Widespread Panic

Cell 2607

Penance Penitentiary

Reckless-Wrecker-of-Lives Block

Pervert Purgatory

9/4/2020

I’m beastfully back. This concluding confession covers spring ’55 to spring ’60. The freewheeling Freddy O. is now a sniveling snitch. I’m Chief Bill Parker’s back-room bitch and punk pawn in his crusade to take down Confidential. It’s a fucked-up fin de siècle. The madcap magazine is doomed, Daddy-O. And I’m the ardent architect of its dipshit demise.

I’ve lost that lush life. I’m bopping the byways of big boo-hoo. Joi Lansing’s gone. Connie Woodard’s gone. Claire Klein’s gone. Stretch Perkins went licentiously lez and snagged herself a barmaid at Linda’s Little Log Cabin. Jimmy Dean’s pulling away. He’s a movie star now. He toplines Giant and East of Eden. He’s been shooting a teen turkey called Rebel Without a Cause. It’s filming on some loopy L.A. locations. I’m his main mentor no more. Director Nicholas Ray has replaced me. Nick Ray’s a sweaty switch-hitter and a carcinogenic Commie. I’m Jimmy’s real faux dad.

Boo-hoo, boo-hoo. I’m surfing a sicko surge of self-pity. But — this thunderous thought keeps me poised to pounce.

I know people. I’m now the pills-and-cocaine conduit for Senator Jack Kennedy. I broker scrapes for the contract cooze at Columbia and Metro. I’ve got L.A. bugged, tapped, and hot-wired here to Hell. I’m all repugnant resource and the withering will to survive.

Opportunity is love. Confluence is opportunity. I move in a mélange of machers, grifters, and graft-grabbers, and the sex-soiled sycophants so indigenous to L.A. Something has to pop my way. Something’s coming. Something’s telling me that IT is a SHE.

Shell Gas Station

Beverly and Hayworth,

L.A.

5/11/55

The wheelman lot. It’s the baaaaaad bane of wicked wives and horndog hubbies, hot to trot. Divorce begins here. Lowlife lawyers call the pay phone by the lube rack. Punk PIs hustle off to hot-sheet huts and kick doors down. There’s flashbulb flare and eeeek and shreeek and fuckee-suckee singed on celluloid.

The wheelman lot. It’s my lurid launching pad today. Confidential’s cornholing Art Pepper. Artful Art’s an alto sax hopping high on the Downbeat poll. He’s a junkie with a jacked-up jones for high school honeys. He’s nailed Miss Belmont High and Miss Lincoln High already. He’s meeting Miss Franklin High at the Leechee Nut Lodge in Chinatown, one hour hence. I’ll be there to instigate fuckus interruptus.

I’m serving two masters here. Confidential’s calling the piece “Sax Potentate Pepper: Junk and Jailbait Call the Tune Now!!!!!” LAPD Vice laid on the lead to the meet and laid down the law: We’ll be there to slam this slime for Stat Rape/1st Degree.

Bill Parker hates hopheads and jailbait jumpers. Bill Parker’s out to keester Confidential. He wants to catalogue Confidential’s coercive methods and march the mag to Indictment City. He’s implementing a looooooooooong-range strategy.

I lounged in my Packard pimpmobile. Ward Wardell and Race Rockwell reclined in their surveillance van. Donkey Don Eversall worked the outside spot. Miss Franklin High had her own sled. She handed out hand jobs, at five bucks per, and glommed a beat-to-shit ’48 Merc. Donkey Don would call the pay phone. He’d say It’s on and tail the twist to the Leechee Nut Lodge. The desk clerk was an LAPD lapdog. He told Don that putzo Pepper was smack-back in Room #9. Two Vice Squad goons were mainlining mai tais in the Lily Pad Lounge. They were set to grind Pepper while my camera crew rolled film.

I’m a snitch. I’m a rat fink. I’m a doofus double agent. I’m LAPD Lapdog #1.

I eyeballed the lot. Six wheelmen reposed in their rides. They drove hellacious hot rods and blew their gelt on booze, kustom kar kits, and cooze. They lived at the lot. They slept in their sleds. They poked B-girls from the Kibitz Room at Canter’s Delicatessen and bounced their backseats, six at a pop.

Ward Wardell walked to the phone. Race Rockwell schmoozed a wigged-out wheelman with pizza-pus zits. The cat was a cop buff. He said the Hat Squad was chasing two 211/rape-o’s. They stormed steak houses at closing time. They tapped the tills and took wallets. They purloined purses and made the women strip and dispense snout jobs. The Hats were out to take scalps on this one.

I tuned it out. The Hats and I had shared some shimmering shit. Fuck them — more current shit shivered through me.

Bondage Bob called me this morning. He beefed a southside radio station and a late-nite show called Nasty Nat’s Soul Patrol. It was all pimp patois, cool-cat consciousness, and jive jazz. A woman called in three nights running. She came off winsome and waaaay white. She called herself “Miss Blind Item.” She jawed with Nasty Nat and aped Confidential’s alliterative prose style. Bob had no gripe there. But — she crossed some craaaaazy line and madly mauled the magazine. She baaaaad — beefed the August ’52 piece on “Red Light Bandit” Caryl Chessman.

The piece bawled boo-hoo per Chessman’s tripartite conviction. It’s baaaad: Kidnap/Armed Robbery/Forced Oral Cop. Dig: the tone was apoplectic apostasy. The tone disregarded the magazine’s perpetual fry-the-fucker stance. Chessman was convicted in spring ’48. The Little Lindbergh Law applied. Hanging judge Charles Fricke righteously mandated DEATH. Chessman professed his innocence. Chessman excoriated capital punishment. Lunar-looped liberals took up his hue and cry. ’48 to ’55. He’d held off his trek to the green room for seven full years. He filed appeals. He wrote screechy screeds and peddled them to pinko publishers. Now, this wiggy witch was mocking my magazine, and lambasting its one lamentable lapse in moral tone.

Bondage Bob told me to tune in Nasty Nat tonite. He said the witch called in at 1:00 a.m. and motormouthed till 3:00. I said I’d jump on it and take boocoo notes.

The pay phone rang. Ward grabbed it and grinned. He said, “Arriba, boss.”

I banged Beverly, straight downtown. My Packard pimpmobile performed. A supercharged V-12 va-va-voomed me due east. My sled featured lake pipes, cheater slicks, and a Nazi death’s-head shift knob. It was two-way-radio-rigged and synced to the surveillance van and Donkey Don’s ’53 Chevy. Our frequency number? What else? It’s 69.

I ran the lead slot. The surveillance van dogged me. Donkey Don tailed Miss Franklin High southbound on the Arroyo Seco. She’s crazoid Chrissy Molette. She’s a hot-hormoned hellion out to bang all the bopsters on the ’54 Downbeat and Metronome polls. She plays mean skin flute and hides hatpins in her big beehive. Her high school homeroom teacher was hotsville with Donkey Don. She tattled Chrissy’s crazed yen for men.

Confluence. It’s who you know and who you blow. Thus, this shimmering shakedown—

My radio cricked, crackled, and spit sputters. Donkey Don said, “69-Baker to 69-Alpha. Come in, Freddy.”

“Alpha to Baker. I hear you, Don.”

Don gargled garble talk. Sputters, stutters, static — his real voice shimmied and shot through.

“Chrissy picked up a tail at the York Avenue on-ramp. It’s a ’49 Ford ragtop, tan over blue. I got the plate number and buzzed the DMV. It’s her brother Robbie’s ride. Robbie’s got a green sheet. One fall for pandering, one for 459.”

I said, “Shit, this is grief.” I brain-broiled a cool countermeasure.

“The Vice guys at the Lodge have a walkie. They’re tapped in at 69, D-for-Dog. Buzz them and tell them to grab Robbie, plant some dope on him, and hold him. He’s out to mess the gig up, and we need Chrissy and Pepper in the sack and at it for this deal to work for the magazine and Bill Parker.”

Don tittered and tee-heed. He giggled, guffawed, and laffed lewd.

“Yeah, plus full bush, insertion, Pepper’s sax and groovy dope paraphernalia in view.”

Wire warp froze the frequency and cut the call off. I knew Don would field a follow-thru and buzz 69-Charlie. He’d rig the rendezvous. We’d converge and collide at the Lodge. Chrissy knocks on Door #9. Pepper opens up. He might be noxiously nude. We’ll airbrush in a two-foot schlong and redact it, down to his knees. Our randy readers will get the gestalt. Ward and Race will roll film from high cover. I get the kick-the-door-in shot. The Vice cops pile in behind me.

Oooooooh — it’s Stat Rape/1st Degree for Bill Parker. Ooooooooh — it stacks my status as LAPD Rat #1 and brings me brownie points with the pervy puritan I hocked my soul to!!!!

I hit the hill by Belmont High. Beverly bywayed to 1st Street. I goosed the gas eastbound. I cut north on Broadway and east on Alpine. There’s the Leechee Nut Lodge, up ah—

There’s a car cavalcade, curbside. Chrissy’s ’48 Merc. Robbie’s ’49 Ford ragger. Donkey Don’s ’53 Chev. The Lodge is horseshoe-shaped, one floor only. Chrissy’s cutting through the courtyard. She’s anxiously angling toward Door #9. Robbie’s skulking by the door of the Lily Pad Lounge. He’s peeping the courtyard. He’s insidiously intent. There’s Donkey Don and the Vice cops. They’re crapped out in deck chairs outside the office. They’re sharing a short dog of Old Crow.

I parked behind Don’s Chevy. The surveillance van parked behind me. I grabbed my righteous Rolleiflex. Ward and Race wrangled out their movie-camera shit. The whoooole scene sizzled in SIN-emascope and slid into a slithery sloooooow motion.

I signaled Don and the Vice cops and pointed to Robbie. They booze-barged over and braced him. He went Who, me? Don went Yeah, you — cocksucker. Robbie resisted and refuseniked. He put up his paws in a punk fighter’s pose and bop-de-bop danced on his toes. Vice Cop #1 nabbed his neck and whacked his head against the wall. Vice Cop #2 kicked him in the balls and cuffed his hands behind his back.

Robbie baby-bawled and bitch-squealed. Don grabbed his greasy hair and pulled him inside the Lily Pad Lounge. I scoped Door #9. I saw craaaazy Chrissy crash in and crotch-dive Art Pepper. Man — it’s a deep-focus door shot, delicioso!!!!!

The door slammed shut. I signaled Ward and Race and pointed to my wristwatch. The second hand tick-tocked toward fuckus interruptus. Tick, tick, tick — it tapped the two-minute mark. Donkey Don said, “Banzai.”

We ran to Door #9. Ward and Race rolled film. Donkey Don worked the sound gizmo. The Vice cops ran up and stood behind us. They put on palm-weighted sap gloves and got het up to hurl some hurt.

Ward counted down. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one — zero.”

I flat-foot kicked the door-doorjamb juncture. It juked the door hard off its hinges. The door flew back and in. It dumped a nightstand and pulped Pepper’s sax.

Man — it’s suckus interruptus.

Chrissy gobbled Ardent Art. Ardent Art geezed Big “H” in caustic concurrence. I got my shot. My boys rolled fuckee film. Chrissy went eeeek. Art Pepper said, “Oh shit.” The Vice cops charged the bed.

The Hats hard-nosed Robbie Molette. I observed. The City Hall DB/sweatbox row/two-way-mirrored walls and outside-corridor speakers.

I perv-peeped the action. Sweatbox #3 snap, crackled, popped. I goosed the wall volume dial and caught every nasty nuance.

Robbie sat in a bolted-down chair. Note the bolted-down table and fat phone book. The Hats hovered. Max Herman waved Robbie’s green sheet. Red Stromwall riffled Robbie’s wallet. Harry Crowder crowded Robbie and caused a case of the sweltering sweats. Eddie Benson tapped the table and looked meeeaaan.

Max said, “Pandering. Pleaded down at arraignment, March ’52. You’re the most raggedy-ass-looking pimp I’ve ever seen, Robbie. Successful pimps take considerable care with their appearance.”

Es la verdad. Robbie dressed pure pachuco. He wore a see-thru Sir Guy shirt and slit-bottom khakis. Pointy-toe fruit boots cinched the enchanting ensemble. Robbie evinced bad hygiene. Dandruff debris dusted the table. Robbie picked his nose and noshed the nuggets.

Red said, “459 PC. Three counts. Tossed at prelim, January ’53.”

Robbie said, “I quit pimping, and I quit burglarizizing. Actually, I don’t know what the beef here is. You boys and those magazine shitheels kicked my ass, when all I was doing was lounging in the vicinity of a room where my underage sister was about to get devirginizized by a notorious junkie and degenerate.”

Harry laffed. “Your sister’s three weeks and one day under the age of consent. The DA will never file Stat Rape on Pepper.”

Eddie laffed. “He’ll file for possession of narcotics, and leave it at that. And your sister lost her virginity back in the Coolidge administration.”

Robbie laffed. “Yeah — just like your mama.”

Eddie phone-booked him. Whap — a real noggin-knocker. It scoured his scalp and raised blood blisters. His dentures dipped to the floor.

Robbie reached down and replaced them. Bill Parker walked up to me. He weaved a tad. I knew the signs. El Jefe was half in the bag.

I said, “Hola, Chief.”

Parker passed me his flask. I gargled Old Overholt and popped two Dexedrine on the sly.

“The kid’s dirty. I’ve got a theory. I think he wanted to catch Pepper in the kip with his sister, and extort him with it.”

Parker yukked. “Never let it be said that Freddy Otash doesn’t know from shakedowns.”

I passed the flask back. Parker yodeled Old Overholt. I rescoped the sweatbox hullabaloo.

Max said, “There’s a few items we’d like to discuss with you, Robbie.”

Robbie shrugged. Robbie said, “Okay.”

Red said, “Here’s the first item. There’s a note from the Boys Vice Principal at Hollywood High attached to your green sheet. He states that you were seen at last year’s Hollywood-Fairfax football game, attempting to pass yourself off as a ‘talent scout’ and recruit high school girls for your stable of underage prosties.”

Robbie stut-stuttered. He blanched and blew spit bubbles. They pop-pop-popped.

“That’s a humbug accusation. I’ve gone straight. I’m gigging as a busboy at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Talk to the desk manager. He’ll tell you I’m revered by both my fellow employees and all the guests.”

Max said, “Here’s the second item. An hour ago, we sent two plainclothesmen from the Highland Park Station to the house where you live with your mom and dad, and your sister. They tossed your room and found a stack of forty-two beaver photos of Chrissy, all of which were marked ‘$1.00’ on the back. Robbie, you would spare yourself a lot of grief, in this room and beyond, if you admitted that you were peddling those photographs, and that you and Chrissy were engaged in an attempt to extort Art Pepper, based on his somewhat specious relationship with Chrissy herself.”

Robbie sputtered and stuttered. His dentures popped out. He crammed them back in.

“That is a no-good, goddamn lie. The cops planted those pix, and—”

Harry phone-booked him. Whap — a real cranium-crunch. Robbie’s head bounced on the table. Ashtrays hopped, cigarette butts flew.

Parker said, “You called it on the extortion.”

I said, “The Hat Squad. Accept no substitutes.”

Robbie quivered and quaked. He shook, shimmied, and mewed for his mama. Max pulled his pocket flask and whipped it on him. Robbie suckled and siphoned it. His Adam’s apple bob-bobbed.

He drained the flask dry. Max tossed him a pack of cigarettes and a matchbook. Robbie lit up and surged with a sudden savoir faire.

“I’ll concede that I’m quite the racketeer, and that you’d do well to utilizize me as your personal secret informant. I’ve been known to provide young stuff to the guests at the hotel, so they might utilizize this young gash for what you might call ‘casting-couch sessions,’ which ain’t illegal the last time my high-priced Jew lawyer checked. Also, ‘Rapid Robbie,’ as I’m known in the trade, has been known to supply maryjane to the geeks working at film locations, throughout the southland. I’ll be candid here. I utilizize the inside scoop on the locations off of tips the guests feed me.”

Max said, “You’re a criminal mastermind.”

Red said, “I’ve never doubted it.”

Harry said, “People dismiss you as a dipshit kid, in over his head. They fail to see the real, dynamic you that lurks beneath the façade.”

Eddie said, “Keep going, hotshot. You’ve got us utilizized.”

Robbie blew smoke rings. “Right now, I’m moving maryjane to the gang on Rebel Without a Cause. That’s this juvenile delinquency lox being shot all over L.A. This jamoke Nick Ray’s directing it. He’s got the hots for all these rough-trade boys he’s hired to stand around and look tough in crowd scenes. I’m doing high-volume biz here. Nick the Dick’s signed up an all-hophead cast, and—”

Parker hit the speaker switch. Rapid Robbie ran his mouth and made mute-mime gestures. Nick the Dick. That shitbird. He holds swishy sway over Jimmy. I should look into—

“I’m working up a brainstorm, Freddy.”

“I’m listening, boss.”

“I want you to build a derogatory profile on the filming of Rebel Without a Cause. Deploy your pal James Dean and your usual gang of thugs, and sell Bob Harrison on the notion of a big spread in the magazine. You see where this is going? The piece is written. You improperly vet it. That leaves your shit rag that much more open to slander and libel charges, and in the meantime, you’ll be passing whatever hard criminal dirt accrues on to me through the Hats.”

I orbed the two-way mirror. Rapid Robbie mute-motormouthed. The Hats har-har’d and haw-hawed. Max Herman mugged at the mirror. He rolled his eyes and made the jack-off sign.

Parker passed the flask. I doused my dexie dose. Yeah! — a blistering blast of straight rye.

I said, “This gig packs potential. Cut dipshit loose, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Max made the meet. 6:00 p.m. at Ollie Hammond’s. He’ll be there, Freddy. It’s an ass kicking, otherwise.

I arrived early. I worked the pay phones for two hours flat. I called Bondage Bob Harrison first.

Bondage Bob bemoaned the Art Pepper fiasco. All that shakedown shit for one dope bounce? Bob bitched: The demonizing — dope fiends craze has crapped out. It’s muerto, you dig? I said, Au contraire, Daddy. It’s seditiously segued into the jejune juvenile delinquency craze. To withering wit: the filming of teen turkey Rebel Without a Cause.

I laid it aaalll out. Jimmy Dean’s my “in” on the shoot. Nick Ray’s a carcinogenic Comsymp. There’s sure to be horny hijinx with all the hot hunks and honeys on the set. Dig, Daddy: I’ll dive for the dirt, you’ll deliver the dish. Ten thousand words in the nuke-bomb November ’55 issue.

Bob bought it, big. We seamlessly segued to the Rock Hudson — Phyllis Gates mock-marriage mishegas. Universal instigated it. Rock was one gallivanting gay caballero, and Lew Wasserman wanted all ripe rumors quashed. He hired me to find Rock a wife. My first candidate ran rogue and ransacked Rock’s pad for cash and Krugerrands. Phyllis Gates seemed like a safe and sedate second bet. She was Rock’s agent’s secretary. She seemed to catch a secret scent of Rock’s man-lust modus operandi — but would most likely keep her mouth shut. Confidential planned to publish a dizzy-disingenuous piece. How’s this fly? “Rock’s Trippy Triangle — With Two Women!!!!!” How’s that for yuks and fucks/lies and sighs?

Bob said, You’ve got to find the other woman first. I said, Yeah — and I’m meeting Phyllis and Jimmy Dean at Googie’s tonite to discuss it. Bob signed off, per usual: L’chaim, boychik.

I called Jimmy’s pad and got no answer. I called his answering service and left a message: Nine tonite/Googie’s. I called Phyllis and told her to make the meet. She gassed on the tricky triad scenario. She said it should culminate in a catfight at the Mocambo.

I hung up and scoped the barside crowd. Shit — there’s Robbie Molette. He’s hard-hustling a high-toned blonde and causing an undulating upscut.

Shit—

I fast-walked over and grabbed him. Rodent Robbie squirmed and squeaked. I frog-marched him to a back booth and shoved him in. I said, “Behave.” Robbie sulked submissive. The barside babe blew me a kiss.

A waiter waltzed up. I ordered two double Old Crows, quicksville. Robbie smirked smug. The waiter dropped our drinks off and vamoosed.

Robbie said, “I know about you. My dad’s a grip at Metro. He called you ‘Mr. Fear.’ He said you’re the king of the shakedown.”

I lit a cigarette. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“That we’re two peas in a pod. That you should consider taking me on as a protégé. You could teach me the tricks of the trade and make me the new you. You could retire and ride off into the sunset then, knowing that you’ve got a vital young stud to fulfill your legacy.”

I cringed. “Let’s change the subject.”

“How about boxing? Ray Robinson versus Bobo Olson. I think Ray’s stale bread. Bobo’s a vital young stud, and it won’t go four rounds.”

“How about Rebel Without a Cause? Lay the full dish on me. If I like what I hear, I’ll let you run loose for a while. If I don’t, I’ll send you back to the Hats. You can play the role of the vital young stud in the queens’ tank at Mira Loma.”

Robbie cringed. “What’s to tell? Nick Ray’s a switcheroo man. He likes it young and hung, and ripe and saucy. The word is he stakes out one quiff of each gender on all his flicks. On Rebel, he’s got Jimmy Dean for the brown eye, and Natalie Wood on the distaff side. Natalie’s sixteen, in case you were curious. She’s also a nympho with lezbo tendencies, for what that’s worth.”

Rodent Robbie. Reptile Robbie. He delivers the dish. He’s cruel-credible so far.

“Keep going.”

Robbie chugalugged his drink. “So, I drop off the maryjane and toke with the actors. I observe the gestalt, and to my way of thinking, this actor Nick Adams is Nick Ray’s head honcho on the set. He’s the court jester and the instigator, the boss pimp and the guy who drops the hammer and fulfills Nick Ray’s skeevy hopes and dreams.”

I killed my drink. “What hopes and dreams?”

Robbie went tee-hee. “Getting all these punk, fruitcake, hophead actor kids to ‘fly without a parachute,’ ‘work without a net,’ and all that other movie horseshit, when all he really wants is limitless young woof-woof, and to manipulate people in the guise of his jive, so-called art.”

I clapped. I went Ole!!! I wolf-whistled and went Woo-woo!!!

“You’re not stupid, Robbie. That’s the only attaboy you’re ever likely to get from me, so enjoy it while you can.”

Robbie beamed biiiiiiiiiiig. “Nick Ray’s got all these hood-type extras under his thumb. He says he’s testing their ‘motivation.’ He’s sending them out on ‘chickie runs,’ like in the flick. Nick Adams is straw-bossing these deals, and Jimmy Dean’s along for the ride. I don’t know what’s actually happening, but Jimmy calls them ‘panty raids.’ ”

I chained cigarettes. “Where do you drop the dope off?”

“The set, the location, or Nick Ray’s bungalow at the Chateau Marmont.”

I peeled off five C-notes and slid them across the table. Reptile Robbie rolled his eyes and went Oooh-la-la.

“I’m in the White Pages. Call me at home or page me at Googie’s the next time you’ve got a delivery.”

Robbie scooped up the cash. “Two for the road? A couple of aperitifs to keep your whistle wet?”

I sighed. “All right.”

“Hey, he’s acting bored and vexed already.”

“Robbie...”

“Okay, okay. Here’s aperitif number one, straight from Nick Ray’s mouth. Jimmy goes to leather bars and has guys put out their cigarettes on him. He is therefore known as the ‘Human Ashtray.’ Aperitif number two’s more predictable. Jimmy’s putting the moves on this kid actor, Sal Mineo. Pretty good, huh? Especially from a guy you only met a few hours ago.”

I flashed back. Jimmy at Googie’s. Little Band-Aids on his arms and neck. A solvent scent wafting my way.

Robbie stood up. I grabbed his waistband and slammed him back down to the table. He yelped and flailed. I held the table candle up to his face. Flame flutters scorched his pachuco pompadour and fried it to frazzled split ends.

“Jimmy and I go back. I’ll concede my soft spot. Watch what you say about him.”

Googie’s All-Nite Coffee Shop

West Hollyweird

5/11/55

The 8:00 p.m. rush. Prosaic-predictable. Folks tumbled tables, noshed and shot the shit. Niteclub action accelerated around 9:30. Ditto, late-show movies. The Strip/the Boulevard. Ciro’s, the Mocambo, the Crescendo. Grauman’s Chink and the Egyptian. Googie’s bopped close to all.

I took my table. Tipsters tagged the Tattle Tyrant as fair game. They salaamed and sucked up. They delivered the dubious dish.

Orson Welles sliced the Black Dahlia. That choice chestnut. Here’s five scoots — please go away.

Here’s a ripe wrinkle. Orson Welles sliced the Black Dahlia. Yeah — I know, it’s day-old bagels at half price. Yeah, but dig this: Rita Hayworth held the Dahlia’s legs while Orson sawed her in half.

Okay, here’s ten scoots — now go away.

Van Johnson’s at it again. The old semen demon’s always up for a taste. He siphoned Tab Hunter’s python in a back row at the Admiral Theatre.

No, I can’t prove it. Yeah, I need gelt. There’s a sneak peek at the Iris, and I’m short on the freight.

Here’s twenty scoots. Uncle Freddy’s a soft touch. The popcorn’s on me.

A guy peddled Carole Landis morgue shots. Yawn. A guy peddled pix of Marlon Brando with a dick in his mouth. Shit — I thought I cornered that market, back in ’53. A call girl tossed me a tip on the steakhouse rape-o/robbers. They were holed up in a hot-sheet flop on 54th and Vermont. They were geezing Nazi-made morphine and meth speedballs. I slid her forty scoots. She slipped me her phone number. I told her to tattle the tip to the Hat Squad. She told me she banged Red Stromwall at an Elks Club smoker, back in ’46.

Juan the fry cook passed me a message. Jimmy was 86’ing the Phyllis Gates meet. Nick Ray culled the cast and called for a script read. Nick Ray ran regular “Motivational Missions,” as in tonite. Sorry, babe — give Phyl my love.

Neuter Nick Ray. “Motivational Missions.” Robbie Molette’s mad monologue. My pal Jimmy. The “Human Ashtray.” I felt god-awful gut-punched.

It was 8:55. A late nite loomed. I had a batch of bilious back issues to study for Big Bill Parker. Nasty Nat’s Soul Patrol popped the airwaves at 1:00. Miss Blind Item might call in. She’d castigate and condemn Confidential. She’d evince righteous rage per Red Light Bandit Caryl Chessman. The deal instantly intrigued me. Chessman was sure as shit guilty. I wanted him to burn, baby, burn.

My dexie dose fizzled, drizzled, and withered to wisps and gnashed nerves. I popped two more and awaited the aaaaahhhh. Phyllis walked in. I stood up and bowed. She walked up and curtsied cute. She wore twill slacks and a cashmere cardigan. She radiated rectitude and a reserved ring-a-ding.

A waitress brought menus. Phyllis sat across from me. She went Where’s Jimmy?

I said, “He couldn’t make it. Something about a script rehearsal.”

The waitress whipped back. Phyllis ordered a dry martini. I held up two fingers. The waitress scrammed. Phyllis said, “Drat.”

I laffed. “Drat?”

“Well, yes.”

“Should I decode that?”

“Well... Jimmy and Rock were pals on Giant. I was hoping that he might provide...”

“A perspective on Rock’s bent, and your conundrum? Maybe buffer you and me getting down to brass tacks?”

The martinis materialized. Phyllis mainlined half of hers. She said, “Drat. What have I gotten myself into?”

I lit a cigarette. “You love him, right?”

“What’s not to love? He’s every Minnesota farm girl’s dream. But this girl has lived in Hollywood for a while, and I’ve heard the rumors, and I know how to read signs.”

“How discouraged are you?”

Phyllis laffed. “Not that much. Part of me knows that it’s more than a little bit of a lark.”

