James Ellroy

Shakedown: Freddy Otash Confesses

Prologue

Cell 2607

Penance Penitentiary

Reckless-Wrecker-of-Lives Block

Pervert Purgatory

6/16/2012

I’ve spent twenty years in this fucking hellhole. Now they tell me I can memoir-map my misadventures and write my way out.

All that religious shit I disdained as a kid is true. There’s heaven for the good folks, hell for the beastfully baaaaaad. There’s purgatory for guys like me — caustic cads that capitalized on a sick system and caused catastrophe. I’ve pondered my sins for two decades. I’ve relived my earthly transit in dystopian detail. My cunning keepers are currently dangling a deal:

Record your jaundiced journey, and you may hit heaven on a high note. Baby, it’s time to CONFESS.

Purgatory is Shitsville. You’re stuck with the body you had on earth when you died. You eat nothing but coach-class airplane food. There’s no booze, no jazzy intrigue, no women. My earthly victims visit my cell unpredictably. They remind me of my misdeeds and jab me in the ass with red-hot pokers. Fags flit down from heaven and scold me for outing them back in the fag-fragging ’50s. Fuck — there’s that limp-wristed lisper Johnnie Ray. The prongs of his pitchfork are white-hot. Johnnie had a righteous run from ’53 to ’56. His record “Cry” sold mega-millions. Confidential cornholed him. The piece was titled “Men’s Room Mishegas: Jittery Johnnie Strikes Again!” Johnnie threatened to sue the magazine. I kicked his ass as a deterrent.

Fuck, Johnnie — those prongs are hot!!!!! How many times do I have to tell you I’m sorry?

Dig this, earthlings: You pay for your sins in the afterlife. I am telling it like it is.

My ass is always sore. Ava Gardner jabbed me last week. Ava was a noxious nympho with a delirious devotion to dark meat. I set her up with a Jungle Johnny packing studly steel. My boys kicked the door in and snapped photos. Confidential ran insidious ink.

April ’54: “Ava Gardner: Mud Shark Mama!”

It was wrong. I’m ashamed. I’ve stewed in my evil shit for twenty years. Earthlings, I’m sorry.

My keepers have supplied me with pen and paper and a complete run of Confidential. My synapses are sizzling with a million malignant memories. Fred Otash, 1922–1992: rogue cop, private eye, shakedown artist. Soldier of fortune and demonic deus ex machina. The hellhound who held Hollywood captive. The man with all the sicko secrets you irksome earthlings want to hear.

Confidential presaged the infantile Internet. Our gobs of gossip were repugnantly real. Today’s blowhard bloggers and their tattle texts? Pussyfooting punks all. We stung the studios and popped the politicians. We voyeur-vamped America and got her hooked on the devilish dish. We created today’s tell-all media culture.

Yeah, I’m sorry. Yeah, I want to get paroled to that cloud bank upstairs. But — I more urgently want to groove my wild ride once again.

My keepers have given me back my 1950s-vintage body. It’s a Machiavellian move to make me recall. They want to prime my prose and mold my moral vision. They’ve put me in telepathic touch with an earthling writer named James Ellroy.

Ellroy’s a dipshit. I knew him in my waning months alive. I’ve been granted tell-all telepathy. I will know that cocksucker cold.

He ripped off my persona for a character in his overhyped novel L.A. Confidential. The book and major movie chewed Chihuahua dicks. I met Ellroy in the summer of ’92. He wanted to turn my life story into a boffo TV series. He paid me some gelt for my FBI file — but I kicked off before he could glom it from me. I don’t trust the motherfucker. He’s a right-wing religious nut and a backer of Mitt Romney’s current White House bid. I’m an Obama man — I dig the notion of a coon president. My keepers are setting up a purgatory-to-L.A. telepathy call. My most fitful fear so far? That Ellroy located my secret diaries. Man, did I dish the dirt on myself! I’m afraid that Ellroy is still beating the dead horse of an Otash TV show.

