Shakedown: Freddy Otash Confesses

8

Jimmy timed the fuck: 1:46. The fuckers: future prez and mick martyr JFK, Swedish sweetie Ingrid Bergman.

Pillow patter tapped the tape. Jack coughed and said, “Aaaaah, that was good.” Ingrid yawned and said, “Vell, for vun of us, perhaps.”

I roared. Jimmy howled. The market was 3 a.m. quiet. We passed the Old Crow back and forth.

Jimmy said, “We wrapped GE Theater. I invited Ronnie Reagan to the premiere.”

I said, “He hates the Reds. I’ll hit him up for some snitch-outs.”

The tape groaned and ground to squelch. Jimmy turned it off. I looked out the mirror. The kid with the red wagon was unloading Confidential. The wagon was white-print-emblazoned. I couldn’t quite read the words.

Jimmy said, “The kid gets to you.”

“He shouldn’t be out this late.”

“You’ve got the same employer now.”

“I know.”

“When I’m famous, keep me out of the magazine.”

“When you’re in it, you know you’ve arrived.”

The first check arrived. I retained Bernie “the Bug King” Spindel. He was an Orthodox Jew with eight kids and six schvartze girlfriends. We discussed the mud-shark metaphysic. Bernie said, “Once you’ve had black, you can’t go back.”

We spent a week whipping wires to wainscoting and laying mike mounts into mattresses. I bribed hotel honchos up the yammering ying-yang. We drilled, bored, spackled, threaded, planted, and wired all the high-end hotels. Regular retainers would result in records of sicko celebs sacking up in those rooms. Bondage Bob had bountiful bucks. We wire-whipped full-time listening posts at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Bel-Air Hotel, the Beverly Wilshire, the Miramar, the Biltmore, the downtown Statler. A Biltmore bellboy tipped us right off: Gary Cooper and a jailbait jill jumped into that bugged bedroom. BAM! — our system socks in sync. Bedsprings bounce, voices vibrate, mikes pick up tattle text and lay it to the listening post. BAM! — my Marine Corps mastiff retrieves the tape. BAM! — the babe is 16 and a Belmont High coed. Coop says, “You’re built, honey. Tell me your name again.” The girl gasps, “I’ve always loved your pictures, Mr. Cooper. And, wow, you’re really big.”

The dirt, the dish, the scandal skank, the lewd libels revealed as real. It was all starting to come to me and to Confidential.

Jimmy edited his movie and dubbed in a sizzling soundtrack. The priapic premiere was the L.A. moment of fall ’53. I served pizza, booze, and pills from a felonious pharmacy. My pad was packed with movie machers and Marines, stupid starlets, stars, and studs. Dig: Liz, Joi, Ward Wardell, Race Rockwell, Donkey Don. Ronnie Reagan, Harry Fremont, Arthur Crowley, Bondage Bob, and Jean-Paul Sartre — existentially seeking the scene. A six-foot-six drag queen, Rock Hudson, ex — U.S. senator Helen Gahagan Douglas. Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, nodding on Big H.

It’s the egalitarian epicenter of postwar America. It’s a colossal convergence of the gilded and gorgeous, the defiled and demented, the expatriots of exultant extremity. This seedy summit set the tone for the frazzled and fractured society that is our nation today.

I dimmed the lights. Race Rockwell ran the projector. The soundtrack hit: Bartók, Beethoven, bebop by way of Bird. There’s the opening titles: “The Stacked and the Hung, starring Donkey Don Eversall and June Christy.” “Photographed, Edited, Produced and Directed by James Dean.”

The applause was apoplectic. There’s the establishing shot — a coontown motel room, shot surreptitiously through a hole-in-the-wall peek.

June Christy enters the room and drops her purse on the bed. She looks apprehensive. She lights a cigarette, she checks her watch, she taps her toes and paces. It’s soundless cinema. The camera stays static — the lens is lashed to that wall peek.

There — June hears something. She smiles, she walks offscreen, she walks back on with Donkey Don. Donkey winks at the wall peek — he’s in on it. June sits on the bed. Donkey Don whips it out and wags it. My pad shakes and shimmies. There’s gasps, wolf whistles, shrill shrieks.