I mainlined my martini. It payload-packed the dexies. I rippled resurgent and revitalized.

“I’m on your side, and Rock’s side. ‘Love conquers all,’ and all that happy horseshit. The magazine’s on your side, and Rock’s side, but the magazine is Confidential, with all the skank that implies. We’ve got to dispel one set of rumors, and create a contradictory, second set to eclipse it. Bob Harrison’s committed to an eternal triangle scenario. That means we need to find a bait girl, and L.A.’s the bait girl capital of the world. And, for what it’s worth, I like your idea of a catfight at the Mocambo.”

Phyllis popped the olive out of her drink and snarfed it. I tossed my olive on her place mat. She snarfed it, quick-quick.

“Rock’s a sweetie pie. Who am I to demand perfection in a man?”

“You’ve got every right to demand more than you damn well might have to settle for.”

Phyllis said, “Ouch.”

I said, “I’m sorry. That was harsh.”

Phyllis went Pshaw. “It’s not like I’m a hundred percent discouraged.”

“Give me the good news, then.”

“Rock took an inkblot test once, in the Navy. He saw butterflies and snakes, which symbolize a feminine nature and the penis. He took a second test, after the war — and this time he scored much more butch.”

I sighed, sad-ass. “Shit, don’t break my heart.”

Phyllis snatched my martini and drained it dry. Her eyeballs boinged. Now, she’s all rectitude — ripped to the gills.

“It’s a lark, right?”

“Right.”

“And there’s no guarantee it’ll remain a lark, right?”

“Right.”

“So I should be prepared for any and all outcomes, right?”

“Right.”

“Didn’t you say something about us getting down to brass tacks?”

I leaned close. Phyllis leaned close. We deep-dialed our eyes and cleaved close. She wore Chanel No. 5. I wore Lucky Tiger. Our separate scents sizzled and merged, molto bene.

“You’ll want out sooner or later. You won’t want him hurt in the press, but you’ll want your fair share of the pie. I’ll handle the entrapment and all the other shitwork for ten percent of the initial property and revenue split, and ten percent of your alimony, in perpetuity.”

Phyllis kissed me. She found the fit and held my head and leg-clamped me under the table. The kiss lingered loooooong. We wrapped ourselves into it. Our scents merged that much more. Some geeks at adjoining tables whistled and clapped.

11:00 p.m. Googie’s is late-nite lulled. The dinner crowd’s thinned threadbare. Phyllis split. I brooded and brain-broiled my Rebel Without a Cause caper.

My dexie decibel helped. Vodka shots sheared the rough edges. I worked the pay phone. I called Harry Fremont and my contact at Sheriff’s R & I. Dig: Get me homo-hive roust sheets on Jimmy Dean, Sal Mineo, Nick Ray. Check for juvie sheets on Natalie Wood. Solicit hometown paper per Nick Adams.

The counter man divvied dish. Nick Ray placed take-out orders nitely. Juan the fry cook schlepped the shit up to Nick’s boss bungalow at the Marmont. The orders came in late. There was bupkes tonite. I told Juan to burn a batch of burgers and send them up now.

The Marmont was four blocks west on Sunset. I shagged my Packard pimpmobile and crawl-cruised on over. I saw three hunky hot rods stashed just off the Strip. Craaaaazy chrome creations. Kool kandy-koat kolors.

One ’40 Ford coupé. One ’46 Merc. One cholo-chopped Chevy van, replete with flame paint job. All three flew flags for the “Nick’s Knights Kar Klub, Limited.”

The flags wiggled on whip antennas and flat-out flew in the wind. I fantasized shivering shit.

Nick Ray in tight toga and a simpering Caesar haircut. He’s holding a movie megaphone and sporting a spiked collar. He’s Mr. Fasco Fantastico at the all-boy bacchanal. As real-life proof — there’s Nick’s Knights, poised and posed by their sleds.

Three hunky monkeys. Ruff trade tricksters and buff B-boys. Black leather jackets, pomade pompadours, and pegged pants. Rodent Robbie ratted these punks. They were Nabob Nick’s crowd-scene extras. They went out on “chickie runs” and “panty raids.” Nudnik Nick held swishy sway over them.

I pulled up and parked on the bungalow access road. Juan the fry cook’s junk jalopy was parked just ahead. I walked up to bungalow row. I peeped whipped-wide windows. I saw sapphic soixante-neuf and Marilyn Monroe blowing Joe DiMaggio. I saw a dusky dominatrix whip producer Sam Spiegel. I saw Funky Führer Nick Ray blaspheme, bloviate, and bluster to his actor acolytes.

He’s the Father Führer, the Daddy Despot, the Doofus Duce who’s exhumed mad Mussolini. He’s brewing up bracing bromides. It’s populist pap across all specious spectra. He’s stamping it Stalinist. He’s looping in Lenin and marginal Marx. It’s the actors’ art to subsume the rule of law and the ordered society. It’s ART to sack sacred synagogues, chain church doors, and retorch Joan of Arc at the stake. It’s sicknik sexual liberation, by way of the maladroit Marquis de Sade. He’s pitching Sex/Sex/Sex/ and Love Me/Love Me/Love Me — and I will beatifically bestow upon you the gilded gift of MOTIVATION — which will unlock all the doors of your life.

His kiddie korps is digging it. They’re bopped back in beanbag chairs. They’re biting the burgers I bought them. They’re big-eyed behind Big Nick’s bullshit. There’s Jimmy Dean and Natalie Wood. There’s sloe-eyed Sal Mineo. That blond cat’s Nick Adams. I’ve seen that Dennis Hopper hump on TV. They’re Nihilist Nick’s hip Hitler Jugend, ten years post — V-E Day.

I unpeeped the window and broomed back down to my sled. Memo to Chief Bill Parker: I got your derogatory profile, hanging a hard fucking yard.

Something was brew-brew-brewing. It had to break up and boil over, soon. I hunched low and peeped the hot rod punks. They popped hoods and adjusted fan belts. They poured quik-start in quad carburetors and goosed the gas loud. They made big noise. They torqued and toxified the air outside the Chateau Marmont. Then the moment of Achtung!!!!! arrived.

The punks froze. Eyes right, all Kameraden. There’s Nick Ray in a cool khaki jumpsuit. He’s Rommel, reborn. He’s got an Iron Cross pinned to one pocket. He’s wearing a Desert Korps hat. He’s got a movie camera strapped to one shoulder. Jimmy Dean and Nick Adams stand behind him. They’re his suck-up subalterns.

The punks salaamed and saluted. Nick Ray ran to the Chevy van. Raus mit uns!!!!! Mach schnell!!!!! All subalterns and B-boys to the Chevy van now!!!!!

The crew cringed and complied, toot-fucking-sweet. The van U-turned and booked west on Sunset. I U-turned and tailed it.

We struck off down the Strip and bombed through Beverly Hills. My Packard pimpmobile hovered three car lengths back. Beverly Hills to Holmby Hills to the East Bel-Air gate. Up to Westwood and the UCLA campus.

The van cut south on Hilgard. It decelerated down to a crawl. I crawled and kept perfect pace. We were on Sorority Row now. Note the big Tudor and sparkle-Spanish houses. Note the Greek symbols embossed by the doors.

It was midnite. It was quiet and moon-muzzled dark. The driver rolled down his window and pointed across the street. Somebody said, “Establishing shot.” A back window slid down. Nick Ray held his camera out and rolled film. I decelerated and pulled to the curb. The Führer van U-turned and parked in front of a faux-château sorority house.

The Desert Korps decamped. That’s the B-Boys, Nick Ray, Jimmy, and Nick Adams. A B-boy held Ray’s camera cord and a spotlight gizmo. Ray gave the high sign. They walked six abreast. They crossed the sidewalk and trampled the front lawn. They hit the porch. Nick Adams pulled a set of picks and unlocked the door. It’s soooooo sinister — the six sickos slide and slither inside.

I heard nothing. I saw nothing. No light went on. I got out and jogged up to the door. It stood ajar. I heard wicked whispers and sssshhh, sssshhh upstairs.

The camera light snapped on. A beam bounced across upstairs walls and closed doors. I heard a door open. A girl said, “What’s that?” A girl said, “Who’s there?”

Then door kicks/shrill shrieks/light beams on dorm doors and double sets of bunk beds—

Then college girls in nightgowns and pajamas. They’re kicking off their covers and tumbling out of bed. They’re running straight into bright light and the Desert Korps with their hands out to GRAB.

Nick Ray yelled, “Chickie run!!!”

Jimmy yelled, “Panty raid!!!!!”

Spotlight beams bounced. I saw short shots of grabs at pajama tops and nightgowns. I saw panties pulled down to the knees. I heard screams overlap.

I ran upstairs. Half-nude girls dodged grabbing hands and bouncing light and ran from der Desert Korps demons. I pile-pounded into them. I dumped the fucko Führer’s camera and smashed the bouncing-light machine. I got a fade-out shot. It’s Jimmy Dean with pink panties pulled over his face.

I saw a fire-alarm switch wired to a wall mount. I swatted the switch and instigated deep darkness. A siren shrieked shrill. The girls screamed into it. They ran left and hit the back stairs. The Desert Korps ran to the main stairway. They couldn’t see me. I couldn’t see them. I pulled my belt sap and sapped black leather and coarse khaki. They made with the motivation and bitch-bleated. I might have sapped my pal Jimmy. So what if I did?

My Boss Bachelor Pad

West Hollyweird

5/12/55

I ran the radio. KKXZ — le jazz hot levied with listless bop ballads that blew blue and nodded off to nothingness. A low-watt/storefront station. Above Sultan Sam’s Sandbox and Rae’s Rugburn Room.

I was laid low, bent bare, and stripped to striation on the Isle of Deep Despair. The Westwood caper cornholed me. I humped Hilgard to Sunset. I ripped rubber just as the fuzz and fire engines arrived. The Afrika Korps beat it southbound. Their goofy getaway masked their insidious intent. A moment to maul my memory: Jimmy Dean, with pink panties stretched eyeballs to neck.

Nasty Nat’s Soul Patrol popped the airwaves. Nat read local news spots before he samba’d back to his soporific sounds of the nite. He kicked off with his “Cutie.”

UCLA. Sorority row. Panty raid at Chi Beta Gamma. The fuzz arrive. There’s a garland of girls, wrapped in robes and issuing indignation. Four girls put it off on the SAE boys or USC football studs. One girl called it “more evil than that. These guys were older. One guy carried a camera. They ripped our robes, and tried to shoot a nudie film right there.”

Nasty Nat put down some pooh-pooh patter. “UCLA ain’t the ghetto, sisters. And I’m sure those young buck cops will be back to ask you to stage in-the-buff reenactments.”

Ouch.

Nasty Nat said, “It’s crime on the dime, tonite. The some might say infamous LAPD Hat Squad shot it out with those two steakhouse rapist-robbers. It went down at Tommy Tucker’s Playroom on Washington and La Brea. One man escaped in the mad melee. Muerto at the scene: Richie ‘The Dutchman’ Van Duesen/white male American/age thirty-eight. Still at large: George ‘Fat Boy’ Mazmanian/white male American/age forty-two. The Fat Boy is purportedly armed and dangerous, so watch out.”

Nasty Nat mimicked the Confidential style. It gored my goat. He cut from crime on the dime to bleak blues from the Synagogue Sid Trio. Dig: Sid on bass sax, Bobby Horvitz on flügelhorn, Aaron Adelman on drums. The piece: “Premature Funeral March for Gamal Abdel Nasser and King Farouk.” Nat laid down the intro. He closed with “These cats run long.” One, two, three — shalom, cats.

Synagogue Sid blatted his sax. Bobby Horvitz flaunted his flügelhorn. Aaron Adelman drilled his drums. I doused the volume. I got imperiously impatient. Where’s Miss Blind Item? Where’s her cruel critique of Confidential’s Caryl Chessman piece??? Where’s her fry-the-cocksucker rebuttal???

I was itchy/antsy/fraught/fragged and dexie-ditzed out of my gourd. I got out my notepad and skimmed ’52 to ’55 Confidentials. I’m a snitch, a rat fink, a stool pigeon, a squealer, a quisling, a rogue dog who bites the hand that feeds him. Let’s do legal prep work for Chief William H. Parker.

Bill Parker and me. We’re like that now. Let’s take down Confidential.

Back issues. Clipped-on legal files. Lawyers’ notes and field reports. Look for loopholes. Dippy depositions to dice and deep-six. The mag hired ace legal beagles. The mag had Freddy O. for strongarm vetting and verification. All our slurs and slander slams are true. We stand by our shit. Yeah, but if anybody’s prone to fuck it all up, it’s yammeringly yours truly.

I skimmed back issues. I read legal briefs and my own notes. I muddled through mellifluous memories.

December ’52: “Showgirl Sells Shares in Self!!!”

Bland, by and large. A stock-market spoof. Vetted by a kid clerk. No slander slams or libel loops here.

December ’52: “Exposed: Love in the UN!!!!”

Tattle text. The Multinational March of Miscegenation. Minor minions j’accused. I’m bored already. No vetting notes. Doofus diplomats never sue.

November ’53: “Marked for Death: Walter Winchell, Bishop Fulton Sheen!!!”

Anti-Commie pap. Lawyers cite unnamed sources. Snoresville, U.S.A.

March ’54: “Why Orson Welles Bit the Lip of Eartha Kitt.”

Miscegenation — Confidential’s merry mainstay. Orson was boning irksome Eartha. A Vegas stringer fed us the bit. Eartha said goons broke down her door. She was right. I hired the goons. Eartha demanded cold compensation. I slid her ten thou. Orson said, “You’re a shit, Freddy.” I bitch-slapped him.

This piece was bad juju and a potential Parker payoff. It exposed the mag’s strong-arm methods and exposed ME. I put it in my secret Parker dirt file.

November ’54: “Christine Jorgensen’s Romance with a Vanderbilt Stepson.”

He-she hijinx. Ex-man Christine set Vanderbilt up and had me shoot sneak pix. She wanted the publicity — to goose her dead-stalled film career. I shook down Vanderbilt for twenty thou. Christine and I split the gelt. Confidential published a pablum-packed piece that went pffft. Christine was pissed. She wanted to see some wild and wet woof-woof. This piece could mulch the magazine, baaaaaad. Ditto, Fred Otash. It was goooood Parker file fodder.

January ’55: “Eartha Kitt and her ‘Santa Baby’ Arthur Loew, Jr.”

Miscegenation marches on. The old colored canary/white sugar daddy bit. It’s Irksome Eartha again. Eartha threatens to sue. I’m the bagman. Confidential coughs up cold cash.

Synagogue Sid blatted on. I yawned. Where’s Miss Blind Item? It’s almost 2:00 a.m.

March ’55: “The Wife Clark Gable Forgot.” Yawn. “The Girl in Gregory Peck’s Bathtub.” Man, it’s sacked-out soporific.

Synagogue Sid bleated bleak and deep diminuendoed. I heard the mike-magnified cough of coins dropped in a pay phone. I kicked the volume. Nasty Nat said, “Miss Blind Item’s back — so I know we’re going to be talking Confidential magazine and the infamous Caryl Chessman case.”

Miss Blind Item said, “Hey, Nat. What’s shaking?”

I dug her voice. It was cool contralto and mucho Midwest.

“Nothing but the leaves on the tree, baby.”

“Locate me, Nat. Where did we leave off last time?”

“Well, we did the long-range overview of Confidential, and we both commented on how atypically liberal their coverage of the Chessman case was, given that Confidential’s been a Red-baiting and race-baiting rag from jump street.”

Nasty Nat told it true. August ’52. The cheesy Chessman piece. The mag was naïvely new then. I didn’t sign on till fall ’53.

Miss Blind Item laffed. “Confidential’s got style, baby. You’re starting to alliterate already.”

Nasty Nat wolf-whistled. “And you’ve got cojones, as our Mex cousins say, calling a Negro man ‘baby.’ ”

Miss Blind Item relaffed. Phone-booth sounds went mike-magnified. There’s a match strike and exhale. She’s smoking a cigarette.

“I’m an actress, Nat. You can always count on me to go for a provocative effect.”

“Disc jockeys go the same route. Our sponsors here encourage it. Come on, Sultan Sam’s Sandbox and Rae’s Rugburn Room? They ain’t paying me for bland.”

“Talk about alliteration, baby.”

Nasty Nat said, “You ain’t Miss Blind Item, you the sexy succubus. Now, moving along, before you get me in trouble with the Klan, the Catholic Legion of Decency, and Chief Parker his own self, why don’t you drop the basic lowdown on the Chessman case on all the folks out in Radioland.”

Miss Blind Item refed the pay phone. Dimes dipped, nickels notched down the slot.

“It’s early ’48. Chessman’s fresh out of Folsom. He’s stealing cars and committing armed robberies. He’s utilizing a hot ’46 Ford as his rape vehicle, and he’s affixed a phony red light to it, so he can pass himself off as a policeman. Now, he’s prowling lovers’ lanes in Pasadena and up above Hollywood. He’s robbing young couples making out. On two legally affirmed occasions, he forcibly removes young women from their cars, and places them in his car. That legally constitutes kidnapping. Once they’re in his car, he sexually assaults them, which constitutes a second, specific set of felony charges. His two certified victims conclusively identified him. He was convicted at trial and sentenced to death. Much has been made of the fact that Chessman did not kill anyone. C’est la guerre, sweetie. The Little Lindbergh Law applies. Now, that evil no-goodnik has become an ace jailhouse lawyer, and he’s beaten back a slew of attempts to send him to the green room, where he most devoutly belongs. He wrote a book, which was published last year, called Cell 2455, San Quentin. In it, he fatuously asserts his innocence of the Red Light Bandit crimes and demands a redress of the entire American legal system.”

Nasty Nat went whew! “I’m renaming you, and it ain’t ‘baby’ or ‘sweetie.’ And you ain’t really Miss Blind Item, you more the ‘Vindictive Vixen,’ which prompts me to ask you why you so het up on this case, when just about everybody I know thinks Chessman got railroaded, and these justice-minded folks I know are all doing their darnedest to make sure he don’t go to that green room.”

Go, Nasty Nat. You snagged it on the snout. Baby, sweetie, Miss Item — why you calling in to my radio show?

“It’s dawning on me, sugar. You got a personal stake in this whole Chessman hullabaloo. That means there’s something you haven’t told us.”

Miss Blind Item lit a cigarette. I heard the match flare and exhale.

“There was a third victim. She came forth and identified Chessman, but the DA chose not to have her testify at trial. The sexual assault that Chessman perpetrated against her was especially vile and vicious. Bluntly put, she went insane, and has spent the past seven years in Camarillo. The young woman was a friend of mine. We studied at a prestigious acting school in New York together, back in late ’47. That’s the long and short of it, Nat. I’m on leave from a gig in New York now, so I thought I’d make a little ruckus in my friend’s hometown, and maybe take a little drive up to Camarillo.”

Es la verdad. I was at Hollywood Station that night. I saw Miss Third Victim walk in and collapse on the squadroom floor.

Griffith Park

Above the Rebel Without a Cause Shoot

5/13/55

Ouch!!!!!

Outdoor surveillance. The withering worst. Dirt on my duds and briar bristles brushing my ass. I’m up some hellhole hiking trail. There’s a noxious noonday sun singeing me. I’ve got binoculars trenchantly trained on the Observatory lot.

It’s lunchtime. The lot’s cordoned off for cast and crew, exclusive. It’s loaded with hot rod heaps and kool kat kids couched within. Robbie Molette’s hopping, heap to heap. He’s pushing pills and reefers. I’m peeping the transactions. It’s a rippling replay of last nite’s panty raid/chickie run.

There’s Nick Ray, Nick Adams, my putz pal Jimmy Dean. The gang’s got up in street threads. There’s no Afrika Korps kouture and Sieg Heil today. There’s the three B-boys. They’re still dressed in blasphemous black. I memorized the Chevy van plate stats last nite. They came back to one Chester Alan Voldrich/white male American/age twenty-six. Dig: he bossed the nabobically noted Hollywood High Rat Pack, circa ’49. They rolled elderly fruits and Mickey Finn’d Marymount girls and got in their pants.

That was goooooood derogatory dish. Bill Parker would crap-his-pants cream. And — per Nick Adams/real name Adamshock/DOB 7-10-31/Nanticote, Pennsylvania:

No arrests/eight rousts on suspicion: GTA, flimflam, malicious mischief, Stat Rape, Peeping Tom, pushing pornographic snapshots. Plus: gay-bar roust sheets on Jimmy Dean and Nick Ray. Confirmed per Jimmy: Robbie Molette’s “Human Ashtray” shtick. Confirmed per Nick Ray: rousted at the Saints and Sinners Drag Ball. Whoa, Nellie — Nick was a knockout in his Red Guard empire gown. Plus: Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, popped at the “Jailbait Jamboree” at Linda’s Little Log Cabin.

It’s all Kids Run Wild/Kids Led Astray. It summoned me to serve Bill Parker and my meshugenah magazine. It summoned me to save Jimmy D. from himself.

I binocularized the big parking lot. Robbie pushed pills. Jimmy and Nick Adams shot craps on a Nazi-flag blanket. Jimmy called my service and left a message: “See you at Googie’s tonite.” That meant this: he didn’t make me at the panty raid/chickie run.

I binocularized. Chester Voldrich and his B-boy buddies sniffed a glue-soaked rag. Natalie Wood basked in a bikini. She reclined on the roof of a ’52 Eldo. Nick Ray walked by and kissed her thighs on the sly.

I walked into Hollywood Station. The desk sergeant moaned. Oh shit — it’s Freddy O.

I walked up to the squadroom. A meter maid tagging tickets sighed. Oh shit — it’s Freddy O. The squad lieutenant saw me. He rolled his eyes and slammed his door. Oh shit — it’s Freddy O.

I looked for Colin Forbes and Al Goossen. They bossed the Chessman case, back in ’48. There they are. They’re Hollywood Squad lifers — they’ve still got the same two desks. They’re workhorses worn weary. They’re working. The squadroom was otherwise dead.

They saw me. They shared a look. Oh shit — it’s Freddy—

I pulled a chair over. Forbes said, “Hi, Freddy.” Goossen said, “Freddy’s slumming. That means he wants something.”

I said, “Chessman. The magazine wants to atone for that boo-hoo piece they published three years ago. There’s some rumors percolating on the third victim. I was here when she came in, if you recall.”

Forbes lit a cigarette. “That’s right. You called Queen of Angels when she fainted.”

Goossen lit a cigarette. “Chessman bit her forty-three times. You’d faint, too. She went straight from Queen of Angels to Camarillo, and the last I heard, she was still in shock. Don’t put her in the magazine, Freddy. Show some class for once in your life.”

I let it go. “Do you recall her name?”

Forbes shook his head nein. Goossen shook his head nyet. They revealed zilch. My reptile rep rubbed them raw.

“What’s the story on her? Can you give me that, without naming names?”

Goossen kicked his chair back. “She was an L.A. girl, home for a visit. She was studying at the Actors Studio in New York, which is some sort of hotshot deal. So, she’s home, and she’s staying with her folks. She’s also a lezzie, which her folks know nothing about. On the night in question, she picks up a girl at Rhonda’s Rendezvous, and they parked on the shoulder at Mulholland and Beverly Glen. Chessman pulls his red light number, sees the girls making out and flips his lid. He throws the pickup girl out of the car, escorts the victim girl to his car, does what he does to her, and she makes her way here, under her own power. She never testified in court, and she didn’t need to. Judge Fricke heard the story, and that’s what convinced him that Chessman should burn. And he will burn, sooner or later, despite all his books and legal appeals, and Marlon Brando and all the other Hollywood geeks waving placards.”

Forbes said, “Shove your ‘rumors percolating’ up your ass, Freddy. You’ve got your own perv-o agenda going on this deal, so take it with you when you walk out the door, sometime in the next five seconds.”

Perv-o agenda.” Oh shit — it’s Freddy O. My old cop colleagues lay on the love. Freddy O’s the Shakedown King. He’s the Shaman of Shame. He’s the Pervdog of the Nite. Where’s the payoff here, Freddy? There’s got to be a payoff with you.

Why mince words? Cherchez la femme. It’s Miss Blind Item. She’s scorched herself under my skin.

I drove by the Ranch Market. I checked my phone slips. Jack the K. called. “I’m at the hotel. Come by at six. I’m having people up for drinks.”

I’ll be there, Jack. Fetch, Pervdog, fetch. I’ll go by your favorite pharmacy first. I know what you like. Why mince words? I like it, too.

Miss Blind Item. She studied with Miss Third Victim. They were New York friends. A “prestigious acting school.” Late ’47.

Al Goossen. The Actors Studio. “Some sort of hotshot deal.”

So—

Quo vadis, Freddy? Where to now?

I know. Let’s slam Mr. Blacklist. He always gives up the goods.

Jack Lawson. John Howard Lawson. Anglicized from Levy or some such. One studly Stalinist. He tramples Trotskyites and hexes HUAC to hell. Folks hate Jack. It’s that perennial politics and personality parlay. Jack’s determinedly dyspeptic. He’s a schmuck, a schlemiel, a schmendrick, and a schlimazel. The PD and DA Ernie Roll own him covertly. Let’s bop back to ’40. Jack’s the Party’s Kultural Kommissar and hard-hearted hatchet man.

Enter Budd Schulberg. He’s a ripsnorting writer and a marvelous mensch. He’s writing What Makes Sammy Run? The Party demands rafts of revisions. Budd’s a Party man maimed by mucho misgivings. Like Studly Stalin’s purges that mowed millions dead. Jack mediates a meet and sets the spot. It’s some comrade’s casa off Hollywood and Fairfax. Budd is suddenly summoned. Jumpy Jack’s there. Likewise the viperish V. J. Jerome. V.J.’s Jack’s Ko-Kultural Kommissar. V.J. and Jack pack the Party’s one-two punch.

V.J. and Jack. They berate Budd for two days, stridently straight. You will rewrite your bourgeois book. It must be proudly proletarian. You’re a revisionist, a refusenik, a deviationist delinquent. You’re a passive pawn of the fascist elite.

Here’s the punch line. The comrade’s casa is bugged, rugs to rafters. The comrade called in the cops. The Hitler-Stalin pact did it. The comrade ain’t no Commie no more.

Jack berates Budd. Jack reads him the ripe riot act. Jack motormouths on many topics. Jack pounds popular front groups and takes them to task. Jack jacks off à la idiot ideologues worldwide. The PD shoots the bug tapes to State HUAC. Fourteen Smith Act indictments result.

The bug’s still in place. Jack’s sublet the comrade’s casa since ’48. Ex-Commies visit Jack. They juke him with jungle juice and get him to jaw. Jack jaws on overdrive. He’s every Red Squad cop and dirt digger’s dream. ’48 to ’55. That’s seven years. The bugs remain in place. Jack don’t know shit.

I drove over and parked outside Casa Comrade. I brought Jack a jug of Jim Beam. Jack sat on his front steps. I saw him. He saw me. It was Oh shit — Freddy Otash, redux.

I got out and walked up. Jack went Sieg Heil and hummed “Das Horst Wessel Lied.” I yukked and tossed Jack his jug. He yanked the cap and yodeled a big blast.

“Freddy the O. Gauleiter for the occupation forces of Chief William H. Parker.”

“You know who I work for, Jack. I’m a free-speech man, just like you.”

Jack grabbed his crotch. “Free speech is a shuck. It’s a smoke screen to cosmeticize the fascist agenda. Confidential riles up the schvarzers and faygeles. In that sense, it’s an organ of revolutionary intent.”

I laffed. “I’ll tell Bob Harrison that.”

“Tell Bob I saw his first wife at a Scottsboro Boys rally, back in ’30-something. She was holding hands with a shvoogie and Pete Seeger’s Filipina girlfriend. They were singing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ — off-key, no less.”