Fuck — I need to get upstairs. Montgomery Clift pitchforked me yesterday. Confidential lampooned the lavender Lilliputian as “Princess Tiny Meat.” JFK followed Monty. He had Jackie in tow. It was a 1953 stink. I circulated a tape of Jack bringing the brisket to Ingrid Bergman. Frank Sinatra played the tape to Jackie and created some surging tsuris. Aaaaaaaargh — those pitchfork pokes hurt!!! Marilyn Monroe was the next penance poker. Baby, you did blow half the pharmacists in Beverly Hills in trade for Nembutal and Dilaudid! Maybe I shouldn’t have spilled the beans, but I was within my First Amendment rights!

Brain blip — dipshit Ellroy’s in my head. Reciprocal re-blip — now I’m in his.

It’s my story, not his. He’s only here to negate my nihilism and noodle my narrative.

Let this mind-bending march down memory lane begin...

1

Nate & Al’s Deli

Beverly Hills

8/12/92

“I was working Central Vice in ’51. We got word on a nigger whorehouse operating out of a pad at the Villa Elaine. I hotfooted it over there.”

My booth at the deli. My audience: four showbiz hebes in worse shape than me. Walkers, canes, and oxygen tanks clogging the aisles to the kitchen. Fractious Freddy O., holding court.

It’s summer ’92. I’m 70 and in bad fucking shape. I’ve consumed a fifth of Scotch and three packs a day since kindergarten. I’ve got emphysema and a bum pump. I’m counting on my native panache to get me to 80. I know it’s a lunar-looped long shot.

Sol Sidell said, “Get to it, Freddy. You roll to the pad and then what?”

Sinful Sol: a jailbaiter from jump street. He produced beach-blanket flicks in the ’60s. I pulled him out of the shit in ’57. He was smoking Mary Jane and poking two underage twists.

I said, “Okay, I roll to the crib and peep a side window. Shit — there’s Sam Spiegel, the cat that produced Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai. He’s muff-diving a black chick on the rag. That was a boss beef, back in ’51. I told Sambo that it’s dues time. A morals bust or a monthly donation to the Fred Otash Retirement Fund.”

My pals yuk-yukked. I took a big bite of my Rueben sandwich and felt a twinge in my chest. I chased a Digitalis tablet with coffee and watched Jules Slotnick suck on his oxygen mask. Julie produced socially conscious turkeys about wetback farmworkers and oppressed schvartzes. It was pure atonement. He made all his live-in maids blow him. He held their green cards as a hedge against their refusal to bestow daily head.

Sid Resnick said, “Give us another one, Freddy.”

The Sidster was Mr. Holocaust Heartache. He produced schlock-umentaries for the B’nai B’rith. Soulman Sid: A chubby chaser/shine shtupper combo. Currently captivated by a Congo cutie weighing 285.

I plumbed my brain stash for a tale my pals hadn’t heard. Two elderly fruits sashayed by the booth and evil-eyed me. That gave me my cue.

I pointed to them. “I got tipped to an all-male pajama party in ’56. I paid some LAPD hard boys a yard apiece to bust it and brought my camera along. Those cats were piled up in a five-way with Rock Hudson, Sal Mineo, and a dude with giant acne cysts. Confidential wrote it up. Universal paid me ten G’s to keep the Rockster’s name out of the story.”

The whole booth roared. Julie Slotnick gasped for breath and oxygenized. Al Wexler yukked out a bagel chunk and said, “Tell us your motto again, Freddy. Man, it’s a gasser.”

Alky Al owned six porno bookstores, fourteen fag bars, and a nose-job clinic. He plowed a truck full of migrant Mexican workers and left six dead. I got it mashed down to a Mickey Mouse misdemeanor. Al owed me.

I killed my sandwich. Here it is, Freddy O.’s credo, intoned like the Gettysburg Address:

“I’ll work for anyone but Communists. I’ll do anything short of murder.”

Boffo: My boys clapped and guffawed. Heads turned one booth over. An older guy flashed an LAPD retirement badge. I made him: Lieutenant Mike Matthews, a pious aide to my old foe, Chief William H. Parker, a.k.a. Whiskey Bill.

He stepped out of the booth. He said, “Freddy shot an unarmed man in cold blood. Has he told you that one?”

The cocksucker nailed me.

The cocksucker winked at my pals and ambled out to the street.

Sol said, “Come on, Freddy.”

Julie said, “Give, boychik.”

