman. I sensed it. Death row cons caught calls at the attorney room. The Quentin switchboard put them through. Nick Ray called Chessman in May ’55. His hotel bungalow was bugged and tapped. He might have sensed it. I was hurling heat at him then. What would he do? He’d place a switchboard call.
I moseyed over to the Marmont. I badged a dippy desk clerk and played special deputy. I laid it out. Nicholas Ray/the Rebel shoot/May ’55. Did Mr. Ray make any switchboard calls, here in the flesh?
The clerk said he seemed to recall it. He was on the desk that month. He checked his call records and went all aglow.
Here it is. Now, I remember. He called San Quentin Penitentiary. He spoke for fourteen minutes, and he used that phone right here at the desk.
I slid him a C-note. He palmed it, perfecto. I went all dippy disingenuous.
I would never accuse you of eavesdropping, but—
Well, I recall one thing that Mr. Ray said. He said, “Jimmy and I consider you our technical adviser.”
I checked the call list. The call went through at 3:16 p.m., 5/17/55. Janey Blaine was murdered the next morning.
Outside City Hall
Downtown L.A.
10/19/57
Picket punks. Slogan slammers. College kids and movie morons moved to outrage. Their main martyr’s up in the DB. He’s hard-wired to a hot seat. We’re heading that way.