I stuffed a fifty in Jack’s shirt pocket. Jack reyodeled Jim Beam. He hummed “Lili Marlene” and the love-death bit from Tristan und Isolde.

“Freddy the O. wants something. He never comes just to schmooze.”

I said, “The Actors Studio. The late ’40s. I know you go back to the Group Theatre, so I thought you might be able to help me.”

“The Actors Studio. Oy. Not a revolutionary organ, susceptible to takeover by Comrade John Howard Lawson and the hundreds of young Red Guard majorettes eager to suck his big dialectical cock.”

I said, “Come on, Jack. I was thinking you could give me some names.”

Jack went mucho outraged. “Me? Name names? You think the apparatchik to end all apparatchiks would name names and betray the Fourth Apparatus of the Central Soviet?”

I said, “Jack, you’re a pisser.”

Jack stumbled into Casa Comrade. He left the door open. I saw him banging bookshelves and tossing tomes on the floor.

I lit a cigarette. Jack barged back outside. He passed me a school-type yearbook. It was buckram-bound and gilt-embossed. The cover read: The Actors Studio/1946–47.

“Thanks, Jack.”

Jack hummed “The Internationale.” “I know about the bug, Freddy. My schvartze cleaning lady discovered it when I first moved in.”

I was floored and flat-flabbergasted. I grabbed Jack’s jug and jammed down the juice. The world rippled and revised itself right before my eyes.

“You could have pulled it. You’d have saved some comrades of yours a whole lot of grief.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to. Maybe they deserved what they got. Maybe I thought I’d fuck with History and roll the dice for a while.”

I traveled Trans-Jack Airways. The Lawson-Kennedy loop. It flew Casa Comrade to Beverly Hills. I buzzed by the Beverly Wilshire Pharmacy and filled Jack the K.’s order. Spaceman Jack would orbit tonite.

I hit the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was a back-bungalow bash. I lit through the lobby and landed right on cue. Women outnumbered men six to one. It was all stacked starlets and porko politicians. DA Ernie Roll and AG Pat Brown. Both quash-Confidential conspirators. Governor Goodie Knight. Colored congressman Adam Clayton Powell. Note his “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” campaign button.

I crashed the crowd. I popped out to a poolside porch and straddled a deck chair. A brisk breeze induced aaahhhs. I studied the Actors Studio book.

I poured through picture-packed pages. No-name kids built sets. Lee Strasberg made like Moses and laid down the law. I noted name actors and nudniks I’d seen on TV. I hit a section marked “1946–47 class.” Kids congregated on bleachers and smiled, heartbreak hopeful. Page twenty-two popped out at me. I thought I saw—

Some names and no-names mingled. Kim Hunter, Ralph Meeker. Two no-name males. I recognized Reed Hadley of Racket Squad. There’s Julie Harris and boss Barbara Bel Geddes. There’s the wounded waif I saw at Hollywood Station during the Red Light Bandit’s rampage.

She’s hopeful here. She’s heartfelt. She’s wearing a paint-smeared smock and saddle shoes. She’s standing beside a lissome light-haired woman I’d never seen before.

A name list laid out the players. Miss Third Victim was Shirley Tutler. The light-haired woman was Lois Nettleton.

Jack the K. walked up. I tossed him the pharmacy bag. Pill vials vibrated and did the shimmy-shimmy shake.

“Dare I ask what it cost?”

I said, “Zilch. The pharmacist’s a defrocked physician. He owes me numerous favors.”

Jack relit his cigar. “I’ll be a defrocked U.S. senator, if I can’t raise a whole lot of money tonight.”

“There’s not a lot of money in the next room. The girls don’t have it, and the political guys never give it away.”

Jack chortled. “Give me a good one, Freddy. My sisters like dish on handsome young actors and their secret lives. And don’t give me Rock Hudson, because that’s yesterday’s news.”

I said, “James Dean is known as the ‘Human Ashtray.’ ”

“That’s fairly unsavory.”

“Barbara Payton’s on the skids. She’s car-hopping at Stan’s Drive-In, across from Hollywood High.”

Jack said, “Old news. You set me up with Babs when you were a cop and I was a congressman.”

I said, “Katharine Hepburn is really a man. Whisper’s running the story next month. She underwent hormone therapy in the Soviet Union.”

“I’ll live with it. As long as she’s not a Commie or a Republican.”

My time was up. Jack’s eyes wiggled and wandered. He’s Two-Minute Jack with his minions. He’s Ten-Minute Jack in the sack.

“It was good seeing you, Freddy.”

“Always a pleasure, Jack.”

The sun salved me. The breeze went warm and bid me to bask. I dipped and dozed. The bungalow behind me went muffled and mute. I saw Shirley Tutler’s picture and heard Miss Blind Item’s voice. Soft sounds soothed me. Reverie. I’m rapt and reverential. I’m a kid back in church.

Wheels popped over pavement. Dishes rattled. Somebody said, “I didn’t know you knew Jack.”

I opened my eyes. Oh shit — it’s Rodent Robbie Molette. A hairnet hid his fried hair. He’s Busboy Robbie today. He’s rolling a room-service cart.

“Everybody knows Jack. He exemplifies our new egalitarian society. It’s why he talks to guys like you and me.”

Robbie scratched his balls. “Be that as it may, I should take advantage of running into you, and tell you the latest scuttlebutt from the shoot.”

I said, “I’m listening.”

“You should listen, given the gist of what I’m about to tell you.”

“Robbie, don’t draw this—”

“Okay, here’s the latest and greatest, which ain’t so great in my view. A, Nick Ray’s talking ‘escalation.’ He wants ‘the kids’ to ‘plumb their motivation’ and ‘escalate their mischief.’ B, he’s talking hot-prowl 459’s, liquor-store robberies, and making some sort of ‘radical alternative movie,’ that will ‘complement and enlarge the meaning of,’ this lox Rebel Without a Cause, which in my view is headed for the drive-in circuit in Dogdick, Arkansas.”

I pondered the poop. Robbie futzed with his hairnet.

“You burned me, fucker. You messed with my good looks, because you’re jealous of me.”

Stood up, stiffed, dropped dry, and jilted. Dumped for some psycho Film Führer. Bereft like some left-behind belle at the ball.

Jimmy no-showed. I waited at Googie’s. No Jimmy. I called my answering service. No messages. I called Jimmy’s pad. No answer. I went by Jimmy’s pad. No lights lit, no Jimmy. I cruised by the Chateau Marmont and bopped back to bungalow row. I peeped Nick Ray’s bungalow. I saw Nazi Nick pour the pork to Natalie Wood while Sal Mineo snapped snapshots.

I bolted back to my sled and slipped southbound. I was whip-wigged and wound up waaaaaaay tight. A new notion nudged me. It pertained to Miss Blind Item. I stopped at a pay phone and called crime lab rajah Ray Pinker.

I outlined my plan. I pledged five yards. Rajah Ray said, “Sure — I’ll do it.” I ran back to my Packard pimpmobile and pointed it southbound. I dove into darktown. Vermont to Slauson, eastbound and doooooooown.

I passed Mumar’s Mosque, Mama Mattie’s Massage Paradise, and the Mad Monk Klub. I hustled by Happytime Liquor, Happy Hal’s Liquor, Hillhaven Liquor, and liquor lockers lit by signs that said liquor and no more. I saw the signs for Sultan Sam’s Sandbox and Rae’s Rugburn Room. There’s my dizzy destination: KKXZ Radio.

A wino weaved by. I curb-parked my pimpmobile right by the Rugburn Room door. The wino whistled and gassed on the tritone paint job. I tossed him a ten-spot and told him to watchdog my baby.

Back stairs ran me past the Rugburn Room and up to Radioland. It was beat-to-shit bohemian and cultivatedly cut-rate.

A wastified waiting room. Album covers stud-stapled to bare walls. They were all Bird. Bird bought the farm and bid us bye-bye in March. Bird beamed beatific now — I’m muerto, muchachos. A myriad of mourners scrawled up the white walls. It was all adios, Big Daddy and Hail to the King.

“Write something, Mr. Otash. He won’t mind.”

I swift-swiveled. Nasty Nat stood there. I recognized his radio voice. He was tall and a fit forty. He dressed cool-cat insurrectionist. I dug his fez/combat fatigues/fruit-boot ensemble.

I pulled my pen and scrawled on the wall. Nasty Nat said, “You’re pissed, right? I mean, the magazine’s pissed.”

“I’m not pissed. I’m intrigued more than anything else. I was thinking you could record a message for me, and make sure that Miss Blind Item hears it the next time she calls in.”

“How about a message for Bird? ‘Sorry I popped your ass for junk outside the Club Alabam in March of ’49.’ ”

I said, “How do you know I didn’t write that on the wall just now?”

Nasty Nat pointed to the sound booth. I followed him over and in. We took the two chairs. The booth boxed us up. We were nudged knee-to-knee.

The Synagogue Sid Trio trickled and trilled. Nasty Nat killed the sound and moved his microphone my way. I excavated my bold bass-baritone.

“Miss Item, my name is Fred Otash. I work for Confidential, and I’m a former Los Angeles policeman. I was there at Hollywood Station the night your friend Shirley came in. I agree with your assessment of Caryl Chessman’s guilt, and I’d like to discuss with you a second Chessman piece that might serve to set the record straight.”

Voilà. That was gooooooood. I was cool-cat commanding and concise. Nasty Nat smiled and hit the kill switch.

“I’m pretty sure she’ll call in tonight, and I’ll make sure she hears your message. And, before you ask, I don’t know her righteous name, or anything more about her than you do.”

I scoped the bare-bones booth. It’s got that rat resort/proud poor folks gestalt.

“You get by on donations, right? Making the rent’s a stretch, and you’re always running on fumes.”

Nasty Nat said, “That’s right.”

I said, “Confidential’s a sucker for good jazz, and we’re in business to make friends, regardless of what you might have heard about me, or the magazine itself. I need a favor that only you can perform, and if you do perform it, the magazine will drop five hundred clams a month on KKXZ, indefinitely.”

Nasty Nat lit a cigarette. “She’s calling from a pay phone. I can hear her feed the coins in. Does this favor pertain to that?”

I smiled. “That’s right. I need a trace. I need you to call a cop pal of mine within two minutes from the time she gets on the horn with you. It might not work the first time, but it should work sooner or later.”

“She might leave town. This whole deal could go poof.”

“You still get the bread.”

“Well then, okay.”

I winked. “I’m going home, to sit by my radio.”

“Tell me something before you go?”

“Sure.”

“What did you write on the wall?”

“I wrote ‘Dear Bird: Thanx for the sounds. Best wishes, Fred Otash.’ ”

Nasty Nat said, “You’re caustic, but you’ll never be hip.”

Synagogue Sid serenaded me. I ran my radio low and laid low on my couch. Nasty Nat cut to commercials for Sultan Sam’s Sandbox, Kool Kings, and the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. Then dimes dipped and nickels nudged and slid down a slot. I knew that noise now. I knew it was microphone-magnified.

Silence socked me. I knew why. Nasty Nat put Miss Blind Item on hold and buzzed Ray Pinker.

It’s Tap Try #1. It’s logged in at 1:16 a.m.

I heard fuzz, buzz, radio rasp, and dissonant dial tones. I knew why. Nasty Nat’s playing my plea. I held my breath. Now, she’s back in ripping rejoinder.

“I don’t know, Nat. Is our Mr. Otash looking for a date, or justice for my friend Shirley?”

“It could be both, you know. One don’t exclude the other.”

I heard tap-taps. Tension taps. Miss Blind Item’s crammed in a phone booth. She’s drumming the wall. It’s stagecraft. She’s buying time to rig a response. That means she’s tweaked, that means she cares.

“Mr. Otash has a reputation, Nat. It precedes him, you might say. I read a piece in the L.A. Mirror — last year, I think it was. It described his illegal surveillance methods and alleged that he resorted to physical force in order to quash lawsuits levied against Confidential.”

“Well, you know that old saw, right? ‘If you want to make an omelet, you’ve got to break a few eggs.’ ”

Miss Blind Item laffed. “Not that Confidential magazine is much of an omelet, right?”

“You sure got me there, baby.”

Silence settled in. Silken, sullen, sickened — who knows? Ardent or artificial — who knows that? She’s amply ambiguous. It’s cold-calculated. She’s leading me, she’s playing me, there’s something she wants.

“A casting director I know told me he beat up Johnnie Ray. Really, Nat — Johnnie Ray? I met him once, after his gig at the Copa in New York. He was certainly one of the nicest, and certainly the least offensive young man that I’ve ever met. Nothing that I can think of could ever justify that sort of behavior.”

Baby, I know just how you feel.

Nasty Nat said, “Yeah, I dig on Johnnie Ray. I spin his discs on the show, every so often.”

“Handsome is as handsome does, Nat. I saw Mr. Otash on Paul Coates’ show, the last time I passed through L.A. I remember thinking, My, that surely is a most presentable man, which made me doubly sad to have heard the Johnnie Ray story.”

Miss Blind Item. I’ve got you under my skin.

Security Office

The Sleazoid Hollywood Ranch Market

5/14/55

A.M. shitwork. Phone work and field reports. Two per Rebel Without a Cause. Mendacious memos to Bondage Bob Harrison and Bill Parker.

I called Nasty Nat at KKXZ. Pathos pounded me. He lived at the station. His noxious news: last nite’s trace went blooey. Nat said he’d try again tonite. I bid the big bopster bon voyage.

Miss Blind Item. You’ve got me torched and scorched.

I wrote my report to Bondage Bob. I delivered the dish on Nick Ray’s Afrika Korps and described the pustulant panty raid in delirious detail. I omitted Jimmy Dean’s presence. I owed Jimmy that. I exorbitantly expanded my memo to Bill Parker. I reported Robbie Molette’s dish per Führer Nick’s “escalation” escapades. Dig, Chief: He’s planning hot-prowl 459’s and liquor-store 211’s. He’s the maladroit mastermind of the “motivation” crime. Addled actors bow to his bidding. Nazi Nick’s applied the Stanislavskiesque stamp.

I called Confidential’s messenger service. A car schlepped down from Sunset and Vine and picked up the pouches. Chop, chop, fucker — deliver them now.

My desk phone rang. I picked up. Bondage Bob bored straight in.

“Lew Wasserman just called me. Rock’s at the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station. He was booked under his kosher name of Roy Fitzgerald, and it looks like he was drunk or maybe Mickey Finn’d, he might have been blowing some guy in a parked car, and what’s for sure is he swung on a deputy, so now he’s in custody. All this means I need you and your boys to get him out and clean him up before the press gets wind of it.”

I said, “Jawohl, boss. I’ll jump on it.”

Bob bored back in. “We’ve got to safeguard our exclusive on the ‘Rock marries a woman’ front. Lew’s a hundred percent behind us on this. He wants to call the piece ‘Rock’s Rocky Road to Marital Bliss,’ and he’s a hog for the eternal-triangle bit that you and Phyllis have cooked up. That means you’ve got to find us a bait girl to play the other woman. You dig, bubi? I want a fresh face, which means nobody we’ve used before. If Rock falls in the shit on this Sheriff’s deal, we can lay the bait girl off as the ‘sexy succubus who led the righteously religious Rockster to tasty temptation,’ or some such happy horseshit.”

I said, “I’ll have Rock out inside of an hour.”

Bob said, “Lay off the kraut jive. I’m one twenty-fourth Jewish, and I’m touchy about it.”

Ward Wardell and Race Rockwell rendezvoused with me. We surged up surreptitious. We slid in slick and parked by the jail-exit door. Bondage Bob called ahead and bought the bail bond. Rock stood ready to roll.

Race remained with my sled and sluiced the engine. I’d called ahead and pledged the jail deputies a yard per. Ward and I juked through the jail door. We caught a corridor and sidled up to cellblock row. There’s Rock. He’s signing autographs for a filthy phalanx of his fellow jailbirds. Wheww!!! — they’re malodorous Menschen — winos, weedheads, K-Y cowboys caught in the act.

Race wrangled Rock. I ran interference. Rock hurled hand kisses back to the boys and ran with us. He was sweaty and swack-back on some kind of hop. His feet flip-flopped on the floor.

We made the door. I barged us out. We ran right into a riotous raft of reporters.

Banzai!!!! Sneak attack!!!! It’s Pearl Harbor perpetrated by the putzoid Fourth Estate!!!!

Flashbulb flare. Hurled questions. I heard Rock, Rock, Rock and ARE THOSE RUMORS TR—

A cordon constricted around us. I pulled my belt sap. Ward pulled his belt sap. We sap-slapped cameras. Flashbulbs shattered and sheared into shards. We sap-bashed heads and scoured scalps and hurled Rock ahead of us. We slid into my sled three across. Race Rockwell goosed the gas. We surfed out to San Vicente and nailed it north to the Strip.

Dig it. Escape from Stalag 69. Rock could top-line the flick. He yukked, I yukked. Ward and Race yukked. There’s blood in my soul and torn-out teeth stuck to my sap.

Race wound west on Sunset and dipsy-doodled south and north on Crescent Heights. Rock and I hopped out at Googie’s. The coffee cave was midmorning lulled. We took my table. Debrief me, Daddy. Escape from Stalag 69. What’s the priapic prelude here?

I fed Rock my flask and two dexies. I fed myself, likewise. Rock said, “Don’t tell me. You want me to lay out the whole sordid tale.”

I said, “That’s right.”

Rock lit a cigarette. “Here’s what I recall. I was visiting this kid actor, Nick Adams. Why? Because I sensed susceptibility. He’s got a little rental house, up north of the Marmont. Okay, I’m there. Nothing much is happening, except I go to the bathroom, and I notice this spare bedroom piled up with hi-fis, TV sets, movie cameras, and all kinds of radio consoles and electrical gear. It’s like Nick’s running a Sears, Roebuck out of this one room. Then Nick makes me a drink, and there had to be something in it, because I go gaga. And... well... there might have been another guy there, but I’m not sure... and... well... the next thing I remember is waking up in jail.”

Nick Adams. “Motivation, escalation.” Robbie Molette’s 459 dish. Rock’s Sears, Roebuck shit. It radiated Burglary Swag.

“I’ll take you home. We’ve got that fake-wife caper coming up, you’ll have two good-looking women fighting over you, and you should get some rest.”

Rock went Why me, Lord?

I pulled into Stan’s Drive-In. Babs Payton knew from bait girls. She had a history with Nick Ray. She cadged courses at the Actors Studio West. She knew all within her limited pervview. She tattled all for cash and cocaine.

I’d dropped off Rock and rolled by the Ranch Market. I read my two message slips. Bondage Bob and Bill Parker called. I returned the calls. I bagged big bravos for my Rebel Without a Cause report. Bob said the Escape from Stalag 69 cost him six g’s. It covered cameras smashed and busted bones set at Central Receiving. He laffed it off.

The Rebel report and Rock’s tricky triangle made the money minuscule. Parker parsed attaboys. He told me Ernie Roll rhapsodized per the Rebel revelations. Meet us at Ernie’s office, 4:00 tomorrow.

Babs skated up. She did her signature sideways dip and passed me a pineapple malt. The malt metastasized. A mushroom cloud toxified me. Babs laced my malts. Bonded bourbon and Benzedrine bits brought the brew to a head.

I slid our seats back. We got cozy. Babs tucked her legs up and skimmed her skate wheels on the dashboard.

“I need a hundred, Freddy. Regardless of how many topics we cover.”

“Okay. Let’s start with the Actors Studio. I’m looking for something very specific here. Do they keep a radio and TV tape library on the premises? I’m looking to identify a specific actress by her voice.”

Babs lit a cigarette. “Yeah, they do. Their members put on these earmuff thingamajigs and watch the TV and movie stuff on some monitor-type gizmos.”

I sipped my malt. The depth charge detonated. Oooooohhh, Daddy—

“Second topic. I’m looking for a bait girl. It’s a long-range deal, and I’m looking for a new-kid-in-town, who-are-you? type.”

Babs blew smoke rings. “Let’s come back to that one. I’ve got to put my thinking cap on.”

“Okay, here’s topic three. Nick Ray. I know you worked as an extra on They Live by Night, so that’s got to ring some bells.”

Babs whooped. “That’s the three-cherry jackpot and two chapters in my book, Hollywood Creeps I Have Known. To begin with, he’s a perv of the fake-daddy ilk. He likes it young, and he likes sending young actors out on ‘motivational missions,’ which he films, and I assume that that would be for kicks in the moment and blackmail purposes somewhere down the line. Do you like it so far?”

I said, “Tell me something I don’t know. This juvenile delinquency turkey interests me.”

Babs tossed her cigarette. “Nick’s got his head goon on all his pictures. On this one, it’s this mean little shit, Nick Adams. He’s also got his ‘Love Boy’ and ‘Love Girl’ on all his pictures, and this time it’s your chum Jimmy Dean and Natalie Wood. He’s always trying to push these kids into all kinds of scary stuff, and he’s got it all justified and sugarcoated to the nth degree. There’s an actor on the shoot named Dennis Hopper. He’s a customer here, and he’s got common sense enough to give Nick a wide berth. Now, Dennis told me that Nick’s got Jimmy all hopped-up to play Caryl Chessman, and Jimmy’s drooling for the part.”

Click, click, click. That’s a three-cherry jackpot. Yeah, but it’s turgidly topical, it’s new news, Chessman’s a headline humper, but still—

“Freddy, are you even listening to me?”

I said, “Keep going. What else have you got on Chessman?”

“Nothing. Except who wants to see a vital young stud like Jimmy Dean play Caryl—”

“Whoa, Babs. Hold on. Where’d you get that ‘vital young stud’ line? It’s something I’ve heard before.”

Babs scoffed. “I got it from a would-be criminal mastermind named Robbie Molette. He’s a regular here, and he’s always referring to himself as a ‘vital young stud.’ I used to shtup his daddy when I was a contract kid at Metro. He also works as a busboy, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and—”

I cut in. “Babs, what? What’s with that lightning-bolt look?”

“Nothing. Except you’re looking for a bait girl, and Robbie was in last night, and damned if he hasn’t put together a stable, and damned if he didn’t show me a merchandise book with some very fresh faces.”

Outside Nick Adams’ Rustic Rental Pad

West Hollyweird

5/15/55

Stakeout. Eine kleine Nachtwerk. The mad march to 1:00 a.m. and Miss Blind Item. I’d run my radio looooooooooow. I’d hear coins slip-slide down that slot. Nasty Nat would try for a trace. I’d hear Her voice.

Nutty Nick Adams. There’s his chump-change chalet. I’m parked across the street and two doors down. It’s a murky moon-mist nite. I’m cunningly camouflaged. Shade-tree shadows shield the shape of my sled.

It’s peeper peekaboo. I see Nick’s pad. Nick can’t see shit. There’s window lights. Big beams bounce my way. I possess Peepervision. No one else does.

There’s a scurrilous script read. Nick Ray pontificates. Nick A. and Jimmy Dean declaim dialogue.

I hexed the house. I made mental mincemeat of the punks and mocked their motivation. Leave now, feckless fools. I’ve got work to do inside.

I brought my evidence kit. It contained print gear and Ray Pinker’s stop-frame camera. I dunned the DMV. They fed me photostats of three drivers-license applications. I had right thumbprints for Jimmy Dean, Nick Ray, Nick Adams. Pinker’s camera light lit latent prints and magnified tents, whorls, and arches. My game was confirmation and/or elimination. If they touched the B and E swag that Rock described, I’d know.

I turned on the radio. Synagogue Sid serenaded me. Sid’s bass sax sallied forth. The flügelhorn flew with it. The drums drilled a cool counterpoint. Then that cacophonous coin cough cut in.

Adios, Sid. Nasty Nat’s nudged you aside for Miss Blind Item. I ran the radio looooooooow. I listened for tone above text. Talk to me, love. Say something, say anything. Give me your voice.

Miss Blind Item riffed and rang rapport with Nasty Nat. I listened for tone above text. I nite-dreamed as she talked.

Caryl Chessman would be in L.A. As in soonsville. He had a court appeal downtown. Nick Ray wants Jimmy Dean to play the Red Light Bandit. It surged as subtext and nudged me nonplussed. It couldn’t compete with Her Voice. Her vowels suggest the urban Midwest. It’s a seen-it-all city voice.

A door slammed. I orbed the chalet. Mark it: 1:23 a.m. The punks pop from the pad. They bag Nick Adams’ rental ragtop and roll northbound.

I rolled. It’s late, time is tight, you need an hour inside. I ran to the door and laid into the lock.

Lock picks and penlight. It’s up-close, in-tight work. I jammed a #4 pick in the keyhole and massaged the main spring. Two tumblers tipped. I pulled out the #4 and jammed in a #2. The door jerked from the jamb. I shoulder-shoved it and inched inside.

I locked myself in. I penlight-flashed the main room and dug on the details. Bullfight posters, bongo drums, a TV tuned to a test pattern. Natalie Wood nudie pix tacked to one wall.

It’s cheesecake chiaroscuro. Natalie’s backlit by flickering flames and feral faces peering out. It’s the Afrika Korps, the B-boys, the Nick’s Knights Kar Klub. The Führer’s face peers out above them. Nick Ray’s wearing devil horns and torquing a ten-inch forked tongue.

I cut down the hall. I flashed a bare-mattressed bedroom and a bathroom in bad disarray. My light speared the spare bedroom. My beam swung over the swag.

The hip hi-fis. The cumbersome consoles. The fetchingly fenceable TV sets and camera cascade. They were hurled haphazard and carelessly covered the floor.

I left the room lights off. I got out my gear. I made for the mountain of merchandise and went to work.

My penlight put me in close. I went contraband item to item. I marked manufacturers’ ID numbers on my scratch pad. It was all B and E stash. I knew that. It might be traceable to specific burglary lots.

Prints next. That’s the tuff part. Dust touch-and-grab surfaces. Daub contrasting-color powder. Put the stop-frame camera up to liftable latents. Expand the images and look for thumbprint configurations. Count tents, whorls, and arches. Compare them to the DMV photostats.

I went at it. I had at it, wholesale. I kept the lights off. I penlight-parsed and brushed purple powder over every touch-and-grab surface in sure sight. Finger oil brought up smudges, smears, paltry partial and full fingerprints. I went item to item. I dusted hi-fis/consoles/cameras/TV sets. Smudges, smears, and partials popped up. No glaring glove prints stood out. That was gooooood.

I caught two full finger spreads. They popped off a pinewood console. That meant bupkes/zero/zilch. I needed right thumbprints X-clusive.

I worked myself weary. I wound my way down to two portable TV sets.

They had hard-to-hold planes and no handles. They were cumbersome and unwieldy. They were hoist every which way items.

I dusted Set #1. I hit hard surfaces, crevices, cracks. I brought up a right thumbprint. I raised my camera. I zoomed close. I let fly.

The camera magnified. The camera impaled images and brought them up, white-on-black. I counted comparison points. I’d memorized the photostat points. I’d broiled them into my brain. I knew every tent, whorl, and arch.

I counted One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten—

Nick Adams, it’s you. You’re fucked for 459 PC.

I dusted Set #2. It’s hard to hold and pry off the premises. There’s that hard-to-hold tube housing.

I dusted it. I pulled Right Thumbprint #2.

I put the camera up to the print. I magnified it. I counted common points. Six points saddened and sickened me. Nine points nullified me. Ten points pounded James Dean, courtroom conclusive.

Bait girls. Babs Payton shtups Robbie Molette’s dad, circa ’47. Rodent Robbie. He’s running call girls now. No shit, Sherlock. Robbie’s got a merchandise book. Babs reveals fresh faces. It’s a nutty non sequitur. It indicates the brute breadth of my craaaaaaazy crowded life.