Sid said, “Give it up, living legend. Don’t be a CT.”

Al said, “You’ve been holding back, Freddy. You know that’s not nice.”

Another twinge hit my heart. I dipped a fistful of French fries in gravy and snarfed them. I popped another Digitalis and stared down my pals. Woooooo — that Fred Otash don’t-fuck-with-me glare.

They twitched, flinched, and looked down. I waited a moment and let their submission simmer. I said, “I’m meeting a cat named James Ellroy here in half an hour. He wrote some shitty novels, and he wants to turn my life story into a TV show. If his money’s green, I’ll play along. I’ve requested my Freedom of Information Act file from the feds. It’s full of good dirt the putz will cream for.”

Sol looked up first. “It’s 1992. The ’50s are stale bread.”

Al looked up next. “The ’50s are a drug on the market. You can’t sell that shit to anyone but white stiffs in Des Moines.”

Sid looked up third. “Your story’s too ugly. It’s the Age of Aquarius, bubi. The wetback dishwashers are unionized, and the fruits want their rights. I predict a jig president one day. The only way Ellroy’s story will fly is to indict your evil, camel-fucker ass.”

Julie said, “Fuck your life story. How about a show about a movie producer who extorts blow jobs on a daily basis? It’s got pizzazz and social significance. You call it Head Man and run it on one of those cable channels that feature immoral content.”

I laffed. It built into howls and roars. I felt my corned beef and sauerkraut on the rise. I got floaty. I popped a bread crust out on my plate. Fuck — this again.

The booth tumbled. My pals vaporized. My vision went black. Ruffling calendar pages flew backwards. Decades disappeared and devolved. Please stop somewhere — I don’t know if I’m dead or in a dream—

Robbery Division Squad Room

LAPD Detective Bureau

6th Floor, City Hall

2/4/49

There I am. I’m primping in front of a hallway mirror in full uniform. Fred Otash at 27: beefcake, boss, and bangin’ them bonaroo bitches.

I exemplify greasy good looks. I’m full-blooded Lebanese — a camel cad from the get-go. I was a Marine Corps DI during the Big War. I joined the LAPD in late ’45. I went on the grift faaaaaast. I put together an ex-jarhead burglary ring. My downtown footbeat provided me with a road map of exploitable biz fronts. My gang hit pawnshops that fenced contraband, pharmacies that pushed narcotics, bookie joints behind storefront churches. I fingered the jobs. My gang clouted cash and merchandise. They were 2 a.m. creepers. I knew when the graveyard-shift prowl cars were elsewhere and passed the word along.

I’ve always been corruptible and tempted by the take. I don’t know where it came from. I had a squaresville home life in Bumfuck, Massachusetts. My mom and dad loved me. Nobody buttfucked me in my crib. The tree limb bent early in my case. I’ve got a sketchy semblance of a code. There’s shit I’ll do, there’s shit I won’t do. The line wavered on that cold day back in ’49.

I combed my hair and adjusted my necktie. The squad room buzzed heavy all around me. A shootout just went down at 9th and Figueroa. A traffic cop traded shots with a heist man. The cop was hit baaaaad and was not expected to live. The heist man was grazed and was expected to live. Both men were at Georgia Street Receiving right now.

The squad room buzzed. The squad-room phones rang incessant. I thought about the business cards I carried and handed out to women. They were understated and oozed high class. My name and phone number were printed in the middle. Right below: “Mr. Nine Inches.”

I heard heavy footsteps. I got bombed by booze breath.

“If you’re through looking at yourself, I’ve got something.”

I turned around. It was a Robbery bull named Harry Fremont. Harry had a vivid rep. He allegedly stomped two pachucos to death during the Zoot Suit Riots. He allegedly pimped transvestite whores out of a he-she bar. He was non-allegedly shitfaced drunk at noon.

“Yeah, Harry?”

“Be useful, kid. There’s a cop killer at Georgia Street. Chief Horrall thinks you should take care of it.”

I said, “Take care of what? The cop isn’t dead.”

Harry dropped a key fob in my hand. “4-A-32. It’s in the watch commander’s space. Look under the backseat.”