I looked around for Jimmy. June devoured Donkey Don, tonsil-deep. Where’s Jimmy? Fuck — he’s jacking off by the pizza buffet!

Calendar pages flicked, flew, sheared, and shape-shifted. They’re sales graphs now.

’53 into ’54. Vertical lines in escalation. Confidential hits a million a month. Confidential makes a million and a half in rabid record time.

It’s all ME. I’m awash in the sicko secrets I’ve cruelly craved my whole life. I’ve got L.A. hot-wired. My city teems with tattle tipsters on my payroll. Hotel rooms are hot-sheet hives hooked up to my headset. I know everything sinful, sex-soiled, deeply dirty, and religiously wrong. It’s wrong, it’s real, and it’s MINE.

My Marines lived in listening posts. They caught Corrine Calvet cavorting with a car-park cat at the Crescendo. They caught Paul Robeson, ripped to the gills at a Red rally. They caught Jumping Johnnie Ray again. I verified all of it and fed it to Confidential. Gary Cooper and Miss Belmont High? Quashed for ten grand.

’53, ’54. A-bomb blast parties on Liz Taylor’s rooftop. Those cavalcades of color against the dim dawn. The camaraderie and opportunity. The sense that this march of magnificent moments would never stop.

Calendar pages, sales graphs, Confidential covers. Dipsos, nymphos, junkies, Commies, feckless fools all. That cover I regret, that ball I dropped, that malignant moment. That page in purgatory as I pause my pen.

May 16, 1954. I’m at my pad. I’m booking a threeski for the Landing Strip. I quashed a story on Marilyn Monroe’s secret Mexican marriage. Marilyn grovels, grateful. She knows a sapphic sister with a sometimes yen for men.

The phone rang. I picked up. Arthur Crowley said, “There’s trouble, Freddy.”

I said, “Hit me.”

“I got a tip. Johnnie Ray’s been to a libel lawyer. He’s suing the magazine. I know that you verified the story, but he’s going forward anyway. I strongly suggest that you nip this in the bud.”

Men’s Room Mishegas: Jittery Johnnie Strikes Again.

I verified the story. Confidential ran it. This was unprecedented grief.

“My Marines are on maneuvers, Arthur. There’s no one to handle it.”

“You handle it, Freddy. Take care of it before that tip gets back to Bob Harrison.”

I hung up. My nerves were nuked. I took three quick pops of Old Crow. Joi was tight with Johnnie. They girl-talked regular. I liked Johnnie. Jimmy screened The Stacked and the Hung for him personally.

I dropped three yellow jackets and obliterated the day. I woke up at midnight. Johnnie always hit Googie’s after his closing set. He always parked in the same spot.

A short stroll, spring heat, a brisk breeze. I walked over and leaned on Johnnie’s Packard Caribbean. Johnnie swished out at 1:15.

He saw me. He got the gestalt. He said, “Hi, Freddy.”

I said, “Don’t make me, kid. I’ll keep you out from now on, but you’ve got to stop it here.”

Johnnie said, “You’re a parasite, Freddy. You feed off the weak. I’m not backing off. I don’t see any of your goons around, so you’ll have to do it yourself.”

Parasite, parasite, parasite—

“Let it go, Johnnie. You can’t win this one.”

“You’re the weak one, Freddy. Joi told me that you cry out for your mother in your sleep.”

I trembled. “One more time. No lawsuit.”

“You’re a mama’s boy, Freddy. Joi told me you fucked a tranny, which makes you more queer than me.”

I saw red and black-red. I hit him. My signet ring slashed his cheek. He went down on his knees. I picked him up and tossed him into his car. I heard bones crack and teeth shear. The bumper ledge gouged his head at the hairline. I kicked him and tore a chunk of his scalp free.

He said, “Okay, okay, okay.” No whimper — strong.

I said, “I’m sorry, kid.”

Johnnie spit blood and twirled a fuck-you finger at me.