I broomed to the Beverly Hills Hotel. Robbie worked the noon-to-nine swing shift. I parked in the employees’ lot and lingered by the locker room door. Robbie rolled up at 11:40. His ’49 Ford fed fucked-up fumes to Beverly Hills and beyond. It laid out L.A. as a lung ward.

I coughed up to the car. Robbie popped the door. I scooched in. Robbie called in some cool.

“Hey, Freddy. What’s shakin’ today?”

I lit a cigarette. Robbie said, “Hey, watch it. Asthma runs in my family.”

“Let’s talk about your family. Like in your dad, who’s a grip at Metro. I see nepotism at work here. Babs Payton and your dad were some kind of an item. And Babs is impressed with your new stable. ‘Fresh faces’ was how she put it.”

Robbie reached under his seat. He pulled out a pink padded notebook. It was embarrassingly embossed “The Young Stud’s Stable.”

I riffled and ran through the pages. “Fresh faces” — yeah. Nepotism — yeah plus. They were Metro contract cooze. The innocent ingénue type. The Hollywood Heartache Class of ’55.

Dad strung strings around Robbie. He passed on his pimp patrimony. I knew the Metro method. The casting cads culled and curried a type. Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Mount Holyoke. This was Ivy League woof-woof deluxe.

“Your dad wants you to keep it localized. The hotel, and nowhere beyond. You suck up to the guests and take it from there. Your dad palms the desk guys and gets the rooms. You do a little matchmaking, and take home your cut.”

Robbie huff-huffed. His dentures dipped out. He’s twenty-two. He’s got dentures. He needs a dad.

I reriffled the girl book. A look lassoed me. She’s tall and lioness lithe. She’s chestnut-haired. She’s heaven-sent in heathered tweeds. She’s Bryn Mawr brought to life.

Robbie said, “That’s Janey Blaine. She went to Smith. She’s gigging with Jack tonight.”

‘Jack’? You mean Senator John F. Kennedy?”

“Well, I call him Jack, and I’m the one who set him up with Janey. He’s meeting her at a Democratic fund-raiser here tonight. It’s my patented ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ scenario, you dig? Janey’s an out-of-town Party functionary, you dig? She sees Jack at the wingding, their eyes meet across a crowded room, and she goes back to his bungalow with him, and stays all night. There’ll be movie big shots at the wingding, and they’ll scope Janey and check out her pedigree at Metro. She’ll get legitimate work out of this gig, you dig?”

I chained cigarettes. “I dig. And I’ll be crashing the gig, by the way. And if I like the way Janey carries herself, I’ll have a long-term gig she won’t be able to resist.”

Robbie sniff-sniffled. His eyes went wet. He trembled. His dentures clack-clacked.

“She resisted me, that’s for damn sure.”

I resisted the riposte. You’ll always have your sister, kid. Chrissy’s a hot sketch. She’s yours as you live and breathe.

Ernie Roll sipped scotch. “Your Rebel Without a Cause summary is boffo. Don’t you think so, Bill?”

Parker sipped scotch. The DA’s sanctum sanctorum featured fishing trophies tricked up on wood-paneled walls. Monster marlin and ossified octopi.

Ernie crapped out at his desk. Parker and I sat in soft leather chairs. The seasick green leather went with the walls.

“It is. We’ll get some indictments out of it, and we’ll get Freddy to improperly vet the magazine’s story, which will give us the double whammy when we put Confidential in the shit.”

“Get us some good dirt on this James Dean kid, Freddy. He’s a big movie star now.”

“Freddy’s tight with the kid, Ernie. We have to assume he’s a source for a lot of this information.”

I sipped scotch. “The Chief’s right about that, Ernie. That said, I should add that I tossed Nick Adams’ pad and took his prints off some hot TV sets. Harry Fremont’s got the ID numbers off the merchandise. If the burglaries were reported, he’ll nail that punk for a whole flotilla of 459’s.”

One more misdirection. One more mercy missive for Jimmy the D.

Parker said, “Freddy Otash. Accept no substitutes.”

Ernie said, “Lay out some story vettings you were remiss or criminally culpable on, Freddy. And, remember, I’m voluntarily offering up that no-file sheet on you when all this goes to court, so you’ll be in the clear on any and all criminal charges.”

I cracked my knuckles. “The two Eartha Kitt jobs were dirty. I slapped Orson Welles around. We paid off Eartha on both of them, all off-the-books cash. The pieces were all lies. Race mixing was a hot topic, so we went nuts with it.”

Ernie went Hubba-hubba. Parker said, “Freddy’s prebriefed me. It gets better than that.”

I scoured my scotch rocks. “Christine Jorgensen and I shook down the Vanderbilt kid for twenty grand. The piece we published was expurgated during the editorial process. I kicked the door down and took pictures. They’ll make good courtroom exhibits or place mats at your next Elks Club smoker.”

Ernie slapped his knees. “Like your stellar photos of Marlon Brando with a dick in his mouth.”

Parker rolled his eyes. “A legendary item.”

Ernie said, “Your legendary tiff with Johnnie Ray. That’s a good courtroom vignette.”

I cringed. “As tiffs go, it wasn’t much. And it’s not like I’m proud of it.”

Parker held one finger up. Ernie ticked that topic off.

“We’re working a two-way street here, Freddy. That means you’ve got a fat credit slip in Banker Roll’s vault.”

I said, “Caryl Chessman’s got an appeal in superior court. He’ll be here soon. I’d like a jail visit with him.”

Parker said, “That evil cocksucker.”

Ernie crossed himself. “Those poor girls. That girl in Camarillo.”

Parker crossed himself. “Consider the request, Ernie.”

I crossed myself. “I promise I’ll behave, and I promise that anything Confidential puts up will atone for that boo-hoo piece we published in ’52.”

Parker beady-eyed me. “Here’s a reminder to go with that request. The next time you witness Nick’s Knights, or the Afrika Korps, or whatever you’re calling them, committing first-degree felonies, you are to intercede with all due and vigilant force.”

Match the voice. Make a voice print. KKXZ to the 1946–47 yearbook. She’s not the noted Kim Hunter or Barbara Bel Geddes. She’s not Shirley Tutler/aka Miss Third Victim. She’s probably Unknown Actress #1 or #2. She might be the lissome Lois Nettleton. Her picture might not have popped on that page.

Babs bought me in. She called ahead and relayed my request. She artfully audited Actors Studio West classes and muff-munched member Mercedes McCambridge on occasion. She explained my kooky conundrum. A clearheaded clerk caught it quick. She snagged her yearbook copy. She found the faces. She rigged a TV clip/film clip/scroll-the-screen machine.

Unknown Actress #1 was Marjorie McConville. Unknown Actress #2 was Lana Linscott. Shirley was Shirley. Lois was Lois. The machine socked sound out of side vents.

The clerk cozied me up in a cubicle and cut the lights. I scrolled the screen. Miss McConville mangled Major Barbara. She stormed a stage in Belfast or Ballymora. She shoved Shaw at me in a brutal brogue. I rescrolled the screen.

Lana Linscott laid it on light. She played some doofus Doris in a dithering Dinner at Eight. Her voice wasn’t The Voice. She was a salt-lick soprano. She came off as a comedienne.

I knew what was next. I scrolled the screen and got to it. There’s Shirley Tutler, pre-Chessman.

She looked L.A. She talked L.A. She had the flat vowels and the vibrato drawl. She essayed Stella in Streetcar. She simpered and saw how it played. She started over and notched up her native dignity.

I replayed the nite we met. Her blood-soaked blouse dripped. I brought her a blanket. She said, “You’re very kind.” I brought her a cup of water. Colin Forbes and Al Goossen took over from there.

I touched the screen. I scrolled the screen. Lois Nettleton mainlined Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

It was Her Voice. She had The Voice. She jumped geography and subsumed a southern belle’s timbre here. She withered her weak willy/bottle baby/homo-haunted hubby and begged him to sire her child. She pinnacled the pathos and wrapped back to the rage. Her Deep South diction dipped north to Chitown shaded with Sheboygan. I was glad. It was Her Voice, The Voice.

Lois, it’s you.

Janey, it’s you.

For Jack, it is. Tonite, at least. You look goooooood. You move magnetic. You roil the room and mug the men moving at you. You’ve got droves of dreary Democrats drip-dried. You might bag the bait-girl gig. I’ll call you Rambunctious Rock’s Squeeze, then.

I circulated. It was a big-room bash. It was committedly corny and panderingly partisan. Note the crepe-paper bunting. Note the coarse cardboard cutouts — Democrat donkeys at graze.

I’m crawl-crammed in with two hundred people. The women wear god-awful gowns and show too much shoulder. The men sport spring-weight suits and sweat them straight through. I’m sweating. I’m a Lebanese camel fucker and prone to the sweats.

Jack’s immune to sweat. Janey’s immune. Jack’s got cucumber-cool chromosomes. Janey’s loose-limbed in lavender linen. I’m tall, Jack’s tall, Janey’s tall. I’m a periscope. I’m peering over the heads of the heaving hoi polloi. Come on, kids. It’s Some Enchanted Evening. This bum bash is one hour in. Orb those eyes. Orbit the room. Let’s see you cull contact.

Some nudnik nudged me. Oh shit — it’s Robbie Molette. He’s passing out puffed cheese and seared tuna on toast. He slipped me a note. I brusque-brushed him off. The rodent rambled away.

Ooooga-booooga. There it is. Jack’s moving her way. Janey’s moving his way. It’s a slow slog and a deep detour through dowdy folks. He’s laughing. She’s laughing. They move their hands in sexy sync. It’s fate — what can you do?

There, they’ve met. They shake hands. They’re speaking. Here’s my speech balloons. She’s calling him “Senator Kennedy.” He’s calling up his killer comeback: “Come on, call me Jack.”

I watched them. The Pervdog of the Nite’s a peeper from waaaaaaaay back. What’s going on here? What’s with this jungled-up juju? What is it that you two have got?

It’s this:

You’re decorous. It’s a deft deception. You project a state of groovy grace as you sally forth in sin. There’s a halo around you now. It hides your cold hearts and your constant calls to conquest.

Janey, it’s you.

You were born to play bait gigs. I’m enchanted and appalled.

I barged out of the bash. I bopped over to the porte cochere and read Robbie’s note.

“Nick’s Knights are mobilizing. Tomorrow night, 9:00 p.m. at the Marmont.”

I remade myself as Stage Door Freddy. I’m a sweaty swain swooning for my phone to ring. I know her name, she knows my name. Nasty Nat’s our conduit and cupid. The Actors Studio clerk laid out the lowdown on Lois.

Born Oak Park, Illinois/’27. Miss Chicago, ’48. The Art Institute of Chicago. East to the Apple. The Actors Studio. Lois meets Shirley Tutler. Her connection to the Caryl Chessman case is calamitously forged.

TV work. Film work. Stage work. Her zenith’s right now. She’s understudying Barbara Bel Geddes in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Here’s a punchy parenthetical:

The play’s all Broadway bravos right now. If Barbara bails behind a bad bug or lays up with laryngitis, Lois plays Maggie the Cat.

But she’s in L.A. She knew her cruel critique of Confidential would somehow summon me. She knows things about me. She wants something from me. My pay-phone trace will work at some point. Yeah, but I’m right here, right now.

I caved on my couch. I’m Stage Door Freddy. I’m a cuckold, a cornuto, a juvie jerkoff, a chump. I hexed the phone. I brain-brewed an APB on Lois June Nettleton/white female American/DOB 8-16-27, Oak Park, Ill—

The phone rang. I picked up and risked ridicule. I said, “Hello, Lois.”

She said, “Hi, Freddy. I figured you’d find me before too long. So I jumped the gun a bit.”

“I’m glad you did. And I’m not going to ask you what you want, because I know you’ll tell me pretty damn quick.”

Lois said, “That’s true, but what I want is evolving, and I’m not quite sure what it is.”

I said, “I saw a clip of you today. It was in black and white. I couldn’t tell what color your hair is.”

“It’s strawberry blond. And I saw you on Paul Coates’ show, and you tried to tell the truth, but you faltered at it.”

I said, “Meet me. Right now. It’s not that late.”

Lois said, “Not tonight. Before too long, though.”

I said, “You’ve got this haunted tomboy thing going. Like Julie Harris, but earthier and more pronounced.”

“I like men who notice things like that, and make accurate comparisons like the one you just did.”

“How long have you been pulling this anonymous telephone stuff?”

“Since the war, when I was in high school. The telephone has always been my métier.”

“I wish we could talk in person.”

“We will, in time.”

“Shall we talk about Chessman?”

“Not yet.”

“You’re right. It’s more of an in-person conversation.”

Lois said, “Shirley speaks of you, when she’s capable of speaking. She’s never forgotten those few moments you spent together.”

Outside the Chateau Marmont

West Hollyweird

5/16/55

Rolling stakeout.

It’s 8:55 p.m. I’m parked perpendicular, down from bungalow row. I borrowed Donkey Don’s ’53 Chevy. It’s innocuous compared to my Packard pimpmobile. I’m snout-out in a flat flower bed. I’m ready to roll.

I’m still stage door — stuck and looped on Lois standard time. We talked until 2:00 last nite. We tippled at topics and nodded off into non sequiturs. We laffed, we flirted, we surged toward and circumnavigated a path past Shirley Tutler and Caryl Chessman. Lois refused to divulge her L.A. hideaway. I called Nasty Nat and Ray Pinker two hours back. They’d trace-tracked three Lois calls. They got cloyingly close. Ray tracked transformer stations and logiced out a loose location. He made it mid-Wilshire east.

It’s a booth call. Here’s his best shot at a border-to-border bid. It’s Western to the west/Vermont to the east/Beverly to the north/Olympic to the south.

I got it. I saw it. My mind churned and channeled straight to Chapman Park.

The Ambassador Hotel’s there. Ditto, the Chapman Park Hotel and the Gaylord Apartments. The Brown Derby’s there. Dale’s Secret Harbor’s there. It’s a lively locale. Lois would light there — I knew it.

The fone fungooed my whole day. Rodent Robbie called and ran me raw. He said, Jack loved Janey. I said, No shit, Shadrack — what’s not to love? Robbie goosed me: You giving her the bait gig? I said, Yeah — tell her to meet me tomorrow nite/Frascati/ten p.m. It’s a pithy party of four. She’ll meet the players then. Robbie hung up. Harry Fremont called. Caramba!!! — Sheriff’s Burglary called him.

It’s a make. The Nick Adams swag matched the manifests for six 459’s. Six B and E’s — all within one mile of Nabob Nick’s rent-a-pad. That’s gooooooood. If Nick keeps the cache, he’s cooked. Here’s what’s baaaaad. The Sheriff’s lab dutifully dusted the B and E locations. They turned up no viable latents.

I called Bill Parker and tattled the tidings. He said, Sit on it for now. I called Bondage Bob and told him. He said, This Rebel Without a Cause caper is a cause célèbre.

I’m a snitch. I’m a rat fink. I’m an infernal informer. I beat both ends against some malignant middle. And the wide world knows.

I checked my mailbox, midafternoon. I found one piece of paper. Dig this vivid valentine:

Jimmy, you shitbird cocksucker. I knew you when.

I bug-eyed bungalow row. I watched my watch. 9:00 p.m. nudged by. Bungalow row remained snoresville. The action accelerated at 9:14.

There’s the filthy phalanx. Farshtinkener Führer Nick Ray stridently strides ahead. His Untermenschen unfurl behind him. Jimmy Dean, Nick Adams, Chester Alan Voldrich. The two black-jacket Kameraden from the sorority soiree.

Die Fahne hoch. Die Reihen fest geschlossen—

They’re all Afrika Korps tonite. The jumpsuits, the big-billed caps, the Rommelesque regalia. Nick R.’s got his movie camera. We’re back at El Alamein, ’42. Rommel’s resolute. He’s readying his raid on the brave British forces.

It’s a quivering quick-march. The Kiddie Korps follows their festering father — they goof some goose steps and hop in the Chevy van. Voldrich whips behind the wheel and peels out.

They looped left on Sunset. I looped left and lagged back. I caught cover behind a big bus booming eastbound. I rode the back bumper and kept their back bumper surveilled.

We headed into Hollywood. The bus barged due east. The van vizzed south on Wilton Place. A taco wagon wiggled between us. It was chopped and channeled. It surged, submarineesque. The sassy side panels read Los Intrusos.

The van vipped ahead. I surfed behind the submarine. We’re headed southbound and down. Wilton arced into Arlington. We passed Mount Vernon Junior High/aka Mount Vermin. The van angled east at the Jefferson juncture. The tacomobile tooled on south.

I lost my car cover. I dawdled three car lengths back and dug darktown by nite. Something Rodent Robbie Molette said sacked me.

Escalation. Liquor-store 211’s. We’re at Jefferson and Normandie. It’s liquorland lit large — right here, right now.

Telepathy ticked — me to them. Don’t read my mind, Menschen — don’t cross this line.

The van wriggled to the right lane and crept curbside. I saw the lit-up liquor store window, jarringly just ahead. I whipped wide and nudged up to the north-side curb. The van stopped in front of the store.

Achtung!!!! Raus!!!! Mach schnell!!!!

The six sickos pile out. Nazi Nick’s got the camera. Nabob Nick’s got a pump shotgun. Jimmy Dean’s got a bottle of T-Bird topped with a cotton-wick fuse. It’s a sure-as-shit Molotov cocktail.

I froze, I watched, I peeped. I’m a peeper first and forever. Bill Parker told me to intercede and fuck up all felony actions. I didn’t. I disobeyed. I sought succor in savagery. I was coldly complicit. I’m all vile volition, and—

They walked into the store. The counter clerk saw them and guuuuulped. Nick Ray rolled film. Chester Voldrich reached behind the counter and tapped the till. The clerk yelped. His mouth moved. I imagined a plaintive please. The two no-name Kameraden hopped the counter and taped his mouth shut.

Voldrich shagged a shelf bottle. He uncorked it and passed it to his putrid pals. Some reflex ripped me. I kept going for a gun I didn’t have.

Nick Ray rolled film. No-name Nazi #2 pulled out a Minox minicamera and snapped stills. Jimmy flicked his lighter and lit the Molotov. Nabob Nick pumped his shotgun and blasted the booze shelves.

Glass shattered and sheared. Wino wine and rotgut rye and skunk scotch blew wide. Jimmy tossed the Molotov. It caught the cold cuts case and exploded. Fumes flared and flattened out at the ceiling. Electrical cords caught fire and sparked blue and white.

Smoke smothered my Peepvision view. The clerk ran outside and ran straight out of my frame. Nick’s Knights walked out, en masse. They stood studly, six across. They rebel-yelled. They whipped out their whangs and pissed in the street.

My Boss Bachelor Pad

West Hollyweird

5/17/55

I confessed. I crawled my crib, cruciform. I drank myself draconian and drip-dried my dearly soul. What soul? They could have clipped the clerk and popped some pedestrians. I had to peep it and imprint the images. I’m the Pervdog of the Nite — past all rancid rationale and jacked-up justification.

I confessed to God and Chief William H. Parker. I wrote him a self-defaming memo and had it messengered, posthaste. I read my Bible and ripped right to Revelation:

Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand... Anyone destined to live by the sword will die by the sword.

That’s Nick’s Knights, that’s me. That’s God’s conflagration called down on Confidential.

I sat by the phone. I willed Lois to call. She didn’t call. I laid the phone in my lap. It rang. I picked up. It wasn’t Lois. It was Reptile Robbie Molette.

He blathered. I listened, listless. I was shot to shit and half in the bag.

“...and, Freddy, I figured I should tell you. Nick Ray’s over at Googie’s right now. He’s got a group of his kids in tow, and they’re all ragging on you pretty bad.”

I hung up. I willed Lois to call. I voodooized the airwaves and tried to make the phone ring. It rang. It wasn’t Lois. It was Chief William H. Parker.

He said, “You’re absolved, Freddy. We’ve got those humps on Arson, Assault 1, 211, and six related firearms charges. They’re sunk if Ernie Roll and I decide to sink them, and you’ve proved to me you won’t sell me out to Confidential. Get it? You’re not a coward or a quisling. You’re a shitbird who played it smart for the first time in his life.”

I blathered. Parker said, “Shut up, and enjoy your absolution and the rather astonishing fact that I’m starting to like you. And, while I have you, here’s a suggestion. It might be nice if you let Nick Ray and his gang know that they should mind their p’s and q’s.”

Absolution. Parker’s sassy sanction. Dexedrine and strong coffee. I hurtled out of my haze and fumbled out of my funk.

Googie’s was jam-packed. I tamped on my tunnel vision and bebopped in the back door. I saw them, they saw me.

Them:

That giant-ant flick, last year. Giant ants attack L.A. They raise a ruckus and eat good-looking women. I giggled and goofed on it. Freddy O.’s a giant ant.

Them:

Nick Ray, Jimmy Dean, Chester Voldrich. Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo. They’re ensconced in a big booth. They’re slurping massive martinis. Natalie and Sal are underage. It’s a Beverage Control bust.

I adjusted my antennae and ant-ambled over. Don’t fuck with Freddy O., the Giant Ant. The gang ignored me. I popped the olive out of Nick’s drink and noshed it. I went Yum-yum.

Jimmy said, “Get lost. Can’t you read? My days as your sidekick are finito.”

Nick started to stand up. I nabbed his necktie and yanked. It put him face-first in his antipasto. He glug-glugged and heaved. I twisted his tie and held his head there. He flap-flapped his arms.

Natalie giggled. Sal swooned, swishlike. Jimmy played it kool-kat quiescent. The Giant Ant bored him. The shimmy-shimmy shakes gave him away.

I dropped Nick’s necktie. He glug-glugged and blew his bloody nose on his napkin. Chester Voldrich pulled a push-button shiv and popped the blade my way.

He was close. I ratched his wrist and sheared the shiv free. Voldrich yelped. I pinned his hand to the table and stabbed straight through it. Bones broke, blood blew, the blade cracked wood and tore through the tabletop. I put my weight behind it. Voldrich screamed. I pinioned and pyloned him. I crafted a cruciform seal.

Voldrich screamed. I said, “Natalie, pour your drink on his hand.”

Natalie said, “What’s my motivation?”

I said, “You’re a juvenile delinquent.”

Natalie said, “Okay.” Natalie poured her drink on his hand.

Chester screamed. His purloined paw got freon-fried and scorchified. He screamed anew. He buckled the table and banged his back against the booth.

Sal said, “I’m a juvenile delinquent.” Sal tossed his drink. It rescorchified Chester’s hand.

Chester screamed. I shoved a napkin in his mouth and muzzled him. Jimmy’s still kool-kat quiescent. Now Nick’s putting on his pose.

I’m Freddy O., the Giant Ant. Don’t fuck with me.

Maiming mission to mortification. Giant Ant to peeper pariah.

I walked into Frascati. The maître d’ moaned. He took me to my table. Dippy diners at adjoining tables moaned and moved away. Waiters whipped up. They plied plates and place settings and rescued the geeks. It’s Exodus — let my people go!!!

There’s Rock and the girls. Hellllloooo, Janey Blaine.

She’s bravura. She’s mucho magnifica in a madras shirtdress.

She held out her hand. I bowed and took it. Rock winked. Phyllis rolled her eyes and registered resentment. Come on — it’s just a showbiz shuck and another mock marriage. It’s Hollywood. Rock’s Trippy Triangle!!! Let’s lay in for some laffs.

I sat down. Rock motioned for more martinis. I smelled tossed gin on my coat cuffs. It made me moan.

Janey kicked it off. She went for the whammo, straight in.

“Forgive me for being precipitous, but exactly what do I do?”

I lit a cigarette. “You act. You’re a Smith girl on the loose in L.A. You meet Rock at a dinner party. It’s the Some Enchanted Evening scenario that I know you’re acquainted with. Phyllis is with Rock. She’s his fiancée, and she doesn’t like what she’s seeing with you two. I’ll script a dinner-table dialogue for you and Phyllis. You’ll debate politics and some other things, but it’s all a smoke screen to cover the simmering feeling building between you and Rock. That’s how it starts. We’ll see how the kickoff goes, and we’ll take it from there.”

Phyllis said, “It’s demeaning. It can only go downhill from there, at least in my case.”

Rock said, “No heavy petting, Janey. I don’t roll in that direction.”

Janey laffed. Phyllis said, “Not yet you don’t — but we’re working on it.”

The martinis materialized. We took a brief breather and boozed. I scoped Janey, sidelong. I came to cold conclusions.

She’s peremptory. She’s petulant and short-tempered. She gored Phyllis’s goat at the get-go. Let’s define the Tricky Triad. Rock’s the passive putz — but now he’s strictly straight. Phyllis brings the brains and the royal rectitude. Janey is what she is — bait. She’s the torrid temptress who diverts Rock’s idling walk down the aisle.

Janey sipped her martini. “What are you prepared to pay me, and how long will the gig last?”

I said, “Ten thousand. Be prepared for a series of staged encounters, to transpire over a series of months. There’ll be a series of interviews with the celebrity press. Lew Wasserman has pledged a second-tier speaking part in Rock’s next picture. You’ll play the female lead’s bitchy kid sister.”

Janey lit a cigarette. “I’ll upstage her, too. Won’t I, Rock? Or should I start calling you ‘sweetie’?”

Rock said, “Janey’s a pisser. Isn’t she, Freddy?”

I said, “She sure is.”

Phyllis glowered and glared. Hell hath no fury like—

“Just remember who gets him in the long run, dear. Only one of us has the ability to facilitate his conversion, and that’s me. So, in that sense, this tawdry charade of ours does reflect reality.”

Rock said, “Keep referring to me in the third person. It sends me.”

Janey crushed her cigarette. “I can tell you’re quite accomplished when it comes to losing men, Phyllis.”

“Let’s just say I’m more practiced than you in general, dear. For instance, Freddy and I made out in a crowded coffee shop, not that long ago — and I would have slept with him, if he’d asked.”

Janey said, “Freddy, you’re a dog.”

I said, “Woof, woof.”

Rock high-signed me. I moved Janey’s purse out of the way and pulled my chair close. Rock chaired in close.

“I’m coming out of that haze I was in when you got me out of jail. I’m remembering some things that happened at Nick Adams’ place.”

“Such as?”

“Such as arc lights. And, you remember that guy who I said was there with Nick?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Well, now I remember him touching me — if you catch my drift. And he was babbling something about Jimmy Dean playing Caryl Chessman.”

It vibed blackmail/smut smear/cold-cocked Rock and some Nick’s Knights perv. Some filthy-film fandango. That equals Extortion 1. Bill Parker would dig it. Rebel Without a Cause. The derogatory profile expands. Plus — Caryl Chessman, again.

A waiter passed me a message slip. I unfolded it.

I stood up. I grabbed the flowers out of the centerpiece and wrapped my napkin around the stems.

Rock said, “Freddy’s leaving. I’ll bet he’s got a hot date.”

The girls ignored us. They chitchatted and heaped on the hate.

Lois Nettleton at twenty-seven. Here she is, the first time I saw her.

I parked in the lot behind Dale’s Secret Harbor. The booth stood by the back door. She talked to the phone. A booth bulb shined down and shimmered her. She’s boldly backlit by nite.

She’s lithe. Lissome, yeah — I figured that from her foto and film clip. She runs rangy but not tall. Her hair’s red running to blond. She’s unadorned. She goes to gaunt. It’s that timeless tomboy gestalt. She’s got bleached-blue eyes. They connote kulture-kooky and crazy. They confirm our fone-call contact. She works for effect, she shears short of contrived.

I walked up to the booth. Lois saw me. She cracked the door and smiled. She saw the flowers and stage-swooned. She said, “Nat, I have to go,” and hung up.

I handed her the flowers. She said, “Freddy, you shouldn’t have.” Her bleached-blue eyes bounced. They were set too close together. They marred her good looks and served up her soul.