I steadied myself on the wall and lurched back to the bullpen. I zombie-walked downstairs. I couldn’t feel my feet find the pavement. I swear this is true.

A K-car was parked in that space. The key fit the ignition. I couldn’t feel my hands on the steering wheel. The garage was dark. Overhead pipes leaked. Water drops turned into sharp-toothed goblins.

I recall pulling out onto Spring Street. I recall driving slow. I might have prayed for nothing to be under the backseat.

The heist man was being held in the jail ward. He had to be fit for a transfer to the city lockup soon. It was 43 years ago. It’s still etched in Sin-emascope and Surround Sound. I can still see the faces of passersby on the street.

There — Georgia Street Receiving.

The jail ward was on the north side. The ward for square-john folks was to the south. A narrow pathway separated the buildings. It hit me then:

They know you’ll do it. They’ve sized you up as that kind of guy.

I reached under the backseat. Right there: transfer papers for one Ralph Mitchell Horvath and a .32 snub-nose.

I put the gun in my front pocket and grabbed the papers. I walked down the pathway and went through the jail-ward door. The deskman was LAPD. His eyes drifted to a punk handcuffed to a drainpipe. The punk wore a loafer jacket and slit-bottomed khakis. One arm was bandaged. His lips were covered with chancre sores. He looked insolent.

The deskman did the knife-across-throat thing on the QT. I handed him the papers and uncuffed and recuffed the punk. The deskman said, “Bon voyage, sweetheart.”

I shoved the punk outside and pointed him up the pathway.

He walked ahead of me.

I couldn’t feel my feet.

I couldn’t feel my legs.

I felt my heart pump blood on overdrive and wondered why I couldn’t feel my own limbs.

No windows on the north and south buildings. No pedestrians on Georgia Street.

No witnesses.

I pulled the gun from my pocket and fired over my own head. The gun kicked and lashed life back into my arms. The noise pounded a pulse to my legs.

The punk wheeled around. He moved his lips. A word came out as a squeak. I pulled my service revolver and shot him in the mouth. His teeth exploded as he fell. I placed the throw-down piece in his right hand.

He was trying to say “Please.” That’s what always gets me — every time I have this dream.

The cop lived. He’d sustained a through-and-through wound. He was back on duty in a week.

Vicious vengeance. Wrathfully wrong in retrospect. A crack in the crypt of my soul.

Harry Fremont passed the word: The Otash kid is kosher. Chief C. B. Horrall sent me a bottle of Old Crow. The grand jury sacked him a few months later. He was jungled up in a call-girl racket and much more. An interim chief was brought in.

Reform boded. I knew that. I didn’t know that future chief Bill Parker had a target pinned to my chest.

Ralph Mitchell Horvath: 1918–1949.

Ralphie: car thief, stickup man, weenie wagger. Hooked on yellow jackets and muscatel.

He left a widow. I started sending her a C-note a month, anonymously.

Calendar pages started ruffling. It’s where my dreams always get scary. They might go backwards and bypass my birth. They might go forward and announce my death. I’m fucked both ways. I’m no longer the freewheeling Fred O.

There’s a familiar thudding noise. It sounds like magazines slapping the pavement. We’re still in ’49. It can’t be Confidential — the rag didn’t hit the stands until ’53.

There’s that kid. There’s that wagon. He’s a newsboy. He’s off-loading magazines.

My eyelids rolled back. Time recalibrated. 43 years went poof! The thuds were a tall guy hitting the table. He wore a loud Hawaiian shirt and wheat jeans. He vibed GEEK.

He snarfed the remains of my Reuben sandwich. He said, “Mr. Otash, I’m James Ellroy.” The vibe solidified. Add “opportunist” to the cocksucker’s résumé.

I told him to sit down. He did it. I looked out to the street. My pals were hassling with their oxygen tanks and walkers. The sight spooked me. I reflex-popped a Digitalis and two Valium.

Ellroy slurped Julie Slotnick’s coffee. “It’s a pleasure, sir.”

I said, “Run it all by me again. Don’t be surprised when I mention money.”

Ellroy whipped out a checkbook and pen. “I’m calling the show Shakedown. It’s your life, times, and moral journey. You were a sack of shit. I’m a zealous Lutheran out to indict your sleazy misconduct and place it within the larger context of scandal-rag journalism and America in the ’50s. Moreover, the actor who portrays you will have scalding-hot love scenes with the greatest actresses of this era.”

