White Jazz

The will to remember.

Fever dreams — that time burning.

Old now — a gringo exile rich off real estate. My confession complete — but still not enough.

Postscripts:

Will Shipstad — private practice from ’59 up.

Reuben Ruiz — Bantam champ, ’61–’62.

Chick Vecchio — shot and killed robbing a liquor store.

Touch V. — managing drag-queen acts in Vegas.

Fred Turentine — dead — cirrhosis. Lester Lake — dead — cancer.

The place lost/the time burning/close to them somehow.

Madge Kafesjian — alone — that house, those ghosts.

Welles Noonan — convicted of jury tampering — 1974. Sentenced to three to five Fed — a Seconal OD suicide en route to Leavenworth.

Meg — old, a widow — my conduit there to here. Wealthy — our slum pads traded up for condos.

Spinning, falling — afraid I’ll forget:

Mickey Cohen — perpetual scuffler — two prison jolts. Dead — heart attack, ’76.

Jack Woods, Pete B. — old, in failing health.

Dick Carlisle:

Retired from the LAPD — never charged as a Dudley Smith accomplice. “Dick the Fur King” — the Hurwitz stash expanded legit. Dry-cleaning mogul — the E-Z Kleen chain purchased from Madge.

Dudley Smith — still half-lucid, still a charmer: Gaelic songs for the girls who wet-nurse him.

Edmund Exley:

Chief of Detectives, Chief of Police. Congressman, Lieutenant Governor, current gubernatorial candidate.

Acknowledged Dudley Smith admirer — politically expedient, smart.

Dudley — rakish in his eye patch. Pundit when sane: snappy quotes on “containment,” always good for a news retrospective. A reminder: men were men then.

Glenda:

Movie star, TV star. Sixtyish — the matriarch on a long-running series.

Glenda:

Thirty-odd years famous. Always with me — those pictures held close. Ageless — every movie, every printed photo shunned.

In my dreams — spinning, falling.

Like Exley and Dudley and Carlislè.

Exiled from me, things to tell me — prosaic horrors that define their long survival. Words to update this confession to free me.

Dreams: spinning, falling—

I’m going back. I’m going to make Exley confess every monstrous deal he ever cut with the same candor I have. I’m going to kill Carlisle, and make Dudley fill in every moment of his life — to eclipse my guilt with the sheer weight of his evil. I’m going to kill him in the name of our victims, find Glenda and say:

Tell me anything.

Tell me everything.

Revoke our time apart.

Love me fierce in danger.