She’d leased a cool casita at the Chapman Park Hotel. It was a white stucco job with a tiled terrace. A green-brown walkway wound down to Wilshire. Stray headlights strafed skyscrapers and smart storefronts.

We sat on a serape-print swing. Room service sent lobster salads and white wine by. Lois wore a shift dress and a sheer cardigan. We laid our feet on a long ottoman. Lois had knobby knees. I dug that.

I said, “What if Miss Bel Geddes gets pneumonia? You’ll be out here with me, brooding on you know who, and you’ll blow your big break.”

Lois twirled her ashtray. “Barbara will never let herself get sick. It’s one reason why I scheduled the trip when I did. And you shouldn’t be shy about saying his name. It’s Caryl Whittier Chessman.”

I twirled my ashtray. “What’s another reason?”

“He has a court appearance coming up. I thought I might stand outside the Hall of Justice and hex the son of a bitch.”

I stretched and plopped my feet close to Lois. She scooched close and bumped her feet up against mine. She wore ungainly lace oxfords. I dug that.

“There’s a weird confluence going on, with that hump Chessman in the middle. First, you show up and start tweaking the magazine, and yours truly. Second, I get embroiled with some cop pals of mine and the magazine, as they pertain to this movie that my ex — boon companion, James Dean, is filming right now. I’ve been informed that Nick Ray has been urging Jimmy to play Chessman in some sort of biopic that he’s got his hat set on making.”

Lois lit a cigarette. “Jimmy’s a shit. I knew him in New York, and I didn’t like him. If he plays Chessman and portrays him as anything other than the evil bastard he is, I’ll hex him with Aunt Lois’ you-will-die-young hex, and he’ll go tits up in some sort of embarrassing leather-bar altercation.”

I laffed loud and lewd. Lois laffed loud and lewd and laced up our fingers.

“I might have a shot at interviewing Chessman, while he’s in L.A. My pals the DA and police chief have okayed it, provisionally. Would you like to be there?”

Lois crossed herself. “As God is my witness.”

I crossed myself. “Then you shall be.”

Music meandered and wafted over Wilshire. The Ambassador Hotel and the Coconut Grove were close by. I heard “How High the Moon” and looked up. Moonbeams stirred stars, all across the sky.

“Freddy, the mystic. Penny for your thoughts.”

“I’m wondering how you’d summarize this whole Chessman deal of yours.”

“I’d call it the central moment of my life, even though I wasn’t there for the outrage.”

I looked at Lois. “I’ll buy that. I’m also wondering if you’ll let me kiss you good night.”

Lois said, “I haven’t decided yet.”

My Boss Bachelor Pad

West Hollyweird

5/18/55

Fone rings raked me and drilled through a dream. I was the Giant Ant, once again. I wrangled the receiver and scoped the nitestand clock. It read 8:12 a.m.

I said, “This is Otash.”

A man said, “It’s Jack, Freddy. Don’t ask questions, just get out here, immediately.”

It was Jack. He came off panic-pounced and scream-screechy. I said, “I’ll roll now.”

I rolled, rapidamente. I hit the Beverly Hills Hotel in one hard heartbeat. I ran through the lobby and out to Jack’s bungalow. I banged the door. Jack opened up.

And stood stunned-o. In his tattered tartan skivvies. Note his dumb-dunce demeanor. Dig his dilated eyes. He’s on some pillhead pilgrimage. He’s Mongo Lloyd, late of the loony bin. He’s broiled off brain cells by the billions. He’s holding a wet washcloth.

“What are you doing, Jack?”

“I’m wiping fingerprints off the walls. That way, they’ll think she hasn’t been here. I sprinkled cornflakes all over the bedroom floor, so if they come in the back way, I’ll hear them.”

I stepped inside and shut the door. I double-bolted it. A table radio rumbled. I switched it off.

“Who’s ‘she’ and who’s ‘they,’ Jack? Lay it out slow.”

Jack said, “I stripped the bed and sent the sheets to the laundry. I pulled two of her hairs off my hairbrush and flushed the butts she smoked down the toilet. Nobody saw her enter or leave. She hid in the bedroom when room service came. I’m a pro at this kind of thing, so—”

I slapped him, hard. Once, twice, three times. I raised red welts and blood dots. I grabbed his pencil neck and pinned him to the wall.

“Tell me what this is. Tell me who ‘she’ and ‘they’ are.”

Jack trembled and trickled tears. I hankie-wiped his face and put my hand over his heart. His pulse popped to two hundred plus. His skivvies drooped, sweat-wet.

“This call girl. Janey something. She spent the night before last here. They found her body this morning. It was on the early news. She was dumped, off of Mulholland and Beverly Glen.”

Shattering shit fuck. Jack the K., off to Shaft City. Robbie Molette’s cold-complicit. He pimped Janey to Jack. Adieu, Janey. No bait-girl gig for you.

I pulled pills from my pockets. Jack gob-gobbled them. He’d pass out, pacified. He’d wake up goosed out of his gourd.

“Clean up the cornflakes, and stop wiping the walls. Call Jerry Geisler and tell him the truth. Tell Jerry to call Ernie Roll, and I’ll call Bill Parker. We’ll hang a shroud on this deal and make sure you don’t get hurt.”

Jack said, “You’re a pal, Freddy. I knew you’d come through.”

Nothing’s free, rich boy. The ticket’s fifty g’s at the get. The PD’s payoff goes up from there. Parker’s got his eye on the FBI. It’s common drift. Gay Edgar Hoover hates you. This could be goooooooood.

Jack weaved to the bedroom. Cornflakes crunched underfoot. He collapsed on the bed and burrowed under the covers. Muffled snores drifted up.

Fifty g’s. Lois and me. A madcap month in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Last nite’s kiss multiplied mucho million times. I’ll slip some bad bacillus in Barb Bel Geddes’ coffee. Lois will revise and reprise her role and bring Broadway to its knees. We’ll jump to Jamaica on Cat’s closing nite. And, in the meantime, we’ve got Manhattan.

I popped to the porte cochere. I’d conked Jack comatose. I should call Parker and Ernie Roll and jump-start this. The valet saw me. I saw my Packard pimpmobile. Four big men lounged upside it.

Ever yours — the Hat Squad.

I walked up, slooooooow. The Giant Ant ankles, acquiescent.

Max Herman said, “Hi, Freddy.”

Red Stromwall said, “How’s Senator Jack, Freddy?”

Harry Crowder said, “Too bad about Miss Blaine, Freddy.”

Eddie Benson said, “We found your prints on Miss Blaine’s purse, Freddy. The Chief would like to discuss that with you.”

City Hall. The Demon DB. Sweatbox #3. The Hats held me hostage in the hot seat. We’ve been here before.

The bolted-down table. The bolted-down chair. The ashtray. The fat phone book. It’s the you-will-confess confessional.

The Hats straddled chairs. I kicked my chair back. Max passed out cigarettes. Red revealed his flask. It made the rounds. We took two pops each.

Red went aaahhh. “Breakfast of champions.”

Max said, “Explain your prints on Miss Blaine’s purse.”

“I had drinks with her last night, but I left early. I moved her purse out of the way.”

Harry said, “Where, when, and who else was there?”

I said, “Frascati, in Beverly Hills. It was a ten p.m. wingding. The other guests were Rock Hudson and his fiancée, Phyllis Gates.”

Eddie said, “Rock’s a fag. Don’t tell me — you were cooking up some ruse for the magazine.”

“That’s right. I brought the Blaine girl in as the bait.”

Max said, “Why’d you leave early?”

“I had a date.”

Harry said, “Where, when, and who with?”

“About eleven-thirty. The Chapman Park Hotel. A woman named Lois Nettleton.”

“How long were you with Miss Nettleton?”

“Until two a.m.”

Harry sighed. “If the alibi is kosher, it clears you.”

Max sighed. “We should bring Freddy up to date.”

Red sighed. “Freddy deserves to be updated.”

Harry lit a cigarette. “We’ve had you spot-tailed from the moment the Chief signed you up for his Confidential caper.”

Eddie twirled the flask. “For example, I saw your outburst at Googie’s last night. Voldrich lost two pints of blood and went into shock. I stiffed the call to Queen of Angels. Voldrich is a noted sack of shit, so I told the dispatcher to dawdle.”

I laffed. “Give me the particulars on Janey.”

Red checked his notebook. “It’s rape and manual strangulation. The TOD is one a.m. She was dumped on Lindell Street, at the foot of the Mulholland embankment, right off Beverly Glen. It looks like she was killed in the bushes and dumped from there. A dog walker found her at four-fifteen. It made the a.m. Herald by a rat’s snatch-hair margin. Doc Curphey’s doing the autopsy now.”

I point-by-point parsed it. She might have stayed late with Rock and Phyllis. She cabbed to Frascati or took her own car. She knew the guy. She tricked with the guy. It all went bitching baaaad.

“Vehicle at the scene? Did she have a car? Tracks in the dirt up on Mulholland or down at the dump site?”

Harry checked his notebook. “No vehicle at the scene, that we know of. We’ll be running the canvass in an hour or so. She owned a ’50 Buick Super, which is parked in the driveway of this little house she rented in Culver City. We’ve run the cab logs already. There were no drop-offs or pickups at Frascati from eight p.m. on.”

I pondered it. Harry said, “You were spot-tailed the night of the fund-raiser. In case you didn’t know, the public places at the hotel are riddled with surveillance ports, so I was able to observe you, Senator Kennedy, and Miss Blaine — which, in retrospect, looks like a staged-date sort of deal. BHPD, by the way, has a roust sheet on Miss Blaine. She was soliciting at the bar at the Beverly Wilshire.”

Max sighed. “You see what we’ve got, Freddy. The big question is, who hipped you to the Blaine girl and got this whole thing going?”

Eddie slid the flask over. I glug-glugged, deep-deep.

“You won’t believe it, but I’ll tell you anyway. It was that little dipshit, Robbie Molette, that you rousted on my Art Pepper gig. He’s a busboy at the hotel, and his old man’s a wage slave at Metro. He’s recruited some contract girls at the studio, and Robbie’s peddling them to the guests at the hotel, along with his other jive criminal enterprises.”

Max said, “Holy shit. That jerkoff.”

Red said, “Nice family. Daddy and junior peddle poon, and Robbie sells nudie pix of his own sister.”

Harry said, “And, he sells maryjane to all the hophead kids working on film shoots. Remember? He revealed that when we were squeezing him, last week.”

Eddie said, “Including Rebel Without a Cause, which Freddy knows all about, because the Chief’s got him working up a derogatory profile on that lox, and I myself saw him bird-dogging the parking lot by the observatory, while they were shooting there.”

Spot tails. Enterprising entrapment. I’m keestered every which way. Chief William H. Parker. Accept no substitutes.

I said, “Here’s a word to the wise. Anything pertaining to that movie should go from the Chief, to me, and me to you. Robbie’s dirty, sure — and dirty as far as that flick goes. I’m just making sure that this work I’m doing for the Chief doesn’t get trampled on.”

Max sneered. “And I’m sure the same goes for Senator Kennedy, when and if we clear him on the Blaine job.”

Harry scoffed. “The Molette kid is pushing ass to a U.S. senator. I still find it hard to believe.”

Red moaned. “We’re buried on Fat Boy Mazmanian, and now we get reburied on this Blaine deal. Give us a ray of hope, Freddy. Tell us she confided in you, and you know all about her private life.”

I sucked the flask. “Nix. Robbie set the senator up with her, and I just met her last night. It’s a big canvass and known-associates job, when you’d rather be putting that Mazmanian shit in the ground.”

Red laffed. “Es la verdad, junior.”

I buzzed Harry. “Okay, you spot-tailed me at the fund-raiser. You were on the premises at the hotel. You observed the senator and Janey, so you kept your eyes open. I’m wondering if you noted anything inconsistent while you were there.”

Harry shrugged. “Some unruly news photographers, outside the main lobby. At least one guy got loose and started shooting pictures through that big window that looks out on the porte cochere. A BHPD guy told me there were a couple of dozen dumped flashbulbs on the ground where he was standing.”

Somebody knock-knocked the door. The Hats stood up, rapidamente. Bill Parker walked in. The Hats walked out. It took point-one-two fucking seconds.

Parker straddled a chair. “The senator brought in Jerry Geisler. Jerry called Ernie Roll. Ernie sent Miller Leavy over to take the senator’s deposition. It appears as if the senator was indisposed with a second call girl while the first call girl was being raped and murdered, which clears him for Doc Curphey’s presumed time of death. The second call girl has confirmed the senator’s assertion that they were together at the senator’s bungalow from eleven p.m. to four a.m., which handily covers all possible estimated times of death. Inexplicably, the senator wants you on this job. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. I am acceding to the senator’s request, and I forbid you to utilize your dubious influence with the senator to in any way derail my incursion against Confidential. You will also deploy your goon squad and have them make every effort to dissuade newspaper, TV, and radio reporters from publicizing the murder of Miss Janey Blaine. Per that purported homicide, Doc Curphey has revised his first estimate of Miss Blaine’s cause of death. He has officially announced that Miss Blaine died of injuries sustained by a fall from the Mulholland Drive embankment. Are you following me so far?”

I cracked my knuckles. “I am, sir.”

Parker lit a cigarette. “Ernie Roll wants you to work with the Hats. He’s issuing you DA’s Bureau credentials and swearing you in as a special deputy. This will pave the way for you to legally contact municipal, state, and Federal agencies and request records checks on each and every member of the cast and crew of Rebel Without a Cause. I am, of course, aware that the disreputable Robbie Molette sells drugs to them, and I am painfully aware that young Robbie pimped Miss Blaine to Senator Kennedy. I want you to compile dossiers on any and all members of the Rebel gang. This will assist you in preparing Confidential’s smear job on the movie, and assist me in assessing the derogatory profile that you are preparing for my eyes only. It will also, dare I say, assist you and the Hats in your sub rosa efforts to seek justice in the matter of your dear lost bait girl, Miss Blaine. Are you following me so far?”

I follow, boss. Find the guy. Kill him. Buttress Doc Curphey’s bullshit. Janey fell off a high hill.

“I follow, sir.”

Parker dry-popped digitalis. He chained Chesterfields and chased it. He smoke-smacked Sweatbox #3, wall to wall.

“Concludingly, I want you to compile a derogatory profile on Senator Kennedy himself. I may direct you to publish your findings in Confidential. There’s been talk that the senator may be tapped as Governor Stevenson’s running mate next year. It might be just the right time for an in-depth smear.”

William H. Parker. Accept no substitutes.

I parked my Packard pimpmobile in the City Hall basement. Back stairs bopped me down there. I saw Jack the K.’s Lincoln limo by the cop-car slots. The back doors were whipped wide. Roof lights lit the ripe rendezvous.

Jack, Ernie Roll, Bill Parker. There’s a backseat bar and Baccarat decanters. Jack served drinks.

Fluorescent tubes ghoul-glared and lit the whole basement. I slid behind my sled and peeped the confab.

Jack sucked up to Bill and Ernie. Bill and Ernie sucked up to Jack. They all sucked scotch and nailed that noon glow. Jack said he’d cadge a case of Cointreau and send it to Coroner Curphey. His postmortem postulations pulled them out of the shit.

Parker said, “Especially you, Senator.”

Jack said, “Call me Jack.”

Ernie said, “We’re white men, Jack. Don’t expect us to start calling chits in the second you land in Washington.”

Jack said, “Ouch.”

Parker said, “You feel bad about the girl, don’t you?”

Jack lit a cigar. “I do. And, frankly, I’d like to see each and every conceivable loose end tied up, as well as see her avenged in some sort of clandestine and never-to-be-revealed manner.”

Ernie said, “You won’t be disappointed, Jack.”

Parker said, “The Hats are good at that sort of thing. Freddy Otash isn’t bad, either.”

Jack said, “I rue the day I met Freddy. I don’t think a case of booze will express the proper thank-yous for the Dutch uncle talk he had with me, as well as kick that cocksucker out of my life forever.”

Parker lit a cigar. He blew smoke rings. The aroma dispersed and sweet-swacked me. Aaahhh, Cuba. It’s a puppet regime. We’ve got our mob mascots making mad money. They grease Democrats and Republicans, fifty-fifty. Jack and half the House heels take tastes.

Jack said, “Batista’s got a pet shark named Himmler. He lives in a big swimming pool, behind the presidential palace. Himmler eats Commie dissidents. Batista’s goons toss them in the pool, and Himmler goes to town. Lyndon Johnson told me it’s a show you don’t want to miss.”

Ernie said, “Forget about this whole damn boondoggle, Jack. We’ll take care of it.”

Parker said, “We’ve got resources, and we’re not afraid to break a few rules.”

Jack said, “Bury it. I don’t want to know the whos, whats, and whys. She was just another girl, right? Maybe I’ll run into her again someday.”

Dusk. A meandering moon cleared away clouds and starlit chez Lois. We swung on the swing and held hands. Lois wore a cord skirt and a blouse like Shirley wore that night.

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking how deep it goes with me, and that I’m a nutty actress who works out her motivation by assuming persona, because her persona is a drag, and that’s what convinced her to become an actress in the first place.”

I went nix. Lois laid a hand on my leg.

“You were kid roommates. You shared a cheap pad down in the West Twenties. It was just after the war, and things were exciting. Kid friendships are powerful. You can’t let go of Shirley, and there’s no reason why you should.”

Lois burrowed into me. “You’re right about that. And you know just what to say to defuse me. I hardly know you, but I know you’ve been looking wan, because Chessman’s appeal has been postponed, and you know I’ll be going back to New York soon, so what happens next?”

I tilted her chin up. I kissed her hair and caught almond shampoo.

“I’m not letting this go.”

“Yes, but what will you do about it?”

I prickled. “Is this the part where you reveal that you contrived to meet me, because you knew Chessman would be out here, and I spent five minutes with Shirley, and you like to create drama, and you sure like to chase men while you’re at it.”

Lois slapped me. I let her. She slapped me again. I caught her hand and kissed her fingers as the slap hit. She cried a little. I kissed her neck and brushed tears back.

She said, “I need you to do things that I can’t do. I don’t know exactly what they are, but I need you to do something.”

I said, “I’m putting together a smear piece on Nick Ray, Jimmy Dean, and Rebel. I’ve got special deputy status on a cop job that ties in, and I stiffed a call to the mail-room boss up at Quentin. Nicholas Ray and James Dean are approved correspondents of Chessman’s, so I think the rumor that Jimmy and Nick want to make the movie about him are probably true.”

Lois tugged my hair. We bumped foreheads. Our eyes locked too close in. We pulled back and found the fit.

“Let me explain something to you. I suck up to certain men and lean on certain men, and it’s how I cull favors. I’ll put the two of us in a room with Chessman, if I can keep culling favors with the guys who can make it happen, which will sure as shit serve to make it happen.”

Lois said, “If James Dean plays Caryl Chessman, it will result in a publicity blitz that will serve to guarantee his exoneration. I don’t want that to happen, and I want you to do something bold and brave and more than a little bit stupid, because that’s the type of man I throw myself at.”

A light rain kicked on. Lois pulled the serape spread around us. I ran my hand under her blouse and touched her bare back.

“Don’t leave me, because you can’t see beyond this Chessman deal. It’s a drama, so it’s half-assed unreal at the gate. Don’t leave me, period, because I don’t want to lose you.”

Lois threw herself at me. I convinced her I was bold, brave, and stupid. We stretched out and gassed on the storm.

Rain.

Torrents tidal-waved the terrace. Puddles popped and soaked the serape. We swung off the swing and collided inside to bed.

We shivered and shucked our duds. We didn’t do it. We got nuke-bomb nude and dove under the duvet. Wide windows gave us Wilshire by nite. Buses stirred and streaked water high-high. Rain racked the roof. We posed on pillows and whispered under the racket. We kissed and touched each other top to bottom and went back to words.

I spilled. I savagely self-defamed. I confessed. I laid out Bill Parker’s crusade to crush Confidential. Lois called me a crazed crusader. It impelled me to impolitic discourse. I laid myself out as one servile serf. I dodged overseas duty. Men I pounded to perfection at Parris Island got Jap-juked on Saipan. I described the Johnnie Ray debacle as the nightmare nadir of my life. I ran through my Rebel wrangles and deliriously delivered everything that they did and I did. I ran down the Janey Blaine/Robbie Molette/Jack the K. conundrum and the official hoax to obfuscate Janey’s cause of death. We played to Jack’s vile vanity. He wanted the killer killed. Who killed Janey Blaine? Five of us were determined to traffic the truth, even as we assailed it as the penance pose of a hotshot politician too hot to touch. Say we catch the killer? It’s devil take the hindmost, then.

And, per Caryl Chessman? What will I do about it? I’ll think of something. What will it cost me? I don’t know — but the price will be high.

Lois told me stories. Bond drives and beauty pageants in Chicago. New York and acting gigs. This scurvy schizophrenia, the Too Many Bedrooms Blues. Too many weak men with shaky psyches. All of them actors. All too-too temperamental and so-so sadistic, all of it aimed straight at You.

Freddy, I could tell you stories. Darling, you already have. I knew you’d have stories like the ones you told me. I think it’s why I set out to find you. You’re a dear heart, Lois. No, I’m just your midnight caller. Lucky for me you picked up the phone.

We fell asleep about then. The last thing I recall is the rain.

Sub Rosa Investigation (187 PC)

Jane Margaret Blaine (White Female American)

DOB: 4-19-29/Visalia, California

Personnel assigned: Sgt. M. Herman, Sgt. R. Stromwall, Sgt. H. Crowder, Det. E. Benson, Spec.

Dep. F. Otash

5/18–5/21/55

The Hats and me. Full-fledged partners. One rich run at the roses. We reckoned we could race three full days. Max had a cousin in Bremerhaven, Germany. He worked at a pharmaceutical facility. They manufactured Pervitrol. It was a loopy lozenge that maximized merriment and once drove the Wehrmacht Tank Korps to pound Poland to pulp in record time. Anschluss!!! Blitzkreig!!! We rendezvoused at Stan’s Drive-In. Comely carhops hopped us pineapple malts laced with 151 rum. We popped Pervitrol and particularized our werkload.

We ran through our records checks to date. Dig: Janey Blaine dropped out of Visalia J.C. Her Smith — Bryn Mawr credentials were shucksville. She looked it, she didn’t earn it. Dig: her phone records came through threadbare. She buzzed mom and dad in Visalia and Robbie Molette. That’s it — sadly solamente.

We ran Robbie’s records. He had his own line listed at mom and dad’s Highland Park hutch. Dig: Robbie called Janey and the fourteen other call girls listed in his merchandise book. Harry braced the security boss at Metro. The boss vouched the names. He roundly ratted out Rodent Robert J. Molette, Sr. He’d been instigating ingénues into the call girl arts since ’49. He told Harry he’d have a damning dossier for them soon. We returned to Robbie’s records. Re-dig: Robbie called Nick Ray, Nick Adams, Jimmy Dean, Chester Voldrich, and Nick Knight Arvo Jandine. Arvo was the so-called unit fotog at the liquor-store job.

We discussed the Robbie senior and junior jihad. We agreed: senior would seize a lizardesque lawyer, faaaast. We agreed: we’ll hardnose Robbie and get him to give daddy up. I reported on my records checks. I lamentedly left Lois for a 3:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. fone stint. I ran the Rebel rascals and supply supplanted my existing records checks. Now, hear this:

Nick Ray’s under subpoena from State and Fed HUAC. He ran Comintern-financed front groups, ’42–’43. Among them: the Hollywood Committee for Artistic Freedom, the People’s Party to Resist Censorship, and the Hands-Off Comrade Stalin Committee. Max interjected: he talked to a Sheriff’s Burglary bull this a.m. Bingo, baby: the noxious numbers on Nick Adams’ swag matched two recent 459 lots. We agreed: we’ll haul him in and bat him around till he bitch-squeals.

I returned to my Rebel checks. It was all junk juvie shit — Arvo Jandine’s excepted.

He was a whipout man. He tossed his tool during daring girls’ locker room gambols. He hit Pasteur Jr. High, Nightingale Jr. High, Le Conte Jr. High, Foshay Jr. High, and Audubon Jr. High. We all agreed: this cocksucker mandates consideration.

Eddie reported per the crime-lab crucible. Dig: the rape-o/presumed killer was a savage secretor. Ray Pinker typed his blood, off his putrid payload. It’s AB negative. Jammed upside Janey’s body: plasticene and foam fabrics. Car seat-cover shit. Bad news here: said shit was indigenous to Mercs, Buicks, and Pontiacs, produced between ’51 and ’54. We all groooaned. That meant mucho millions of cars. It came down to this: we had to check all indigenous makes and models per our suspect pool.

Cars. This banged our bells per a big issue. How did Janey get up to Mulholland and Beverly Glen? She had no car. She called no cab. Rock and Phyllis didn’t drop her. She didn’t wait outside Frascati. Ergo: somebody picked her up near the restaurant.

It’s in Beverly Hills. It’s a short hill hop up Beverly Glen to Mulholland. It all came down to Janey’s tricks, past and present. It all came down to Robbie Molette and whether or not Janey worked freelance.

Eddie riffed on the crime-scene canvass. It boded bupkes — nobody saw shit. Ray Pinker noted drag marks at the foot of Beverly Glen and the embankment. This indicated one suspect, pulling upward. A West L.A. squadroom dick disagreed. He studied a bunch of crushed leaves. They indicated two suspects, dragging Janey down that embankment. Per toxicology: Janey had a big booze load in her system. No shit: she sheared down martinis and most likely wine at Frascati. Yeah, and she gobbled or was force-fed four Seconol. Ray called her comatose at her TOD.

Max said, “I’m bored. Let’s go get Robbie. Freddy and Eddie, you come with me.”

Harry said, “We’ve got leads on Fat Boy I’d like to check out.”

Red said, “Nix. You and I will go pick up Adams. The Sheriff’s bull said we could have first dibs.”

I guuuullped. Jimmy was Nick A.’s 459 accomplice. I failed to mention that—

We strode in strong. Max, Eddie, and me. We’re overzealous. It’s overkill. We’re raiding the Beverly Hills Hotel kitchen.

We went in the employees’ entrance. We staged a stir. We eyeball-orbed for Reptile Robbie. It’s no sale, papacito.

Max braced the crew chief. El Jefe said Robbie was up by the bungalows. He had four breakfasts to clear.

We bopped back there. We saw Robbie’s pushcart. Max and Eddie snarfed left-behind bacon and home fries. Robbie bopped out of a bungalow. He lugged leftovers off lox plates and dirty dishes. He saw us and went Oh shit.

He dumped his dish debris and went all punk passive. He shuddered and moved meek and mild. We tossed him in our K-car and drove him straight downtown.

Max and Eddie sat up front. Robbie and I hogged the backseat.

Robbie said, “It’s about Janey, right?”

Max said, “Robbie’s wising up.”

Robbie said, “I’m just letting you know in advance that I plan to cooperate. I’m looking to avoid a thumping like the one you put on me last time.”

Eddie said, “Tell him, Freddy.”

I said, “You’ve got two choices here, junior. You give up your dad’s girl biz, or I put the hurt on you myself.”

Robbie’s dentures dipped out. I dipped them back in. Max said, “He gets the picture. His family life as he knows it has just gone pffft.”

We drove downtown. We hauled him up to the DB and sweatbox row. Red radioed in. He said he and Harry just nabbed Nick Adams. Nick got bad-boy belligerent. They kicked his ass and sapped some sense into him.

We ensconced Robbie in Sweatbox #2. Max bought him a candy bar and a Coke. Box 3 was reserved for Nick Adams.

Eddie said, “I turned the hall speakers on. The Chief wants to observe.”

Robbie noshed his Nougat Deelite and chugged his Coke. Max, Eddie, and I straddled chairs. Robbie sat sidesaddle. He’s a passive putz. He’s here to help. He’s a fellow rat. Who do I have to betray to leave here unthumped?