I tapped the checkbook. “I fucked Jackie Kennedy in ’53. She was engaged to Jack then. She said I was the biggest and the best.”

Ellroy said, “I fucked Jackie Kennedy in ’54. I was six years old. She said I was bigger and better than you.”

I laffed, I roared, I howled. My gut bounced and banged the table. Ellroy wrote a check and dropped it on my plate. Ten G’s — va-va-va-voom!

He said, “I want to see your FBI file.”

I caught my breath. “It’s on the way.”

“I want to see the diaries that you’ve kept since the late ’40s.”

I went hot-hot and cold-cold. Freon Freddy, Frigid Freddy — make it sound good.

“It’s a fucking myth, kid. I was never much good at writing shit down.”

Ellroy shook his head. “Nix, boss. I spent some time with Harry Fremont the week before he died. He told me you whacked a hood named Ralph Mitchell Horvath in ’49 and started writing the diary then. He said that you wrote it on bookies’ flash paper, in case you had to burn it quick.”

I palpitated and palsied. Old age fucks with your ability to lie.

“Like I said, kid. The diaries don’t exist.”

Ellroy fondled his checkbook. “I’ll let it slide for now. And I’ll come up green if you ever want to reconsider.”

The Valium hit more — I started to go loosey-goosey.

“I want something written into my contract.”

“Tell me.”

“I want a boss guy to play me. Think of Clark Gable crossed with porno cat John Holmes.”

Ellroy yukked. We shook hands. I pocketed the check and signaled Abe Rosen at the counter.

It’s our regular deal. I grease Abe with double sawbucks. I get faux-paged for calls from big machers.

Abe hit the intercom. “Mr. Otash! President Bush is on the line!”

Memory Lane. It’s the destination for old guys.

Ellroy’s check cleared. I holed up at my pad through Labor Day. My diaries were packed in flame-retardant boxes. They were stashed with some piquant porno pics. Ellroy was back in Connecticut. We talked most nights. I went through my scrapbooks and dished the dirt on my loved ones, lewd ones, and lost ones.

The old photos had my gears going. I’m there with Frank, Dino, and Sammy. I broke legs for them. Why do they seem to be cringing at my touch? There’s pics of my bed at my old Sunset Strip penthouse. I called it the “Landing Strip.” The name derived from my three-ways with stewardesses, starlets, and stars. Liz Taylor and I swung with a stew named “Barb” on many groin-grabbing occasions. There’s pics of my true love, Joi Lansing. We had some goooooooooooood years together. She treated me gooooooooood. I treated her gooooooooood until I treated her baaaaaaaaad. I don’t know why I flip-flopped. My diaries describe that meshuggener metaphysic.

There’s my dictionary and thesaurus. They were teaching tools for the writers at Confidential. Utilize alliteration and inventive slurs. Homos are “licentious lispers.” Dykes are “beefcake butches.” Drunks are “bibulous bottle hounds” and “dyspeptic dipsos.” Vulgarize and vitalize and crazily create a popular parlance. Make it sinfully siiiiiing.

Ellroy’s noxious novels — stamped with my style. Ellroy’s pious putz personality — an odious one to me.

My pals came over on Labor Day. We grilled burgers and hot dogs and killed three quarts of Jim Beam. They left at 2 a.m. A male nurse corps wheeled them down to their limos. The process took half an hour. It was akin to the Berlin Airlift. Walkers crashed, oxygen tanks toppled and rolled. It was fucking hard to endure.

I settled in to watch a Dragnet rerun. I bought the judge in four of Jack Webb’s drunk-driving beefs. I shtupped Jack’s ex-wife, soaring songstress Julie London.

A dozen Famous Amos cookies comprised my late-night snack. I’d seen the episode before. Sergeant Joe Friday busts a hippie punk on a snootful of LSD. I missed Jack. We had some yuks together. He kicked off back in—

A sledgehammer hit my heart. A steel croquet mallet followed. A monster loomed in front of me. He’s Johnnie Ray, he’s Monty Clift, he’s politicians pounded and movie stars mauled — a kaleidoscope of condemnation.

