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.
A cover caught my eye. Priapic primary colors and hard-hearted headlines screamed.
You get the picture. The magazine was called Confidential.
The Beverly Hills Hotel
8/14/53
Joi woke me up. I was nudging off a nightmare. It was a dark double dip. Ralph Mitchell Horvath, shot in the mouth/Manolo Sanchez with skeleton claws.
I looked across the bed. Shit — Liz was gone.
Joi read my mind. “She had an early call. She said to remind you that Arthur Crowley wants that phone date.”
I lit a cigarette. I chased bennies with Old Crow. Aaaaaaah, breakfast of champions!!!!
“Remind me again. Who’s Arthur Crowley?”
“He’s that divorce lawyer who needs your help.”
I said, “I’ll call him when I go off-duty.”
Joi stepped into a skirt and pulled her shoes on. She dressed as fast as most men.
“No more girls for a while, okay, Freddy? Liz is great, but Barb is like Helga, She-Wolf of the SS. Really, that stunt with the armband and the garters? That, and she hogs the whole bed.”
I laffed loud and lewd. My wake-up whipped through me. It canceled out all dreary dreams and coarse cobwebs. Late summer in L.A. — ring-a-ding-ding!!!!
Joi kissed me and bopped out of the bungalow. I shit, showered, shaved, and put on my uniform.
The phone rang. I snagged it. A man said, “Mr. Otash, this is Arthur Crowley.”
I buffed my badge with my necktie. A mirror magnetized me. Man-O-Manischewitz, I look good!!!!
“Mr. Crowley, it’s a pleasure.”
Crowley said, “Sir, I’ll be blunt. I’m swamped with pissed-off husbands and wives, looking to take each other to the cleaners. Legal statutes are in flux, and divorce-court judges are demanding greater proof of adultery. Liz Taylor told me you might have some ideas.”
I lit a cigarette. Benzedrine arced through my arteries and piqued my pizzazz.
“I do have ideas. If you have flexible scruples, I think we can do biz.”
Crowley laffed. “I’m listening.”
I said, “I know some Marines stationed down at Camp Pendleton. I was their DI in ’43 and ’44, and now they’re back from Korea and looking for kicks. It’s a parlay. Hot rods, good-looking shills, walkie-talkies, phone drops, and Speed Graphic cameras.”
Crowley hooted. “Semper fi, sir. You’re a white man in my book.”
“Semper fi, boss. We’ll work out the details at your convenience, and I’ll round up my boys.”
“And, in the meantime? Is there anything you need?”
Benzedrine was a groin groper. One thing did come to mind.
“My Landing Strip’s got two empty runways tonight. Liz told me you’re conversant with the concept.”
Voices vibrated outside the bungalow. They were mucho male and brazenly brusque. I heard foot scrapes and coughs.
Crowley said, “Liz explained the concept, so I called you prepared. I’ll send two stenos over.”
“Mr. Crowley, you’re a pisser.”
“It takes one to know one, sir.”
We hung up. The voices vibrated. I caught key-in-lock sounds. I walked into the living room. The door whipped wide.
It’s William H. Parker.
With two plainclothes bulls. Both six-four. They live to hurl hurt. They’re mastiffs on a mission to maul for their master.
“Send not to know for whom the bell tolls—”
I unpinned my badge and tossed it at Parker. It hit his chest and dropped on the floor. The mastiffs moved. Parker went Get back. The mastiffs pawed the carpet and growled loooowwww.
I unhooked my gun belt and dropped it on a chair. I called up some cool. Freon Freddy, the Shaman of Shakedown.
“Hit me, Bill. Shack jobs, living above my means, bending the rules here and there. My head’s on the chopping block, baby. Guillotine me.”
The mastiffs smirked smug. Pious Parker parsed out a grin.
“You are currently engaged in an intimate relationship with a Pan American stewardess named Barbara Jane Bonvillain, now in Federal custody for possession of narcotics procured in Mexico. I must inform you that the outsized Miss Bonvillain is a Communist agent and a personal emissary of Marshal Tito, the Red boss of Yugoslavia. As if that weren’t enough, Miss Bonvillain is really a man. She underwent a sex-change operation in Malmö, Sweden, in late 1951, before her stellar efforts impersonating a woman at the ’52 Olympics. You fucked a man, Freddy. You’re a homo. Get the hell off my police force.”
You’re a homo.”
“You’re a homo.”
“You fucked a man.”
“You fucked a man.”
“You’re a homo, you’re a homo, you’re a homo.”
I drank myself into a stunned stupor. I passed out on the floor. I got intimate with insects inhabiting the rug. They were dung desperadoes. They were my filthy fellow travelers, lower than lice.
“You’re a homo, you’re a homo, you’re a homo.”
I drank, I passed out, I woke up. I went eye-to-eye with a big beetle. We discussed the man-bug metaphysic. It was infused with frissons from that freaky frog Camus.
The beetle said that life was horrifically happenstance and that we were all fucked by fate. Bugs were biologically bid to live off larvae and leaves. Men were massacred by lascivious lust and bumbled into bed with he-shes. You didn’t know that she was a he. Hit your bennie stash and find your way out of this funk.
I obeyed the beetle. The Benzedrine outrevved the booze. I talked shit with the beetle for hours. We went feeler-to-feeler on the floor.
I called Abe Adelman at the State License Bureau. I promised him two g’s for PI’s ducat, quicksville. I bid the beetle adieu and climbed back into my civvies. I drove straight to the Hollywood Ranch Market.
L.A. looked like Pompeii, postearthquake. The summer sun skimmed the sky and scattered death rays. Hes were shes and shes were hes and the most gorgeous girls were gargoyles. I got to the market and ran up to my office. Jimmy was scanning the August Lowdown.
He said, “You’re wigged out, Freddy.”
I said, “I’ve been talking to a bug.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Some shit you wouldn’t believe.”
“I would believe it. It’s the basis of our friendship. We tell each other shit the world wouldn’t believe.”
I smiled. “Tell me something typical. I’ve had a jolt. I need to get my feet back under me.”
Jimmy said, “The barman at the Manhole is pushing horse.”
I said, “I’ll file it away, in case I need him.”
Jimmy said, “I’ve got a picture of Marlon Brando with a dick in his mouth.”
“I’ll give you a C-note.”
Jimmy passed the Old Crow. I took a pull and felt the floor meet my feet.
“How was your date with Donkey Don?”
Jimmy held his hands two feet apart. Jimmy said, “Ouch.”
I roared. We passed and repassed the jug. Jimmy lit a Pall Mall.
“I’m up for a role on GE Theater, but this Paul Newman punk will probably get it.”
“I’ll plant a bag of weed on him, and lay on the fear. You’ll get the gig.”
“Thanks, Freddy.”
I thought about the talking bug. I looked down at the aisles. I felt fate beaming back at me.