Max said, “You’ve got your girl biz and your dope biz. Your dad runs the girl biz. He recruits, and you peddle the tail, exclusively at the hotel. You run the dope biz on your own, and you sell maryjane and pills to dickheads on film shoots. You suck up to film-biz guests at the hotel, and develop leads on the shoots in that manner.”

Robbie said, “Right with Eversharp.”

Eddie said, “For the record, did you kill Janey Blaine, or know who did?”

Robbie said, “No.”

I said, “What’s your best guess?”

Robbie glugged Coca-Cola. “I read the Herald. They said Janey left the restaurant alone. That means she’s on the hoof, alone, in deserted Beverly Hills at midnight. She left her car at home. Maybe she was meeting someone, maybe she got picked up. Here’s an insight. Janey was avaricious. Maybe a guy picked her up, and she sensed his interest. She offered him some snout for fifty clams, and it got all tangled up, and poor Janey got 86’d.”

Eddie said, “Give up your dad. For the record. Let’s get it out of the way.”

Robbie scratched his balls. “For the record, my dad has been exploiting his job as a grip at Metro for the purpose of recruiting wholesome, Ivy League — looking ingénue snatch, for the purpose of turning them as call girls, for a fifty-fifty split. He’s been pulling this shit since ’49. Before you ask, I’ll tell you he doesn’t keep a trick book or a girl book. He keeps it all in his head.”

Eddie said, “Describe his relationship with Janey Blaine.”

Robbie picked his nose. “He recruited her. That means he made her strip, and he poked her, one time only. He didn’t kill her. That’s ridiculous. He never leaves the house at night. He’s got home cooking, anytime he wants it — and he always wants it. My mom and my sister keep him well supplied.”

Max said, “Tricks harassing Janey. What have you heard about that?”

Robbie said, “Zilch. And that goes for all my girls. They work a high-class clientele, strictly at the hotel.”

I said, “Your dad doesn’t keep a trick book or a girl book. But you keep a picture book — because I’ve seen it. Here’s the question. Did Janey keep a trick book?”

Robbie licked his fingers. Yum, yum — Nougat Deelite.

“I don’t know, but here’s something you should know. I keep a trick list in my room at the house. Specifically, all the big-name guys who put the boots to my girls, and here’s the rub. My room got burgled a few days ago. Shit was subtly out of place when I got home, and the trick list was gone. Lucky for you, I had the list memorized.”

Max yukked. Robbie Molette. Accept no substitutes.

“Give us a preview. You can reconstruct the list on paper, later on.”

Robbie rescratched his balls. “Besides our pal Senator Kennedy, we’ve got Senators Johnson, Knowland, Smathers, Humphrey, and Governor Stevenson, who likes boys, but my biz don’t fly that route. We’ve also got Ike’s chief of staff, Sherman Adams, DA Ernie Roll, Louis B. Mayer, Lew Wasserman, Jack L. Warner, and Darryl F. Zanuck. Not to mention Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Van Heflin, and that froggy guy, Yves Montand.”

Eddie went Oooh-la-la. Max whistled. My first thought: BLACKMAIL. Big-name men/call girls/some clumsy first approach. A list on paper? Prememorized names? It read AMATEUR NITE.

I tossed a tight changeup. “The Rebel shoot. Has anyone on it expressed interest in Janey or your other girls? The cast and crew are nothing but pervs and shitbirds. It’s a suspect pool we should explore.”

Robbie made the jack-off sign. “Nobody on the shoot knows about Janey or my other girls. I keep my two business worlds separate and compartmentalized. And, as far as Rebel Without a Cause goes, the shoot’s wrapping on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth. I’ll keep my ear down for you, but I’ve got to make one final haul off those weirdos, because once they go into postproduction, I’ll never see any of them again.”

Max said, “The Democratic fund-raiser. You were bussing tables there, so you saw your ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ scene play out. Here’s what interests me. Were there any unusual occurrences outside of that that you can think of?”

Robbie dry-drained his Coke. “Not really. Some stray paparazzi guy got loose and started shooting pix through an uncurtained window, and me and Manuel, this other busboy, got tapped to pick up all these used flashbulbs where he was shooting.”

I said, “We know that Nick Ray and Jimmy Dean have been talking up a Caryl Chessman flick. What else have you heard about that? The whole deal sounds unsavory to me.”

Robbie shrugged. “Nick Ray and Jimmy Dean are unsavory. The whole biz is unsavory. Chessman’s headed for the green room. If movie folks are gabbing up Chessman, it’s just that he’s a hot topic these days.”

The wall speaker sparked. Bill Parker said, “Otash, get out here.”

I walked out. Parker passed me his flask. I gargled Old Overholt and lit a cigarette.

Parker said, “The shoot’s closing down. I’m thinking we should recruit Robbie and do a big dope raid. It would do the magazine good in the short term, and we should net a variety of leads on a variety of criminal matters out of it.”

I said, “I agree.”

Parker went scoot. We popped down to Sweatbox #3 and peeped the wall window. There’s Nick Adams. He looks phone-booked and fit to be tied. Note the blossoming bloody nose and torn earlobe.

Parker said, “He confessed to the burglaries, and he gave up your friend Jimmy Dean as his accomplice. Red and Harry are out shagging him now. It may take a while. They’re chasing a hot lead on Fat Boy Mazmanian, too.”

I made the gimme sign. Parker passed his flask. I glug-glugged and got that glow.

“We’ve got the confession on Adams, Chief. That will stand up in court, and who knows what you’ll get from Jimmy. But we need to cut them loose, so they’ll be there if we run that dope raid.”

Parker popped digitalis. Straight, no chaser. Gas on his glow.

“You’ve been saying ‘we,’ Freddy. I find that encouraging.”

“I’m starting to think like a cop again, sir.”

“Anything else before you go?”

“Yes, sir. Tell Red and Harry to give Jimmy a good thumping.”

I soloed out to Culver City. My peeper penchant popped me out there. Pervdog, peeper, priapic pad prowler. You’re a clue clown on a biiiiiiiig case. Let’s toss Janey Blaine’s pad. Let’s lay it low and look for leads. Let’s sniff her panties while we’re at it.

It was 1:00 p.m. I stopped at a pay phone and called my service. I had one message: “Call Mr. Kennedy at his hotel.”

I did it. A stooge picked up. He asked me to drop by at 3:00 today. I said I’d be there.

To extort your boss, fucker. Ring-a-ding-ding!!!!

I found chez Janey. It was a peach stucco cube job off of Motor Avenue. Her ’50 Buick was gone. The West L.A. dicks impounded it, posthomicide. A first-rate forensic revealed zero and zilch. West L.A. left the case then. The Otash-Hats combine caught the duty. The pad was pristine to prowl.

I pinned my badge to my suit coat. It added official ooomph. I walked up and keestered the keyhole. Pick #6 worked. The door popped. I locked myself in.

The living room was squaresville meets hipsville. Persnickety Persian carpets and nifty Naugahyde chairs. The kitchen featured a gas range/Frigidaire combo. The fridge featured TV dinners and Tovarich vodka. Tovarich was high-test and cut-rate. Janey was jacked on the juice. She was a secret sauce hound. That’s Clue #1.

I hit the bathroom. It was tidy, turquoise-tiled, and crawl-in cramped. I checked the medicine cabinet. Aaahhh — here’s some good shit.

A diaphragm. A big box of cornstarch. Vivid vials of biphetamine and Nembutal. I popped two of Janey’s biphetamine. Let’s bond, baby doll.

I hit the bedroom. It was squaresville squared. The de rigueur ratty carpets. The small slipcovered bed. A small four-drawer desk. A matching four-door dresser. Cheap Picasso prints on the walls.

The desk blotter. It’s a clue clown/pad-toss classic. Check it out. Catch some light and look low.

Jawohl. It’s crisscross indented. There’s cursive marks all over it. Janey wrote loose-leaf letters and pressed her pen hard. Shit — no legible words leaped out.

I rifled the desk drawers. An inconsistency inflamed me. They were all bare-bones empty. No pens, no paper, no envelopes. The wood had been washcloth-wiped. That meant print eradication. The gradations of grain gave it away. The light grain was dry, the dark grain was damp.

The desk had been tossed. The contents were picked clean. The thief carried off correspondence and/or personal pen-to-paper musings. He stole some called-up calculus of Janey Blaine’s life.

I checked the one window. I saw tool marks sawed into the sash. He leaped off the lawn and let himself in, presto chango.

That left the dresser. Women’s dressers always draw me. I’m a peeper and a sniffer. I’ve been one since puberty pulsed. Women’s dressers drew me in 1936. Women’s dressers draw me NOW.

I opened the top drawer. I saw the panties I sought. I pulled away, cold concurrent.

They were white. They were decorous-demure. There was one row, fetchingly folded. It was everything I liked.

BUT—

They were jizz-juiced, semenized, spurt-spattered, and sicko soiled. The B and E bastard laid his load on lace and cool cotton. It enraged me.

And it was evidence. I ran out to the car and grabbed my evidence kit.

The Jack-Freddy Summit. It’s been set for 3:00 p.m. It gave me time to run the panties downtown to the crime lab. Ray Pinker promised results by 6:00. I whipped back west and made the meet on time.

I buzzed the buzzer. Jack opened up. He wore seersucker shorts and a Harvard Crew T-shirt. He was drawn dry. He was too thin. He had stick legs. His raw rib bones showed. He was still strikingly Jack the K.

He pointed to a chair. He said, “Sit.”

I sat. He sat facing me. He lit a cigar. It was Cuban. I recalled Jefe Batista. His pet shark noshed dissidents.

“I need a promise, Freddy.”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s no publicity of any kind on the girl. No sandbag job in your magazine. No shakedown attempts by any bent cops who might know the story — which, of course, includes you.”

I said, “I have some questions about ‘the girl,’ as you describe her. I’m wondering what she told you about herself, during that brief amount of time you spent talking.”

Jack flushed. “No. We’re not discussing it. I’m not telling you, and this is the last time this matter will ever come up between us.”

I called up some cool. “I set you up with Ernie Roll and Bill Parker. You own them now. I overheard you guardedly state that you would like to see the girl’s killer put down. There are five of us who intend to find him and kill him, which will surely save you grave embarrassment somewhere down the line. I expect to be compensated for this, and the price is fifty thousand dollars.”

Jack flinched. “The price is way high, and your manner is entirely too brusque. You’re not saying, ‘Jack, I’m stretched,’ or ‘Jack, I need a touch,’ or ‘Jack, we go back a long time.’ You’re too brusque, Freddy — and you’re rather out of touch with reality, given who I already am and where I’m going. So let’s end this conversation and remain friends while we still can.”

I said, “No. I expect to be compensated for what I’ve done already and what I’m going to do, and the price is nonnegotiable, and a bargain.”

Jack fondled his cigar. “It’s a shakedown. You’re shaking me down.”

“No, it’s not. I’ve levied no threat of exposure. I’m presenting you with a bill for services rendered and services to come. Read whatever you like into it. I’ll expect a call from one of your inbred Irish flunkies, sometime within the near future. We’ll discuss the mode of payment and the time and place, and this is the last time you and I will ever discuss it.”

Jack said, “I’ll pay, Freddy. And this is the last time we’ll ever discuss anything. You’ve just made an impetuous and small-time move — but then, you’ve always been that kind of guy.”

It was fifty paces to the Polo Lounge. My legs quake-quivered and held. I ducked by some dowagers and dumped one on her ass. I helped her up and sent drinks to her table. She waved and went Yoo-hoo!

I boozed. I watched a wall clock. Ray Pinker promised semen-stain results by 6:00 p.m. I conjured Montego Bay, Manhattan, the mountains on the moon. I spent the fifty grand fifty million ways. I saw Lois naked by a wild waterfall and Lois naked at the Chapman Park Hotel. Belfast-born hoods killed me all the standard ways. I died by garrote, gun, brass-knuckle blows to the brain. Flags flew. Jack took the oath of office. I saw Caryl Chessman in Hell. He said, “Hey, baby doll.”

6:00 p.m. boded and bopped close. A radio riffed near my booth. The Hat Squad closed in on fiendish Fat Boy Mazmanian. The cocksucker was doomed. I knew it. Nobody said it.

I found a phone and stiffed the call. Ray Pinker got the goods. The jizz-juiced panties matched the Janey Blaine autopsy discharge. Ray said shit like “identical cellular componentry” and “exudate cell formation.” Ray said the sample was six to eight days old. That meant this: the killer left his load before he killed Janey.

I bolted. I drove straight to the Chapman Park Hotel and Lois. We got naked and tumbled into bed. We didn’t do it. We held each other tight-tight and talked.

We made sense and no sense. My monologue on money/Montego Bay/Manhattan. My rude riffs on the Janey Blaine job as really MURDER. Lois on Nick Ray and Jimmy Dean and We Can’t Let Them Make That Movie. I heard what I heard and knew she heard me back the same way. I said We’ve Got Some Money twelve million times. She said Chessman and What Will You Do About It? twelve million times back. We talked at each other. We wrapped ourselves up together and tried to find some fit we never found.

I went out or passed out and went someplace Lois wasn’t. It was booze and dope and Jack and Janey and Jimmy leaving me. I tumbled. I saw things that weren’t there and went somewhere Lois wasn’t. I woke up for real at 4:00 a.m. Lois was gone, her suitcase was gone, she left no note on the pillow. All I had was her scent.

The Hats were off hunting Fat Boy Mazmanian. I drove home and changed clothes. I checked my answering service. Nobody called me. I heard Chessman and What Will You Do About It? — but she wasn’t there.

I called Jimmy’s pad and service and got no answers. What Will You Do?/What Will You Do? She ventriloquized me. I heard her say it — but she wasn’t there.

Jimmy had a crawl-in crib off of Wilshire and La Brea. He slid in there to sleep and be alone. It was an above-garage abode and a cool caterpillar’s cocoon. I drove over and brazenly broke in.

It was easy. One lock poke, one shoulder shove. It’s a room-with-bath/eat-off-a-hot-plate deal. I scoped the one room. Here’s what I saw:

A Chessman shrine. The Chessman Taj Mahal and Sistine Chapel. The Chessman Mount Rushmore and National Cathedral. Newspaper headlines taped wall-to-wall. Chessman foto glossies shellacked to the ceiling. Movie-type test fotos stacked on the bed. Jimmy Dean made up as Caryl Chessman.

He’s got darker hair here. It’s been cut and kinked à la Chessman. A makeup man puttied his nose. That prominent prow is Chessman’s choice feature.

Jimmy always looks peeved and pissed off. It’s always there and always offset by his native pride and prettification. He embodies hip hurt and magnified maladjustment. It’s his studly stock in trade. Here, he moves into MEAN. He looks older. He’s usurped and channeled Chessman. It’s a trenchant transubstantiation. He’s made himself vicious and vile. It’s a metamorphosis, man to monster.

Harrowing headlines hemmed me in. They were existentially Chessman/No Exit. They jumped from January ’48 and jammed up to now. Red Light Bandit Sought. Red Light Bandit Captured! Chessman Convicted — Gas Chamber Looms. Victims Describe Degradation. Third Victim Hinted At.

The walls whipped around me. They coldly constricted me and cut off my air. Pictures popped out. Regina Johnson and Mary Alice Meza. Victims 1 and 2, weeping. Apoplectic appeals. High Court Rules No Stay Of Execution. Worldwide Protests: Free Caryl Chessman!!!

I gasped for air. I stumbled and fell on the bed. I looked up at Jimmy’s Michelangelo art. He’d pasted Chessman pix to the bodies of Greek cherubs. They flew, flitted, and flung the face of the Beast down at the whimpering world.

Maladjustment. He’s memorializing it. It’s his movie motivation. He’s a tortured teenager tempting teens to toss themselves at the abyss. He’s a mad marionette of modernist depravity. And Nihilist Nick Ray is pulling the strings.

I shut my eyes and conjured Lois. I counted to fifty thousand dollars, one dollar bill at a time. I magically misplaced myself: Montego Bay, Manhattan, the mountains on the moon. I opened my eyes and saw the file cabinet by the bed.

Flimsy green metal. One file drawer. File-tabbed C.C./San Quentin Correspondence.

I opened the drawer. I saw dozens of envelopes dumped in. They were addressed to Nicholas Ray and James Dean and postmarked San Rafael, California. I recognized Chessman’s handwriting. The Herald had run two of his prison letters in full cursive. He moved these missives past censors and guards and got them into the mail.

I plucked the first envelope and pulled the first page. The sassy salutation said, “Hey there, Jimmy and Nick.” It was dated 12/18/54. The first line read, “Before we start, let me state that I want Elizabeth Taylor to play the Meza bitch. She’s got bigger jugs, that’s the main thing.”

Chessman scrawled a script title here. If I Really Did It — (heh, heh).

I read my way through the whole file. I popped sweat and sweltered out toxins from my delirious last days. Some tears must have merged there. My eyes burned bad and felt funny. I kept wiping them.

Chessman admitted all of it. He copped to the most minute evidentiary details. It was a savagely sustained depiction of sexual horror. It was demonically descriptive. Chessman recalled sights, scents, and sounds. He reveled in the mess he’d made of lives for years to come. He described the Shirley Tutler assault and designated Shirley by name. He spent forty-three pages extolling each and every time he bit her. He said he sucked the blood off her blouse front. He wrote, “Maybe we can get Natalie Wood to play Shirley.”

I read all of it. I read Jimmy’s margin notes. He wrote, “Wow!” “Dig it!” and “This Caryl cat is cold,” repeatedly.

I got my evidence kit out of the car. I walked back inside and prepped my shooting stage. I turned on all the room lights and photographed all the pages. I ran through twelve rolls of film and dumped the envelopes back in the drawer in approximate order.

My legs quake-quivered and almost caved. I walked into the bathroom and doused my face. I looked different. What Will You Do About It? I looked older. I wondered if Lois would notice.

Evidence. “This Caryl cat” was cooked. His rights of redress had run out. I just punched his ticket to the green room.

Dizzy spells. Discontent and discombobulation. Don’t go for exultant. There’s No Exit, Baby. Don’t pop to your pad or rack out at the Ranch Market. Roll somewhere nobody can find you.

I’d lost a full day and a half at Jimmy’s crawl crib. It was the next nite of the next day at least. I drove downtown and parked in the cop lot at City Hall. My car cocooned me and sent me soporific. I tried to count from one to fifty thousand. I fell asleep at two thousand-something.

Bill Parker rapped on my windshield and woke me up. I popped the passenger door. He stepped in and dropped the early a.m. Herald on my lap.

I saw the Call Girl Homicide headline. Plus Coroner Curphey’s Accident Ruling “Hogwash,” Anonymous Source Sez.

Janey Blaine, hot off the press. There’s one fab foto. She’s fetching fine in ’49. She’s Miss Visalia JC.

There’s zero per Jack the K. Ouch — Prominent politicos among her many patrons. LAPD with egg on face. Chief Parker pledges revived investigation.

I said, “Who’s the source?”

Parker said, “As if you didn’t know.”

“Are you saying you won’t buy the pillow-talk defense?”

“No, and I would think you’d have figured out that you’re being spot-tailed a goodly portion of the time, and would have learned to conduct your liaisons accordingly.”

I lit a cigarette. Parker passed me his flask. I dunked deep and passed it back. Parker dunked deep. A barter bid’s boding. He’d have bitch-slapped me otherwise.

I said, “Let’s trade favors. Binding, as of now.”

He said, “You ask first.”

I said, “No reprisals on Lois Nettleton.”

He said, “Granted. On my end, I want you to assist in the dope raid on the Rebel gang. We’re going in at eight p.m. tomorrow. We’re hitting the Marmont, instead of the set. The head shitheels are camped out there, and they’re the ones we want to shake.”

I laffed. “Is that it? I’m getting the better end of the deal here.”

“No, not quite. I’ve decided that that Fat Boy Mazmanian is good for the murder of Janey Blaine, and I would like you to assist the Hats in wiping the egg off my face that Miss Nettleton put there.”

Why not? Montego Bay and Manhattan moved into sight. Lois rabbited, ratted me, and ran. To forgive is divine. I had that hot hole card. The Chessman/Dean letters would light Lois up. I’m locking them up as of now.

Stage Door Freddy. He’s back. He’s finessing fuckups and finalizing favors at full speed. Rat, fink, sovereign suck-up. The man who shook down John F. Kennedy. Call me bold, brave, and stupid. Lois Nettleton could do worse.

Parker said, “Fat Boy. Are you in?”

I said, “Yes, sir, I am.”

Outside the Chateau Marmont

West Hollyweird

5/22/55

Dope raid. Preselected bungalows. Nick Ray’s hip hutch. The cast and crew crawl pad. The B-level bedrooms of the Nick’s Knights Kar Klub.

It was 7:50 p.m. Rodent Robbie ran the dope by at 7:20. Nazi Nick had assembled the Juvie Jugend at his place. He’ll pitch one more motivation message. The flick wraps three days hence.

We perched on the access road. Four Sheriff’s plainclothes cars, eight Narco cops, plus me. The Hats were off elsewhere. They had Fat Boy Mazmanian 94.6 percent pinned. That quashed our Janey Blaine job. Fat Boy punched the ticket for Rape/Murder One. He’d go down soonsville.

We were looping up loose ends. The shoot would wrap. Ernie Roll would run the evidence and finalize filings. The panty raid. The liquor store 211/Arson. The four burglary counts to keester Nick Adams and Jimmy Dean. The Hats thumped Nick and Jimmy and cut them loose. We were playing and plying a loooooooooong game here. Call it collusive convergence — cops and Fourth Estate.

The Confidential smear job and the issued indictments must hit concurrent. The big bonanza lay there. I ran rapaciously rogue through all this Rebel rigamarole. I would confess all at the Confidential v. State of California trial.

“Two years, Freddy. We’ll be in court then. What you and I hath wrought.”

Parker said it. I believed it. It vouched my visions of Lois and fifty grand. It stamped Caryl Chessman’s insisted innocence Null and Void. I believed it. I had to believe it. So why hasn’t she called?

The radio rumbled. The squawk box squawked. That meant go, goon squad—

We got out and barged up to bungalow row. We’re heat on the hoof — eight cops up against hip hopheads and dizzy dilettantes. We hit the Führer Bungalow at a sprint. We prepeeped the door kick. Here’s the big window view:

Nick Ray in white robe and sandals. He’s serving up the Sermon on the Mount. His addlepated acolytes are attired likewise. That’s Nick Adams, Jimmy, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo.

Reefer smoke smogged the air. The acolytes noshed home fries and Googie’s burger bits. It’s the Last Supper. Jimmy beat his bongo drums. Natalie and Sal made like Muslims and ululated to Allah. Nihilist Nick held up a cheesy chalice of cheap wine. He said, “Art is self-sacrifice in the fight against Squaresville America. Come, drink from my blood.”

He’s serving Commie Communion. T-Bird wine and burger bits for wafers. Natalie whipped off her white muumuu and stood starkers. No shit — she’s the altar!!!

We kicked the door in. I went straight for Nick Ray. I elbow-popped his face and gnashed his nose in. His cheesy chalice flew. I kicked him in the balls and jackknifed him to the floor. I double-cuffed his hands to his ankles. I bow-bent him back ninety degrees. The fucker scree-screeched.

The acolytes made like Mahatma Gandhi. They went supine and sang Sufi songs to unnerve the fuzz. The cops shackle-chained Jimmy, Nick A., and Sal. They fondle — felt up Natalie and let her linger nude. They grabbed pill vials and reefer wrappers off the floor.

I ran down the row. I hit the crawl crib and crashed in the door. Four grimy grips groused and ground themselves deep in their bedrolls. I noticed no dope evidence extant. I ran down the row to the B-level bedrooms. I beat down the door to room #29.

It’s a two-bed flop. There’s nobody home. My roust sheet listed the occupants: Chester Alan Voldrich and fotog Arvo Jandine.

I eyeballed the room. A glossy glint gleamed on the dresser. I checked it out.

It was a black-and-white snapshot. Dig the built babe in a bikini. I’d seen her before. I knew where. Robbie Molette’s girl book. This studette starred in his stable.

Outside Fat Boy Mazmanian’s Hideout

2892 South Budlong

5/23/55

He’s back there. It’s a back garage setup. He’s paying furtive fugitive rates for three hots and a cot. The front house is a sweltering sweatshop. A kiddie korps sews Sir Guy shirts and sicknik silks for L.A. gang goofballs. Ten cents an hour, muchachos. You’re overpaid at that.

He’s George “Fat Boy” Mazmanian. He’s survived his pustulant pal, Richie “the Dutchman” Van Deusen. We’ve got him for the steakhouse/211-sex assaults. That mandates death by cop, all in itself. We’ve got him for the Janey Blaine homicide. He didn’t kill Janey Blaine. Nobody’s perfect — least of all him, or US.

We evacuated the sweatshop. The Hats bought los muchachos Eskimo Pies off a Good Humor truck. The kids gassed on the LAPD’s largesse. We weren’t LAPD or the Hat Squad plus Fred Otash today. We were the Men from Mars.

Dig it. We’re spiffily space age. We’re wearing spangle-sparkly bulletproof vests. The PD purchased a big batch of Chicom surplus supplies. They’re hiiiiigh-density and heat-resistant. They’ll deflect H-bombs and silver bullets. They glow candy apple green in the dark.

We reconnoitered behind the sweatshop. We adjusted our vests. We loaded our Ithaca pump shotguns with rat poison — laced buckshot. We slipped on our headgear. Dig: L.A. Rams football helmets rigged with antiradiation rays and Plexiglas face shields. Wobbly whip antennae for that space-monster look.

We were ready. We were armed and attired. Uno, dos, tres — vamanos, muchachos—

We blasted the door off its hinges. Double-aught buck punctured pinewood to pulp. Fat Boy fired. I caught two shots. Max and Red caught two shots. They singed synthetic fabric and fell off our vests. Fat Boy popped four more shots. Harry and Eddie took them. Ricochets riddled my football helmet and zinged off of me.

We advanced. We were the Men from Mars. We feared no man or beast. We stood in point-blank range and let fly. I pumped my five rounds straight at his head. He was my voodoo-doll substitute. I saw Caryl Chessman’s face as I killed him.

Googie’s All-Nite Coffee Shop

West Hollyweird

5/24/55

I tallied table tips. I autographed a.m. Heralds. Here’s the headline: Men From Mars Battle Call Girl Killer!!!!!

Not quite — but I’ll take it.

I logged lowdown. It was all bullshit. I didn’t care. Let’s celebrate and gloat.

The Rebel wrap party was here tonite. The dope-raid arrestees had bailed out. Parker wanted it that way. Let’s postpone the parade of criminal indictments. We’ll sync them to the film’s release.

I tallied tips. I rippled with resurgence. The money. Fat Boy dead and scapegoated for Janey Blaine. It buttressed Jack the K.’s peace of mind. That was gooooood. That meant it buttressed me.

Yeah — but why hasn’t Lois called? I called her New York service fourteen times and got zilch back. I’d null-and-voided Caryl Chessman. Nobody knew but me. I was resurgent. That meant WE should be.

A tipster bopped up. He tattled the Secret Snatch Hair Auction at the Charlie Chaplin estate. Certified Jean Harlow locks went for thirty grand each. Certified Carole Lombard locks went for twenty grand, plus. L.A. County Morgue doctors certified the snips and attested to their authenticity.

Here, kid. Here’s forty clams. Uncle Freddy can afford to laff. He’s got Lois Nettleton and fifty g’s.

The Rebelites wandered in. Nick Ray, Nick Adams, Natalie Wood, and Jimmy the D. Jimmy had that bruised-and contused, I’ve-been-phone-booked look. His hacked hairline gave it away.