They railed at me. J’accuse, j’accuse, j’accuse!!!!! They hurled ingots at my chest. I gasped. My left arm exploded. I hit the medical-emergency button on my phone.

Then some pinpoint fades to black. Then my pad turns topsy-turvy. Then a big crash and my door shattered like my left arm. Then the mask on my mouth and a fraction of my sight back. Then the gurney, the white-coat men, and the swoop aloft.

One coat guy looked like James Ellroy — but I knew it couldn’t be. An image came to me. It was bright, vivid, old. I saw a little red wagon. I saw words on a strip of red paint. Everything started to fade then. The white-coat man morphed into Ellroy. I still knew it couldn’t be.

Ellroy said, “Hey, Freddy. What’s shaking?”

My breath rasped. I knew I only had two words left.

I said, “Red Ryder.”

2

James Ellroy’s journal

7/12/92

Freddy, I hardly knew ye.

I dug you — but didn’t respect you. There’s a distinction. How’s the afterlife, fuckhead? Repent, you reptile. Yeah, I ripped off your raucous way with words. But I’m not you — you homo hater, dyke defamer, and racist raconteur.

The obits ran tripartite. The prime gist: ex-cop Otash hires on with Confidential. He runs an intelligence network and gathers information on celebrity hijinks. Part two was more pithy: Freddy was a longtime extortionist. His intelligence network supplied the dirt for his shakedown racket. Part three jazzed me. The scandal-rag era bellied up in ’59. Confidential — kaput. Desperate Freddy pulled a racetrack caper. He doped a nag named Wonder Boy and lost his PI’s license. He became a mob lapdog. Jimmy Hoffa hired him to get the goods on JFK shtupping Marilyn Monroe. His aging Marine Corps goons spilled the tale to reporters. Freddy bugged Peter Lawford’s beachfront fuck pad and caught Jack in the sack. Ooooooooooooh, daddy-o: my pulsatingly possible TV show could run indefinitely!!!!!

I got the word on Freddy’s death and flew back to L.A. quicksville. The papers were full of Otash lore. Yawn: his adversarial relationship with LAPD chief William H. Parker. His ’57 interview with TV ham Mike Wallace. His relationship with Confidential’s pervo publisher, Bondage Bob Harrison. Snore: “Fred Otash was the founding father of the tabloid-TV era.” Snooze: “Otash defined the paranoiac horrors of the Red-Scare Decade.” An ex-Liberace bun boy dropped a pearl in with the dross: “I know that Freddy got Lee out of a jam in the early ’50s, but he damn well got paid for it.”

Freddy owned a condo off the Sunset Strip. My first task: intercept his FBI Freedom of Information Act file. I talked to Freddy on the day he died. The file hadn’t arrived. I’ve called the building’s manager every day since. I impersonated Freddy’s lawyer and said I was expecting some files from the feds. The man called me as I left for the airport. Sir, that box just arrived.

I rented a car at LAX. I drove to Chez Otash and snatched the file posthaste. A small UPS box held all the material. I carried the box to my car and tore into it.

Every page was heavily ink-redacted. Odd lines were untouched. Sixteen pages of blacked-out lines and this:

“Accused of extortion,” “accused of bribery,” “accused of harassment,” “accused of suborning perjury,” “accused of jury tampering.”

Please — give me some shit I don’t know.

A photo ID sheet was included. I recognized pics of Freddy’s squeeze, Joi Lansing, and Freddy’s snitch-pal, ’50s-cool James Dean. Bob Harrison — mucho snapshots. Liberace — of course. Liz Taylor — sure. Her ex-hubby Michael Wilding? Yeah, I get it. Ward Wardell, Race Rockwell, Donkey Don Eversall? Freddy mentioned them. They were fruit hustlers in his stable.

The file was a bust.

That left Freddy’s secret diaries.

Freddy said they did not exist.

They might be locked in a bank vault and thus out of reach. They might be packed in a box in that condo across the street.

Do it, dipshit. Life itself is the Big Shakedown, and you can’t let this one go.

I broke in that night.