He saw me. He kissed his middle finger and flipped me off. He wheeled and walked back out the door.

You get the picture. I never saw him again.

Infernal Intermezzo:

My Furtively Fucked-up Life

5/25/55–10/14/57

Confidential fell. The mistrial mandated a move to excessive expurgation and bum bowdlerization. Jimmy Dean went tits-up in a car wreck. Tuff shit. His mopey martyrdom moves millions and redefines Confidential’s concept of epic boo-hoo. I felt next to nothing. Nada, nix, nein, nullification. Jimmy betrayed me. Jimmy dumped me. Jimmy left me for Demon Daddy Nick Ray.

Bondage Bob killed the Rebel Without a Cause smear job. Bill Parker dumped his derogatory profile on the teen turkey turned big hit. Ernie Roll rolled over and declined to file criminal charges on Nick’s Knights et al. Parker and Roll succumbed to sentiment and success. Canonized kid actor, boffo box-office take. They capitulated to cultural consensus. Movie money made them meek. That big boo-hoo made them back off, bitch-like. That’s the bilious bi-fecta. They’re satedly satisfied. I’m not.

’55 to ’57. It was all one speciously spectacular sprint. I served my two mad masters. I vetted vile stories for Bondage Bob as I bamboozled him. I tanked the verification process and trafficked the truth to Bill Parker. We built a defamous dossier. It topped two thousand pages. It was mucho more than any prize-prick prosecutor could ask for. It comprised one wicked workload. It detailed my libelous life as a smear merchant and thug and made for a massive missive of my misconduct. Why mince words? I’m a rat, a fink, a snarky snitch, and an insidious informant. And I revere Bill Parker for giving me the chance to become one.

’55 faded out. Rock Hudson married Phyllis Gates in November. Best of luck, kids. I give it two years. I’ll work Mrs. Hudson’s divorce gig then. Phyllis is a fine filly. We collapse in the kip once in a while. Phyllis pretends that I’m Rock. I pretend that she’s Lois.

Barbara Bel Geddes never caught cold or laid up with laryngitis. Lois never netted the ripe role of Maggie the Cat. The show shut down in November ’56. I remain Stage Door Freddy. I tune in my TV and watch the only woman I’ve ever loved. There’s Lois on Decoy. She’s dizzy and dykey in two prison-drama shows. Lois stuns on Studio One and mangles the motions on Captain Video and His Video Rangers. She’s bravura on The Brighter Day. She called out to me on Camera Three, and told me we’re still on.

Lois played Emily Dickinson. She was all Art and Loneliness. Her poet’s passion pounded me. I know why. Lois lives longing the same way I do. She said, “What will you do about it?” I haven’t told her I’ve done one big thing already. I haven’t said, “I’ll tell you all in time.” I want to rig our reunion in Shirley Tutler’s name and the name of Vindictive Justice. We’ve got time here. Three jolting jurists have told me that.

J. Miller Leavy prosecuted Chessman. He told me the hump should burn some time in ’59. Ernie Roll’s best guess is early ’60. Judge Charles Fricke calls it ’60–’61.

We’ve got time. Hotshot men owe me favors. We’ll get our jailhouse visit. I promise you that. In the meantime, I’ve done this:

I stored the pix from Jimmy D.’s crawl crib in a bank vault. I B and E’d the crib the day Jimmy died. I stole his Chessman letters and stored them in Vault #2. I ripped his Chessman wallpaper to shreds and burned it. I contacted two high-ups at Quentin and begged for all the names of Chessman’s approved correspondents. They’ve refused me so far.

We’ll reunite. I know it. We won’t ride as rich as I’d hoped. Jack the K.’s fifty grand sallied south.

The cocksucker stiffed me. A minion called and made the meet. The parcel weighed in weighty. I took it home and counted the cash. The bills boded wrong. I showed some to a Treasury man. He said the cash was counterfeit. Freddy, you’re fucked.

I hexed Jack the K. It worked at first. He lost the veep bid in ’56. ’56 is not presumptive ’60. Jack was right. My shakedown was short-range thinking and a small-time move. That made me a small-time man.

Yeah — but I took down Confidential.

Es not la verdad. I just helped. The gig was Bill Parker’s bristling brainstorm from the get. We compiled the damaging data. Parker fed it to AG Pat Brown. He launched the official investigation and empaneled the grand jury then. The grand jury issued indictments on 5/15/57. Conspiracy to Publish Criminal Libel. Conspiracy to Publish Obscene Material. Conspiracy to Disseminate Information in Violation of the California Business Code.

Call it a clamorous cluster fuck. Bondage Bob hired Arthur Crowley to defend the magazine. Art was a divorce lawyer. He was not a libel-defense lawyer. Assistant AG Clarence Linn repped California State. I owed Bob a big beau geste. I was not indicted. Parker and Roll kept their word. I made a ham-handed play to pollute the jury pool. It cost Bondage Bob forty g’s. I flew the fuckers to Acapulco. They lived large for one week. So what? Nobody noticed or seemed to care.

A load of lawsuits surfaced, postindictments. Maureen O’Hara sued. Confidential cornholed her in the March ’57 issue. It alleged that she made out with a Mexican at Grauman’s Chinese. Oops. Somebody futzed the fact check. It had to be me.

Robert Mitchum sued. Errol Flynn sued. Dorothy Dandridge sued. We miscegenation-mauled her on no evidence. The trial opened on 8/7/57. Prosecutor Linn called Bondage Bob “Mr. Big.” He said Mr. Big had prosties lure celebs into compromising contexts. No shit. He said we paid known homosexuals to rat out those of their ilk. No shit. He said we employed strongarm methods routinely. No shit. Art Crowley preached the letter of the libel laws and freewheeling freedom of speech. It bopped back and forth. The courtroom socked in summer heat. Maureen O’Hara testified. She said she never made out with that Mex. The trial traipsed and trucked along until late September. The jury was deep-six deadlocked. They stood at seven to five for conviction on two counts. The judge closed the cluster fuck off and declared a mistrial.

Doofus Double Agent Freddy. He’s the dippy deus ex machina of the whole mess. His secret depositions shaped the prosecutor’s trial brief. He gave up his guilt. It cost him big gelt. It freed him to dream and scheme anew.

Confidential survived. It cooled down its content. It now publishes pap for a reduced readership. Our circulation circled downward. Bondage Bob pledged to publish “only wholesome stories.” He went on a cost-cutting binge. Listening posts were abandoned. I’m on my way out. My goon squad squared up tall and went back in the Marine Corps. I’m a full-time private eye now. I work divorce gigs out of the wheelman lot and snitch to Bill Parker. A snitch fund pays me five yards per month. I make out okay. Robbie Molette and Nasty Nat Denkins work the wheelman lot with me. I’m their faux daddy who used to be hot shit.

I’m alone most nights. I talk to women who aren’t in the room with me. I think about Janey Blaine and Shirley Tutler. Rumination to revelation. A click clicked in my broiled-to-burnout brain, much belatedly.

January ’48. Shirley Tutler is abducted and assaulted. Near Mulholland and Beverly Glen. May ’55. Janey Blaine is raped and murdered. Near Mulholland and Beverly Glen.

Rumination to revelation. I now see replication at work here. Movie madness. The Rebel shoot. Craaaazy crisscrosses at play. Robbie Molette and Janey. Robbie and the Rebel crew.

The Rebel remnants remain in L.A. Nick Ray’s prepping a preachy lox at Fox. Nick Adams shows up on TV. The Nick’s Knights Kar Klub is surely making mischief. It poses a What-Will-You-Do-About-It? dilemma.

I’m bored. I’m underemployed. I may be ramping up to do something bold, brave, and stupid.

Bondage Bob Harrison’s Suite

The Downtown Statler

10/14/57

The useless eulogy. The dippy de-brief. The rip-snorting ride is over, Sahib.

We took chairs. Bondage Bob poured mid-morning martinis. He wore a pink-puce toga. Note the lash marks on his legs.

“It’s the end of an era, Freddy. And you’re savvy enough to know why I’ve called you in.”

I lit a cigarette. “You’re ‘Mr. Wholesome’ now. I’m redundant. You’ve got no need for a strongarm corps, so you’re cutting me loose.”

Bob sipped bum Beefeaters. The suite was bargain basement. The booze was bottom shelf. His toga resembled a reclaimed Klan sheet.

“That’s the long and short of it, son. There’s a few clean-up jobs you can take care of — but that’s it, over and out.”

I went nix. “You’ve got qualms about the trial. The prosecutors came in, armed to the teeth. Somebody fed them a shitload of inside dirt. It was either me, or one of my guys. You’re getting up the juice to ask me. You’re sitting there in your toga, and you look like Julius Caesar at a drag ball. You’re getting ready to lay some sort of ‘et tu, Freddy’ number on me.”

Bob went te salud. I went so ask. Bob scratched the whip scars on his ankles.

“I see Bill Parker behind the whole magillah. He ran the show and fed the dope to the AG’s boys. He recruited informants, took depositions, the whole schmear.”

I said, “Ask me, Bob. Accuse me and ask me, and I’ll say yes or no.”

Bob shook his head. “This is not the Freddy Otash of yore I’m seeing here today. This is some new kamikaze version, that I find disconcerting.”

I drained my drink. “You’re asking me to feed you cues. Okay, here’s the first one. The shit I pulled for you and the magazine was wrong. You take it from there.”

Bob made the jackoff sign. “You’re jerking my chain, son. You don’t get to take my money for as long as you did, and make me the bad guy.”

I said, “I’m the bad guy. I knew it when I put the hurt on Johnnie Ray.”

Bob shrugged. “I’m not going to ask you, and you’re not going to volunteer. I’ll tell you what gets me, though.”

I went so?

“Here’s what gets me, son. Whoever it was was some sort of insider, and that fucker sided with that pious son-of-a-bitch Parker, against me.”

I stood up. “Here’s a cue, dad. I’d rather be him than be you.”

Shell Gas Station

Beverly and Hayworth

10/15/57

The wheelman lot. Legions of the lost light and live here. We scrounge for scraps. We dive for divorce dough. I’m El Daddy-O by default and decree. I’m a licensed PI. I’m a DA’s Bureau special deputy. My ex-Confidential status still stamps me a stud. Bondage Bob fired me. I’ve still got my Ranch Market gig. Bob’s got me doing clean-up jobs on a per diem basis. I’m closing out listening posts, tomorrow. Taps, bugs — they’ve got to go. Bob’s divesting and dumping his properties. His profits have dipped looooooow.

He’s Mr. Wholesome now. He told the judge and prosecutors that. Call him Messrs. Bland and Blasé.

I slid low in my sled. I yawned and yodeled Old Crow. I popped two biphetamine and lashed the late-morning blahs. I shared my shit with Robbie Molette. He’s my new sidekick, thus my new Jimmy D. Nasty Nat Denkins dozed in the backseat. He crossed the wheelman color line. He’s now Mr. Darktown Divorce. He’s still got his gig at KKXZ. Confidential still subsidizes the station.

Robbie said, “What’s the deal today?”

I lit a cigarette. “France’s Parisian Room, over on Washington and La Brea. The mark’s an ofay stiff. The girl’s colored. She hops cars at the Parisian and peddles it part-time. The mark’s terrified of exposure. He’s a preacher at a drive-in church in Van Nuys. The wife wants a divorce. Nat’s playing a kitchen cook and bringing lunch over. The pad’s right behind the Parisian. We’ll take down the door and take the pictures. The girl’s in on it. There’s three of us and one of him. We’ll kick his ass and take him to Wilshire Station. The wife and her lawyer want criminal charges filed.”

Robbie yaaawned. He cricked and uncricked his neck. He slept on the lot. He slept in his ’49 Ford. He left his mom and dad’s house. He’s now Mr. Apostasy. He quit boning his kid sister and peddling her beaver pix. The Janey Blaine job tested and torqued him. He cleaned house and wound up here.

I said, “I’ve been teething on Janey. Who she knew, who she tricked with, who she might have met in Beverly Hills that nite.”

Robbie picked his nose. “We’ve been through all that. I’ve been through it with you and the Hats, and Max and Red braced my dad at Metro and polygraphed him. He came up kosher, and you and the Hats made Fat Boy for the snuff. I don’t want to keep on plowing up this old dirt.”

Nasty Nat stirred. “Fat Boy was framed. He’s Emmet Till and the Scottsboro Boys, reborn. I’m referencing him on my ‘Cutie’ tonight.”

I said, “Tell me why.”

“Those Chicom space suits the PD bought spontaneously combusted, in this Police Academy storeroom. Whoosh, they go up in flames. They were defective from the jump. No bad deed goes unpunished.”

Robbie said, “I never thought Fat Boy did it. He always worked with a partner, and he robbed the women first.”

I laffed. The pay phone rang. Nat reached out his window and wrapped the receiver.

He said, “Yeah, we’re here.” He listened. He hung up.

“It’s on. The girl says she’s afraid of the mark. He’s gone kinky on her.”

The Parisian Room. A mock-moderne job with Frenchy accoutrements. The standard counter hut and outside park-and-eat slots.

We pulled in and parked. The girl walked out. She wore a white blouse and pink pedal pushers. She was gawky good-looking, in her own wild way. She wore a black lace hairnet. Her name tag read Babette.

She pointed up to a back-rear apartment. It was second floor/stairway access/ three pads in a row.

She said, “Don’t be too long. He’s on his lunch hour, and he always moves these things along. And he damn sure always jumps on me first thing.”

Robbie winked at her. She rolled her eyes and skipped off. Nat doffed his street duds and slipped on his cook-waiter’s whites. I checked the camera and fitted in a flashbulb strip. Robbie eyeballed the second-floor stairway. He said, “Okay, she’s in.”

A real cook-waiter waltzed up. He handed Nat a big bag of burgers and fries. Nat paid him off.

I watched my watch. I gave the loser lovebirds five full minutes to find that funky fit. The girl screamed, three minutes and eight seconds in.

It rang real. I gunned my sled and peeled through the rear-exit alley. I came up by the stairway and double-parked, snout-out. Robbie moved, Nat moved. I went No and waved them back. I went Sit and This Is Mine.

I got out and ran up the stairs. Scream #2 rang real. The pad was three doors down. I did a spring-and-pivot move and flat-kicked the jamb juncture.

The door caved. I saw them. He had her flat-pinned to the couch. He was naked. She was naked. A foot-long rubber dick extender condom-covered his schlong. He blew on a lit cigarette. He lowered it and burned her back.

She writhed and screamed. He lowered the cigarette and reburned her back. I jumped him and pulled him off. He flailed and sissy-swatted me. His fake dick poked me. I pulled my belt sap and backhanded him in the face. I got his nose and his teeth and broke bridgework. I ripped one nostril loose. His fake dick dipped and wilted. I kneed him in the balls. He puked on my Sy Devore coat.

Somebody Jap-jumped me. A dogpile ensued. It was Robbie and Nat, neighbors and cops. A fat cop applied a headlock. I got loosey-goosey ecstatic. I saw Lois as I went out.

Blackout.

I’ve had them before. I know the messed-up MO. You booze and abuse for weeks running. An altercation ensues. Somebody cuts off your carotid artery. You see shit that is and shit that ain’t there.

Like Lois. Like the backseat of a beat-to-hell prowl car. Like the Wilshire Station drunk tank. Like Jimmy Dean at Ten-Inch Tommy’s — and these bad boys butting Kool Kings on his neck.

Like Max and Red. Holy shit, Freddy — don’t you ever quit?

I came to at Ollie Hammond’s. Max and Red sat facing me. My neck hurt. Somebody snatched my Sy Devore coat. Where’s Robbie and Nat? What’s the dispo on the sicknik sadist and that colored carhop?

Drinks appeared. We imbibed. Max said, “We squared you up. Your boys took your car back to the lot. We got the girl settled in at Queen of Angels, and we booked shithead for Rape 1 and Mayhem. He’ll do a doomsday dime somewhere.”

Curb-to-curb service. Freddy O.’s our boy. Bill Parker wants something. They’re here to ask.

I said, “I appreciate all this. Thanks. Now, let’s go out and kill some 211 guys and blow off some steam. Maybe clear some pending homicides on the books.”

Max said, “Freddy’s miffed.”

Red said, “It’s a delayed reaction to Fat Boy.”

Max said, “We did a favor for Freddy’s pal, Jack. It’s called ‘snipping loose ends while you punch a shithead’s ticket that deserved to be punched in the first place.’ ”

Red said, “Freddy knows the rules. He’s got scalps on his belt. He’s just momentarily aflutter with Senator Jack and his vision of ‘an America that provides for all her people.’ ”

I laffed. I raised my drink. I went Touché.

Max said, “What did Jack pay you, Freddy? Don’t disappoint us and tell us you didn’t shake him down.”

I said, “The bite was fifty g’s. I got the package. Too bad it was all counterfeit.”

Max and Red roared. I re-roared. Montego Bay, Manhattan, the mountains on the moon. O bird thou never—

Red lit a cigarette. “The Chief has a job for you. It pays three grand, cash, no counterfeit. It piggybacks a job you’re embarking on for Bob Harrison.”

I drained my drink. I faked a cough and dipped two dexies.

“He’s got me packing up listening posts, and disarming the bug-and-tap feeds. Let me hazard a guess. The Chief wants me to play the recordings extant and compile intel files.”

Max said, “Freddy was never dumb. He’s always known up from down.”

Red said, “I like Freddy, but I wouldn’t go that far.”

I blew smoke their way. “Sure, I’ll do it. I’m starting the gig for Bob tomorrow.”

Max twirled his glass. “You know what the Chief likes. You can’t go wrong with sex, politics, and California Penal Code violations.”

I noshed a bread stick. It was stagecraft. It covered my mean megrims and trembling tremens.

“I need a favor. I don’t think it’s a big one to ask.”

Max went tsk-tsk. “Snow job alert. I sense one coming.”

Red went tsk-tsk. “The shaky hands are always the tell.”

“I need a look at the Caryl Chessman master file, and the PD file on Janey Blaine.”

Max said, “No. Whatever you’re thinking of, whatever you may be planning, no good can come of it. The Chief looks askance at your fixation with dead and brutalized women.”

Red said, “No more dead-woman crusades, Freddy. That’s over and out. Chessman’s a dead issue, and Janey Blaine’s been avenged. You should know — we killed the man who killed her.”

Listening Post

Argyle North of Franklin

10/16/57

Shitwork. Divestment duty. I’m a wage slave. Lift that barge, tote that bale.

There’s six posts. Pack the furniture/box the bug-and-tap mounts. Take last listens. List damning dish Bill Parker would drool for. Look through bug-and-tap logs. Bootjack hot bug-and-tap tapes for Big Bill.

I started here. The Argyle post ran a loooooong-range transceiver. We bugged and tapped mid-Hollywood and the hip Hollywood Hills. Our bug-and-tap targets totaled twenty-four houses and apartments.

Film folk. Sullen subversives. Furtive fuck pads and nifty nests of stewardess call girls. Fly me — I’m Pam, Lizzie, Sally, Nancy, Kathy et al.

I scanned the logs. The indices listed bug-and-tap targets and their addresses. Tap callers were listed. Their call dates and times were marked. Two names nabbed me, straight off.

Ingrid Ellmore. Pan Am stew and poon panderess supreme. Ingrid invented the all-nite pajama party. She owned a six-bedroom A-frame on Bronson Hill. You got six girls/180-proof absinthe/all the poppable pills in the PDR. Ingrid had a heated pool. Ingrid had sauna and steam rooms. Two yards bought you the Debauch of the Damned. Ingrid rocked round the clock.

Ingrid’s call-in list. Note some names. AG Pat Brown, Mayor Norris Poulson. Baseball boss Leo Durocher. Sheriff Gene Biscailuz. TV titan Sid Caesar. Bumptious Buddy Hackett and lounge lizard Louis Prima.

I boosted three bug-and-tap boxes. I’d listen in and cherry-pick some choice shit for the Chief. This was a listen-at-your-leisure deal. The second name shrieked Listen Now!!!

Dalton Trumbo. Commie Caporegime. Bugged and tapped at his worker’s wigwam off Whitley Drive. Hollywood Ten hard-on. Gallivanting gadfly. Dig this name on his call-in list:

The Caryl Chessman Defense Committee. Dig Bernie Spindel’s margin notes:

“CP-financed. Popular front-group remnant. Evolved from the Free the Rosenbergs Committee. Frequent celebrity call-ups to target’s home phone. Names noted on specific call sheets.”

I culled the call sheets. They coughed up baaaaaad Burt Lancaster and cheesy Chuck Heston. There’s Calypso King Preston Epps. He’s hard on the heels of his hit “Bongo in the Congo.” There’s Liz Taylor. There’s Hugh Hefner. There’s Mr. Mumbles himself — Marlon Brando.

Marlon mauled my main mujer, Joi Lansing, at a party. It was fall ’53. I’ve ground that grudge for four years now.

I went straight for the call-in tapes. I was hopped up on hate now. I’d rereprised my role of the cornholed cornuto. I got a hot hit off the call-tap list: Marlon Brando at the Caryl Chessman Defense Committee.

I found the tape and wrapped it into a tape rig. Dig the date: 10/9/57. That’s just last week.

I got cozy. I lit a cigarette and sucked my flask. I punched play. Red rake Trumbo schmoozed Mumbles Brando.

Static cut through the call. I amputated the amenities and sundered some chitchat. Voices vibrated two minutes in.

Brando: “...and they’ve got that burglar-killer guy, slated to burn on the eleventh. What’s his name, again?”

Trumbo: “Donald Keith Bashor. The Party was thinking of sending some pickets up, but this guy was just too vicious. He killed two women, and messed around with the good-looking one, postmortem. We want him to burn, because it explicates the callous nature of fascist injustice. In fact, we want everyone to burn, including Caryl. The more the merrier. They’re martyrs to the cause. We can really play that angle up in the press.”

Brando: “You’re right about that. And, you know, there’s these rumors floating around that Caryl will be coming down soon for a hearing. I’m laying some groundwork on that. Can the Party bounce for two hundred protestors, at ten clams a pop? That’s two grand, all in all. I’m leading a protest outside the Hall of Justice, downtown. Me, Preston Epps, maybe Liz Taylor. That’s on the seventeenth, and I’m not floating this gig out of my pocket.”

Trumbo: “I’ll get you the bread, don’t worry. That’s what front groups do — they front their comrades money.”

Brando: “Rumors... yeah, I dig that concept. Hey, have you heard the one about the third victim? That Caryl bit her nipples off, and she’s been in the funny farm ever since? That she couldn’t testify at Caryl’s trial, because she was far-gone catatonic?”

Trumbo: “The fascist lie machine dreamed that one up. Of course, they made her a real baby doll, with tits out to here. Too bad she didn’t really exist.”

The call staticked up and stuttered out. Mumbles mumbled. Dial tones ditzed and dimmed Trumbo out.

I went back to work. Caryl Chessman click-clicked in my head. It felt like a fever. It’s mutating and metastasizing. It’ll maim me unless I do something soon.

I boxed up the Ingrid and Trumbo tapes. I called Confidential’s messenger service and told them to roll up here now. I added notes to Bill Parker:

“The Ellmore woman’s a mother lode for Headquarters Vice. Duplicate and forward the Trumbo tapes to your Intel Division, plus State and Fed HUAC. More to come/F.O.”

That fever. Festering, mutating, metastasizing. I could feel it. I could feel him — this malignant microbe inside me.

I called my answering service. I had one message:

Mr. Nat Denkins called. He said Miss Blind Item called him and will call the show tonight.

Festering. Mutating. Metastasizing. The malignant microbe inside both of us.

I messengered the bug-and-tap boxes to Bill Parker. I blew off my other work gigs. I popped home and perched by the phone. I’m Stage Door Freddy, resurrected.

She didn’t call. The wait wilted, withered, and wiped me out. I boozed, I chain-smoked, I popped pills to push the clock forward. A paradoxical effect popped me. They slowed the clock down.

I made midnight. The clock climbed to 1:00 a.m. I ran my radio. The Synagogue Sid Trio blatted and blasted their intro. They went topical tonite. The microbe moved within them. Dig their composition: “I Got Dem Caryl Chessman Blues Again, Mama.”

Bass sax, flügelhorn, drums. A crash-out crescendo. Then the silken sound of coins slid down a slot. Then her voice: “Hey, Nat — what’s shakin’, baby?”

Nasty Nat said, “Miss Blind Item, her own self. Man, it has been way too long!”

My heart thudded and thumped and threatened to blow on the spot. Lois said, “Over two years, sweetie.”

“Sooooo, are you back to finalize your beef against Confidential? Is that what brings you to town?”

“What’s to finalize, Nat? That trial last summer pretty much emasculated it.”

Nasty Nat said, “Yeah, Confidential’s been declawed and devenomed, that’s for sure. Hhhmmmmm. Let’s see now. Could the purpose of your visit be the fact that Caryl Chessman will be coming here for a court appearance later this month, and because there’s a big protest rally scheduled at the Hall of Justice tomorrow, with Marlon Brando and numerous other celebs slated to appear?”

Lois laffed. “You’ve lost me there, Nat.”

“Hey, baby. You’re an actress, I hear tell, and I know you’ve done some things in New York. You ever cross paths with the Mumble Man?”

Lois said “Weeelll, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say we shared a history.”

My heart shook, sheared, and shuddered — and almost shut down on the spot.

Nasty Nat said, “Here’s a question, Miss Item. Chessman’s court appearance hasn’t been announced in the press, but it certainly has been a persistent rumor. How did you hear about it?”

Lois laffed. I saw her bleached-blue eyes bounce and almost cross craaaazy.

“Well, Nat. I flew out for a fund-raiser for your attorney general, Pat Brown — who’s running for governor next year. Mr. Brown mentioned the appeal, and also the fact that Vice President Nixon will be touring South America next spring, where Communist-backed protests against Chessman’s death sentence and American foreign policy in general have already been announced, which poses the question, ‘How can one evil man command such attention, and what can we do about it?’ ”

Well now, baby. Here’s where it gets really gooooooooood.

Outside the Hall of Justice

Downtown L.A.

10/17/57

Oooga-boooga. There’s the protest. That’s two hundred college kids. Note the Party putzes passing out ten-spots. They’re buying a Commie cacophony. The kids are chugging out chants: “Chess-Man is Inn-O-Cent!!! Stop the Death Machine!!!”

There’s Brando. He’s in with the kids. He’s signing autographs and popping a placard high in the sky. He’s the solo celebrity. He’s top-lining this gig. He’s wrapped in a fulsome phalanx of fans. He’s a hog for their loooooooove.

The Spring Street sidewalk shook with their shouts. I curb-crawled and slid my sled inch-by-inch slow. I looked for Lois. I saw her not. I circled Spring to Temple and drove around the block. I saw counterpickets congregate. Their signs said Burn Chessman Now!!! They were weary working stiffs. The college kids packed more panache.

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.

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.

“Chessman Is Inn-O-Cent!!!” “Stop The Death Machine!!!”

I ran interference. Lois lugged a prop steno machine. Picket punks posed and paraded. They were packed tight and pissed off. They bristled with bromides and placard-plumed the air.

I stiff-armed us through them. We maneuvered by Marlon Brando. Lois said, “Hi, Marlon!” Brando said, “Lois, what are you doing with that putz?” I flipped his necktie in his face.

There’s the steps. We tumbled over, up, and inside. Max Herman and Red Stromwall played escort. They doffed their Hat Squad fedoras. Max ogled Lois. Red went Woo-woo!!!

We made the freight lift and the DB. We walked to sweatbox row. The Fiend’s in #2. I looked at Lois. She looked at me. I winked. We held the Holy Shit moment close and linked hands. I pushed the door in.

There he is.

Beelzebub. 666. The Biblical Beast. The red-horned/trident-tailed/cloven-hoofed apparition. He emits dust and sparks. Serpents coil through his hair. He’s assumed human form today. He’s thirty-six and pale. He’s got that bumpy nose. He’s skinny, he’s prissy, he wears jail denims. He vibes World’s Smartest Convict.

He sat cross-legged. I pulled a chair up. Lois perched her steno machine on the table. I brought my briefcase.

Chessman said, “You were at Hollywood Station. I recall you at the squadroom there.”

The Beast speaks. He’s a brazen braggart. I know that about him. He’s brought his so-soft voice today. He’s surgically circumspect and silky self-effacing. He’s the watchful world’s Victim of This Time and Place. He’s Sacco and Vanzetti, and Timothy Evans, framed for Reg Christie’s grief.

I said, “Yes, I was there. I saw Colin Forbes and Al Goossen interview you, and I was there when Shirley Tutler came in.”

Chessman said, “Who’s Shirley Tutler?”

“She’s the woman you assaulted between your assaults on Regina Johnson and Mary Alice Meza. I state that knowing full well that you’ve denied those crimes, and will certainly deny assaulting Miss Tutler.”

I let the moment meander and metamorphose. He’ll deny it. He’ll say there’s no proof. Lois futzed with her machine. Dear Lord, her eyes. Such righteous hate.

“I don’t have to talk to you. The court will invalidate the stenographer’s transcription, and I surely will not confess to yet another crime I did not commit.”

I popped my briefcase. I pulled out the forty-three-page depiction of Shirley Tutler’s bite wounds. I put the pages before the Beast’s eyes.

He looked down. He saw, he recognized, he willed himself nonreactive. His hands palsied, his neck veins pulsed.

“It’s not my handwriting. And even if it was, I’ve attributed those crimes to someone else.”

I lit a cigarette. “You only looked at the top page. You don’t know it’s crimes plural you’ve described here. I didn’t mention the attribution, and the only way you could have known that was if you’d written this document yourself.”

Chessman pushed the pages back to me. He’s Camus’ l’étranger. He’s beset by bourgeois burghers who just don’t understand. He’s implacably withstood their stupidity and indifference. He’s read Gandhi and Sartre. He knows how to trenchantly transcend.

He said, “No.” That one word. Existentialism 101. To refuse is your right of redress.

I passed him a pen. “You will write the following on that top page. ‘These are my crimes, as told to the late actor James Dean, and attributed to an unnamed rapist. Thus, they are my crimes, and these documents in the aggregate stand as my confession.’ ”

Chessman said, “No.” The Beast’s beset by Bourgeois Burgher Freddy. It’s his lot in life. Who’s that red-haired wraith? She’s rape bait, for sure.

Chessman said, “No.” I backhanded him and banged him to the floor. He went sullen silent and nonreactive. Bourgeois Burgher Freddy kicked him in the balls.

“You have two choices here, Caryl. Sign the confession or get kicked to death. The latter option leaves you no option. The former option permits you to survive, cultivate yet more public acclaim, and further dissemble in court.”

Chessman shape-shifted. He went maladroit Mahatma, coming off the railroad tracks. He couldn’t call up a costume change. He couldn’t shave his head and don his granny specs.

He stood up. He winced from my nut shot. He wrote out my confession text and signed his name below.

Lois said, “Jimmy Dean wanted to play you. That must have appealed to your vanity.”

Chessman said, “Hi, Red. I knew you’d have a kicky voice.”

I locked his confession in my briefcase. Chessman kicked back in his chair.

“I’m beyond vanity, Red. I’ve seen too much and had too much done to me. You’re a woman, so I’m sure you’ll understand.”

I said, “Too bad Jimmy crapped out. I would’ve dug on the movie.”

Chessman said, “There’s always Nick Ray’s alternative movie, not that it will ever surface. I was the technical adviser on it, so I’m sure it’s got some verisimilitude.”

Lois said, “Things went awry there, didn’t they? It seems that always happens with you.”

Chessman shrugged and grinned. Ring-a-ding. The Mahatma meets the Rat Pack.

“The game’s rigged, Red. That’s why I always take what I want, and take it where I can find it. And I always find it, because I’m not choosy. Johnson, Meza, and Tutler surely attest to that.”

That’s it, then. It took eight minutes and sixteen seconds.

I hustled Lois out to the hallway. The wall speaker spritzed and sparked static. Bill Parker and the Hats hooted, howled, and clapped.

I had no name/no at-the-scene proof/no certified murder suspect. I had the infernal inspiration for the crime itself and the cancerous contexts that had caused it. Lois and I laid siege to the Bacillus chessmanitis. At some point of prickly protraction, the strain would strangle by gas. That was the unforeseen then. Janey Blaine revenged ran me resolute now.

I dropped Lois at the hotel and nudged north-northwest. I hit Mulholland and Beverly Glen. The two crime-scenes crisscrossed and merged as one hellish whole.

’48 to ’55. The perfectly preserved historical location. Jimmy D. didn’t kill Janey. Ditto, Nick Ray. It was some suck-ass subaltern. He’d prowled Janey’s pad. He rifled her desk and jizzed up her undies. Somebody stole Robbie Molette’s list of Janey’s johns. That somebody was circling Janey in advance of the alternative film. Nick Ray called that man at the pay phone by the Black Cat. They discussed the details of the shoot. The Hats cleared Robbie Molette’s dad. The killer was a Rebel set flunky. He possessed technical and/or logistical skills. He 459’d Robbie’s pad. That meant he knew Robbie. That meant Robbie knew something about him.

I walked the merged crime scenes. I climbed hills and claimed clues. I found used flashbulbs off the Mulholland embankment. That meant photography. It linked the lead of the used flashbulbs at the Demo fund-raiser site. He was stalking Janey then. It was furtive foreplay. He knew Janey would be there to culminate with Jack K. Robbie set Janey up with Jack. That meant Mr. X knew Robbie.

I humped hillsides. I claimed clues. I found a roll of red cellophane by a tree trunk. Red cellophane. It covered the headlights on Chessman’s ’46 Ford. It covered the headlights of the ’46 Ford prop car Nick Ray discussed with Mr. X. The Red Light Bandit posed as a cop. Jimmy revived the role. This red cellophane was weathered and worn. It looked to be two-plus years old.

Robbie didn’t kill Janey Blaine. He showed me his foto ID once. He had O-positive blood. The killer had AB-negative blood. His jizz secreted his blood type. Robbie had a name for me. I sensed it, sure thing.

The wheelman lot. There’s Robbie. He’s listlessly lounged by the lube rack. The lot’s listless, today. There’s no trabajo, no divorce dinero.

I pulled in and hit my horn. Robbie rubbed his eyes and walked over.

I popped the passenger door. Robbie scooched in. I passed him my flask. We traded pops and glommed up a glow.

“I had a few questions about Janey.”

Robbie said, “Boy, that’s sure old news.”

I smiled. “Well, something’s come up.”

Robbie heh-hehed. “You mean Fat Boy doesn’t fit the bill anymore? Not that he ever did, to the cognoscenti.”

I went nix. “I’m recalling something you said, and how you said it wistfully. You said, ‘Well, she resisted me,’ and I’d like you to elaborate on that.”

Robbie choked up. “Aw, Freddy. Don’t make me say it.”

“Say what, Robbie? That you were in love with her?”

Robbie wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Robbie blew his nose on his shirttail.

“Okay, I’ll say it. I was in love with her.”

“And your dad set you up with her. And she joined your stable at the hotel.”

Robbie said, “You’re rubbing it in. I divested the stable, as you damn well know. I’m a wheelman now. I’m on the straight and narrow.”

That made me laff. “Your dad introduced you to Janey, right?”

“No. Chrissy, my sister, did. She knew Janey, independent of my dad. Even before she got her contract at Metro.”

“Are you saying they were pals? Running partners?”

Robbie snatched the flask and deep-dunked it. He got this kid wild-man glow.

“Chrissy and Janey were movie-mad. They costarred in these jive, skeevy-ass shorts. You know, so-called experimental films where nobody gets paid, you never see the flicks in theaters, but copies circulate. I’m not calling them smut, but I’d call them ‘bodice rippers,’ with a lot of skin and some pretty smutty scenes, if you get what I mean.”

I said, “Keep going. Don’t make me prompt you.”

Robbie deep-dunked. “They were historical-type pastiches, and they were all based on famous crimes where women got raped and sliced. You know, The Last Days of the Black Dahlia, Fatty Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe, the girls that guy Otto Stephen Wilson shanked. Chrissy always played the sidekick, and Janey always played the victim. That’s how they met, and how they got tight.”

I said, “Who made the films? I mean photographed and directed them?”

Robbie said, “I don’t know. Just some fucko movie guys who wanted to push women around and see some skin.”

“Did any guys like that work on the Rebel shoot?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Did you know that a film like the ones you described was being shot, and that it pertained to Caryl Chessman?”

“No, but it don’t surprise me, because, like I told you back then, that sick twist Jimmy Dean was all hopped up to play Chessman, and that yet sicker twist Nick Ray was promoting the idea. I also passed you the tip on that so-called alternative film.”

I lit a cigarette. “Do you know a bar in Silver Lake called the Black Cat?”

“Yeah. It’s a bookie joint by day and a fag joint by night.”

“All right. Did you know anyone from the Rebel shoot who lived near there? Right off of Sunset and Vendome?”

Robbie shook his head. “Not exactly. Not back in ’55, I didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I knew a guy who lived up the hill from there, and who frequented the Cat, and who moved his studio to a couple of doors down from the Cat, maybe last year.”

I tensed up. Say the name, Robbie. We just tipped telepathic. I should have tapped the guy already. I nabbed the name a split second back.

“And?”

“And, what? It’s Arvo Jandine. He was the unit fotog on Rebel, and he’s another sick twist of the Jimmy and Nick Ray ilk. He don’t strike me as the killer type, so that’s why I didn’t mention him when you started in on the Rebel guys.”

I shut my eyes. I saw it. Jandine. The Rebel records checks. He’s a whipout man. He habituates junior high schools. He invades girls’ locker rooms. He’s a photographer. He snapped stills at the Liquor Store Inferno.

Plus, the dope raid. Jandine’s flop. The bikini pic from Robbie’s girl book.

Robbie said, “Freddy’s in a trance. It’s like he’s on some new species of hop that’s just been discovered.”

I opened my eyes. “You said ‘sick twist.’ ”

“Yeah. He’s the guy who took those beaver pix of Chrissy. That, and he whipped it out on my mom.”

I reshut my eyes. Robbie said, “Do you ever get ashamed of your life, Freddy?”

I said, “Only most of the time.”

Escalation. Mine and his. I escalated my efforts to know him. I escalated my master plan and primed it for profit. I called LAPD Vice and filched a full fotostat of Arvo Jandine’s green sheet. It revealed his rude escalation.

Arvo Jandine, one sizzling sick twist. Born 6/8/19, bumfuck Nebraska. Arvo’s a shifty shutterbug. He’s sneaking snaps in girls’ locker rooms, eeeaaarly.

His first bust is back in Omaha, ’37. He’s peddling candid nudes at CCC camps and WPA wingdings. He’s sent to a compassionate youth camp. It’s committedly coed. He wires the girls’ locker room and rigs an automatic shutter flap. He compiles and catalogues candid nudes by the thousands. He escapes and peddles the pix at truck stops and gin mills throughout the Midwest. He’s Mr. Smut now. He makes his move and hotfoots it here.

He becomes a unit fotog. He pops pix at Paramount and calls Columbia home. He rigs automatic shutter flaps in female stars’ dressing rooms. They snap sneak pix on overdrive. He’s Mr. Beaver Bounty and Mr. Stark Naked Star. Word of mouth mainlines him to the L.A. Perv Elite. He manufactures nude actress trading cards. Myrna Loy, Carole Lombard, Norma Shearer. Rita Hayworth, Ella Raines. One Ann Sheridan trumps two Betty Grables. He spawns a craaaaazy craze. He makes a fat fortune. The fuzz fox him and entrap him. He sells shunt shots to an undercover cop and gets five to eight in quivering Quentin.

He’s paroled in ’49. He returns to L.A. He’s Mr. Subtle till his fall ’51 flameout. He gots to have it/see it/fotograph it young now. He’s popped outside Le Conte Junior High, June ’52. He does eighteen months at Chino and pops out on parole — January ’54.

He’s escalated. He’s ready to collaborate. He seeks sick twists who twirl to his delirious delusions. He finds his way to Nick Ray and Rebel Without a Cause. He’s cringingly crossed the path of Freon Freddy Otash. That’s where Arvo erred.

Escalation. His and MINE.

I creeper-crawled Sunset and Vendome and stared at storefronts. Jandine Art Photography was two doors down from the Black Cat.

Noxious nitefall fell. I wound my way west to the Fox lot. Nick Ray was shooting his latest lox there.

Party Girl. Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse. Costarring studly John Ireland. Jungle John’s Hollywood’s reigning tape topper. He measures in at a mighty 171/2.

I knew all the gate guards on the Fox lot. I knew I could bluff my way in.

I did. I cited a pokerfest at Pandro Berman’s office. The guard bought it. I slid him a C-note. I parked my Packard pimpmobile and noodled over to Nick Ray’s bungalow.

I burgled my way inside and paved paths by penlight. I planted a mini-mike and a battery pack under Neuter Nick’s desk. It was a flip-switch gizmo. I’d flip said switch on Judgment Day.

It was 11:14 p.m. I barged back to Silver Lake and orbed Jandine’s studio. It was deep dark and devoid of all movement. I circled the block and saw a back door off the alley. I stashed my sled and slid on rubber gloves.

I carried a camera case and a Leica loaded with infrared film. I loped up like I owned the place. Two pick pokes popped the door. I locked myself in. My penlight paved paths once more.

I got the gestalt. Arvo lived for his work. I flash-flared three storerooms laid with lights and camera gear. I slid by a sleeping cubicle. Arvo conked on a couch-bed combo and cooked on a hot plate. He hung his threadbare threads in a freestanding wardrobe. The sink, shower, and toilet stall stank of rat turds and sprayed piss.

Arvo the obsessive. Arvo the unkempt. He’ll keep malignant mementos. These sickniks save souvenirs.

The cubicle catty-cornered a corridor. My penlight lit a shut door. I nudged the knob. I got no give. I put picks in and pushed counterclockwise. The door gave and bent in.

It’s one room. Ten by ten, tops. It’s windowless and suction-sealed, tight. I tapped the walls and tipped a switch. Gooseneck floor lamps lit four walls of this:

The combined shoots. Rebel Without a Cause and Red Light Bandit. Glam glossies by Arvo Jandine.

Jimmy Dean in his red Rebel jacket. Nifty Natalie and Sassy Sal, costumed per the flick. Shots from the shoot. Shots from the Sorority Panty Raid. Shots from the Liquor Store Inferno. Natalie, nude. Sal, nude and nervously embarrassed. A nude Jimmy Dean, banging his bongos. Jimmy Dean, costumed as Caryl Chessman. The ’46 Ford rape car, replicated. Nite exteriors at Mulholland and Beverly Glen.

Janey Blaine done up as Shirley Tutler. Janey, with mock blood blotting her blouse. Janey and Jimmy, tussling in the Ford. Note Janey’s bare breasts.

Then we escalate. Note this wraparound wreath of shots:

See Janey, nude. See Janey and Jimmy, nude. See Janey and Jimmy coiled in coitus in the backseat of the Ford. See Janey in the clothes she wore to Frascati. See Janey body-dumped at the crime scene. She’s handspan-strangled and dead.

Nabob Nick Ray’s Office

20th-Century Fox

10/20/57

I sat and tamped up some tension. I conjured Lois and moved money to new mountains on the moon. Nick notched his final take an hour back. His office slaves slid out early. I booby-trapped the doorway. I kept the lights off. I brought Exhibits A and B in my briefcase.

My pix of Jandine’s pix. My pix of his diary pages per Red Light Bandit. He kept his diary cached under his couch-bed. He kept his Junior High Hall of Fame pix close by.

Jandine recounted his revelatory fix on Janey Blaine. He met her at Robbie Molette’s place. Chrissy introduced them and called her a friend of her dad’s. Janey got him unit fotog work on The Last Days of the Black Dahlia and the Fatty Arbuckle flick.

His obsession per-per-percolated. He 459’d Janey’s pad and stole her diaries. He read them and got to the hard-hearted heart of her yen for men and money. He tried to seduce her with his own blackmail scheme. He enlisted Nick Adams. They Mickey Finn’d Rock Hudson and took nudie pix. He 459’d Robbie’s room and stole his list of powerfully perved clients. Janey laffed his blackmail scheme off. He fotographed Janey and Jack K. at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He had the unit fotog gig on Rebel, already. He ran up a rapport with Nick Ray and Jimmy Dean. They concocted Red Light Bandit. The shoot went swell. Janey jumped Jimmy’s bones for real, right out in the open. It made him mad. He said he’d drive her home after the wrap. It got out of hand. He didn’t mean to rape her and kill her. Shit like that happens. Thank goodness nobody blabbed.

The door opened. Nabob Nick hummed “Lisbon Antigua” and walked this way. My trip wire tripped him and proned him out flat on his face. His head hit the floor. He snagged his snout. He’s Nosebleed Nick now.

He groaned. I got up and stepped on his neck. It pinned him and muzzled his mouth. I penlight-flashed the pix and the diary pages. I ran them by his flattened face sidelong and slooooow. I gave him time to digest his dilemma and ponder Jandine’s every word.

“You’re going to pay me twenty-five percent of your net earnings, for the rest of your life. That means twenty-five percent of every dime you make. You’re going to cut me in for twenty-five percent of all your current bank balances, and you’re going to liquidate any stocks and bonds you might possess and pay me twenty-five percent of their value, now. You’re going to pay me twenty-five percent of the assessed values of any properties you might own, now. You will pay me my salary cuts on the first of each month, beginning on November 1, 1957. I called your bank in Beverly Hills this afternoon. I impersonated a Federal bank examiner and learned that your current balance is forty-four grand. We’re going to the bank together, tomorrow. I’ll take the first eleven grand in cash.”

Nick Ray squirmed and squinted back tears. Freon Freddy Otash. The Giant Ant ascends.

Low clouds unzipped and reigned rain. I broomed northeast to Sunset and Vendome. I parked on that same side street and sidled to the same back door.

The same two picks popped the lock. I stepped inside and eeeaaased the door shut. I heard his snores, straight off.

The sleep cubicle. Eight paces and flank sharp right.

I brought a .44 Magnum revolver. It blasted loud. The pro suppressor soaked up all attendant sound. I walked toward the snores and flashed my penlight. It haloed Arvo’s face on the pillow. I aimed and fired six shots.

He vaporized. I smelled dissipation and desiccation in the bone-and-blood mist. I snatched his diary and his wall-to-wall fotos. I jacked the wall heat up to ninety. Let the demon decompose.

KKXZ Radio

Southside L.A.

10/21/57

Jolting jam session. Walloping world premiere. Live in-studio: the Synagogue Sid Trio.

The piece:

“Trippy Triptych: Dirge for Shirley Tutler and Janey Blaine & Caryl Chessman’s Gas Chamber Chaconne.”

It’s hastily composed. As in right now. Sid and his boys embody improvisation. There’s four kool kats here for the bash. As in Lois, Robbie Molette, Nasty Nat, and yours truly.

We’re celebrating. I bought KKXZ outright and dumped the deed on Nat. Nick Ray paid the freight. I pocketed two g’s in chump change and paid Lois’ air-fare back to the Apple. She’s got an Armstrong Circle Theatre gig pending.

I’m bleak, blue, and shorn to shit. We defanged the Beast. We radically revised the sexy secret history of our nation. Lissome Lois leaves me for ten minutes on TV.

Sid and his boys cranked it. Bass sax/flügelhorn/drums. It only goes so far.

I got itchy and Giant Ant antsy. I kept thinking of fatal fuckups and the loony lore of decomposition. I walked to the waiting room and ran some deep breaths.

It helped. I de-antsified. I scoped the Charlie Parker tribute wall. I noticed a new screed scrawled below the Live on 52nd Street album.

“Pack up all your cares and woes / Here you go, swingin’ low / Bye, bye, blackbird.”

It was signed, “Much love, Lois N.”

Infernal Intermezzo:

My Pensively Pent-up Life

10/22/57–5/1/60

It came and went. Confidential, the whole Rebel rigamarole. I waltzed on the Arvo Jandine snuff. Decomposition devastated all possible inquiries. Stagnant stomach gasses gasped out of the stiff and ignited. The studio blew up. Nobody made it a murder.

I burned all of the listening-post tapes and tape logs. Confidential and I went kaput. The mag moseys along without me. Bondage Bob’s been raked by residual lawsuits. Savaged celebs now savage him. He’s putting out ten and fifteen g’s per pop. Nuisance suits are draining him dry. The mag’s corrosive content has wizened to wispy white bread. There’s no vindictive va-va-voom and scandal skank. There’s no strongarm goons to dash dissent and fight that fierce First Amendment fight.

I’m shit out of luck there. I’m Ex-Officio Freddy. I’m a former PI and a dervish of divorce at the wheelman lot. I shook the shakedown tree and bled Nosebleed Nick Ray for a spell. Sustained extortion withered my wig. I blew my take on booze, dope, and women. I sold myself into sin and saw a certain sickness eat me alive. I divested to climb clear of the serpent sucking at my soul. I told Nosebleed Nick this. He genuflected and wept.

Opportunity is love. I’ve always known it. I doped a racehorse named Wonder Boy and tried to rig a run of races. I got popped for it. The L.A. DA issued indictments. Bill Parker interceded and rerouted my Quentin trek. I lost my PI’s license. I’m still Big Bill’s back-door bitch and informant. I’m still a rat, a fink, a snarky snitch. I’ve gone from tattle tyrant to tattletale. It’s the work I’m best suited for.

I’m still the Pervdog of the Nite. I still trawl for trouble and peep potent windows in my path. I’ve cruised and crashed a load of lives on said path to date. I’m lonely in my loss of them. I peep them from afar and peruse the paths they’ve chosen.

Jack the K. was resoundingly reelected to the Senate. ’58 boded big for him. Pat Brown was elected governor of California. The Confidential trial trounced the notion that Pat was a putz. Rock and Phyllis are Splitsville. I negotiated the divorce. Nick Ray remains the awful auteur. He makes miasmic movies that slide folks to sleep. The Rebel rigamarole marked his slide into evil. Confluence is destiny. He had help there.

Jimmy D.’s dead. I killed Arvo Jandine. Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo are movie stars. Nick Adams has his own TV show. Chester Voldrich lost the hand I mangled to gangrene. I slide him five yards a month, anonymous.

I see them all as the specious spawn of Caryl Whittier Chessman. The cancerous conjunction of vicious thug/victim/hard-hearted hipster left them too weak to resist. Escalation. The Sorority Panty Raid, the Liquor Store Inferno, the film Red Light Bandit. Spring ’55 et al. Chessman hovers in ellipsis. I cannot and will not forfeit the thought of him. He’s insistently intertwined with Lois Nettleton. They collectively colluded and marked my one shot to become someone else.

Chessman continues. He files appeals and writes books and claims the ownership of a fatuous phalanx of folks given to dime-store notions of redemption. He’ll fry sooner or later. I trust that legal consensus. Here’s what my most heated hatred and powerful perceptions tell me.

He’s struck Lois with a strain of his virus. It lives within that part of her where the hard-hearted careerist and ardent artist coexist. Lois worships a tricky trinity. It’s Art/Chessman/Shirley Tutler’s Desecration. She found me because she needed me and sensed my susceptibility and rage for romance. She’s discarded me twice now. She sees me as a Chessman casualty, as I see her. She knows that I’m love-struck in a way that careerist-artists are not. I torch for her as she does not torch for me. She’s unfit to live a squarejohn life. So am I. I’d try it with her. She won’t try it with me. I must change my life. She will not abet this design. She considers the design pathetic and inimical to her Drama of the Artist Alone. I’ve got one last shot at Lois Nettleton’s love. I consider it a curtain call. We must stand together the day Chessman burns.

The Green Room

San Quentin Penitentiary

5/2/60

There it is. This stark steel contraption. It’s ghastly ghost green and riven with rivets and big bolts. It faces the spectator seats. It fits one condemned convict. The door’s plied with a Plexiglas window staring straight at us. The hot seat features cinchable restraints. A vat socked with sulfuric acid sits beneath it. The cyanide pellets scoot through a chute and dissolve there. Thus begins the big adios.

I sat with Lois. Bill Parker booked our seats. Colin Forbes sat two seats down. Chessman drew a full house. Sixty seats. Sixty newsmen, politicos, and those with clear-cut clout.

We parked in a lower lot and pried through protesters to get here. A thousand people jostled, jeered, shoved, and shrieked. Marlon Brando mugged into a megaphone. He told the folks he was set to play Chessman in a forthcoming flick.

It’s 10:01 a.m. There’s the Beast. He’s entered through a side hallway. Two guards hold his arms. A third guard pops the door. They strap Chessman hard in the hot seat. He’s strapped legs, lap, and chest.

A doctor appears. He hangs a stethoscope around Chessman’s neck. The death dudes pop back out. Chessman’s alone in the green room. It’s 10:02 a.m.

The Warden spoke. Wall speakers sent sound our way.

“Do you have any last words?”

Chessman said, “I am not the Red Light Bandit.”

A green-room mike cranked out his credo. I winked at Colin Forbes. Colin went Freddy, you dog. Lois caught it and swatted my leg.

The pellets dropped. It was soundless. I saw Chessman feign nonchalance. Cyanide fumes filled the chamber. They were invisible. Chessman buckled and gasped and dripped drool.

His head lolled and sat sideways. His mouth stretched wide-wide. His lips curled over his teeth. His tongue torqued. His arms trembled and palsied palms-up. He looked sure-as-shit deadsville to me.

Time slipped slow and stood still. The fumes dissipated and died. The doctor reentered the green room. He held a handkerchief to his face. He donned his stethoscope and put it to Chessman’s chest. He said, “I pronounce this man dead.”

Guards got us through the throng. Protesters pressed against us. Lois looked at them and waved at kids in papoose-style pouches. We trudged and tripped down some stairs. The slogan chants and shouts sheared off to a low roar.

We made the lower lot and my Packard pimpmobile. We lounged upside it and lit cigarettes.

I said, “Let’s head into the city. I’ll get us a suite at the Fairmont, and we’ll lay low for a while.”

Lois blew smoke rings. “I’m getting married, Freddy. I thought you should know.”

I slumped into my sled. “Well, shit. Who is he?”

“He’s a playwright, and he has his own radio show. Before you ask, I’ll admit it. I took to calling in, and one thing led to another.”

I laffed. “Okay. L.A., then. We’ll hit Trader Vic’s or Ollie Hammond’s. I’ll drop you at the airport tomorrow.”

Lois said, “Marlon’s driving me back. Don’t look so glum, and don’t pretend you don’t know. It was always about the three of us, and with What’s His Name gone, we’d just be fishing for compliments, and making conversation.”

An evil rape-o burns. I lose the girl. My confession ends right here, right now.

The bridge traffic was brutal. News trucks traipsed to and from Quentin. Outbound cars carted slogan slammers and protest pros out to hatch havoc. Placards plumed out their windows. Stop The Death Machine and Kennedy in ’60. Hey, kids — I used to pimp and cop dope for that guy!!!

I dipped downbeat and bopped with the blues. Dig my big boo-hoo. Lost Lois and a dizzy decade out to castigate and confound me. I’m shivering under my shroud. I’m a rogue cop and strongarm goon with too much past and no future to lose.

The traffic thinned. I hit the bridge and goosed the gas. It propelled me past a caravan of Kennedy kids. Sheer movement gored my gonads. L.A. was four hundred miles south. Opportunity is love. I’m gonesville, Daddy-O.