It wasn’t hard. I threw my weight at a loose stretch of the door-doorjamb juncture. The door popped easy. I carried a penlight and prowled in the dark.

I tossed the cabinets. I eyeballed the shelves. I displaced 10,000 leisure sweatsuits. Freddy’s scrapbooks were useless. His gold Rolex was a fake. I found a Nazi Luger in the sock drawer. I found a stack of porn vids under the sink. I hit pay dirt in a hall closet.

Photos: plastic-sheathed and lovingly preserved.

Marlon Brando with a dick in his mouth.

Lena Horne muff-diving Lady Bird Johnson.

And—

A box full of bookies’ flash paper.

I skimmed a few pages. Freddy block-printed legibly. He deployed a calendar-page motif to encapsulate anecdotes. It was lurid lightning in a bottle. It was the Hellacious Holy Grail and the Demonic Dead Sea Scrolls.

The entire TV series and a corresponding run of novellas came to me rápidamente.

A photo fell out of the box. Holy shit — Rin Tin Tin fucking Katharine Hepburn.

I grabbed the box and put the photo in my pocket. My wife Helen was a big Hepburn fan.

3

Downtown L.A.

10/4/52

Calendar sheets ruffled. Paper wilted and blew. I recalled that hot summer and those fall storms. I was working the Central day watch. I’d disbanded my burglary gang. Two of my men got hooked on Big H. They were decidedly desperate and snitch-prone. I’d gambled away all my gelt. I was living on a schmuck cop’s pay and was suffused with the blues. William H. Parker became chief in ’50. He instituted righteous reforms and riddled the ranks with a phalanx of finks to sniff out miscreants and misconduct. I drove a Lin-coon Coon-tinental coon-vertible. I won it in a niggertown card game. It was a “suspect expenditure.” Parker’s boys tattled to the hellhound jefe. I got called in and grindingly grilled. Parker warned me not to be a Bolshevik and said, “I’ve got my four eyes on you.”

The rain was a mad monsoon. Wild winds whipped me on my footbeat. I stopped at a Gamewell phone and called the station. The deskman told me to hotfoot to 668 South Olive. They were shooting a Racket Squad episode in the lobby. They needed a hard boy to shoo off autograph hounds.

I headed over there. I caught a taut tailwind and slalomed most of the way. It was a medical building with a pharmacy and adjoining lobby. I caught a frazzled fracas on the set right off.

Lights, cameras, boom mikes — and action.

A jug-eared cat was hassling a boss blonde. He wore pegged chinos and a gone jacket. She was built from the ground up.

The cast and crew eyeballed the scene. Jug-ears grabbed the blonde’s arm and applied abrasions. It gored my gonads and hit my heartstrings. I walked up behind him. He saw my shadow and swiveled. I broke his nose with a palm shot. I looped a left to his larynx. I kneed his nuts as he dropped.

The blonde’s jaw dropped. I tipped my hat to her.

Jug-ears cradled his busted beak and moaned for his mama. The cast and crew clapped.

The blonde said, “He’s my ex-husband. He stiffed me for three months’ alimony.”

I kicked him in the head and lifted his wallet. He mama-moaned anew. The cast and crew wolf-whistled.

The wallet weighed in heavy. I fanned the cash compartment and counted a sea of C-notes. I handed them to the blonde. She dropped them in her purse and dropped a dollar on her ex-hubby. She said, “For old times. He was good in the sack.”

I laffed. I reached in my pocket and handed her a card. Understated class: my name, phone number, and “Mr. Nine Inches.”

She dropped the card in with her cash stash. A guy yelled, “You’re up, Joi! Scene 16-B!”

She winked and walked away from me. I handcuffed Jug-ears behind his back and pay-phone-called the station. Holly-weird: they filmed the scene with the ex coma-conked and cuffed on the floor.

I walked outside and smoked a cigarette. A black-and-white cruised by and hauled the ex to Georgia Street Receiving. I thought of Ralph Mitchell Horvath. A kid brought me a cup of coffee and returned my calling card. She’d written on the back:

“Joi Lansing. 39-25-38. Googie’s, tonight at 8:30.”

I had a wolf’s lair above the Strip. It was furnished with Jap flags and shadow-boxed Lugers. I never made it overseas. I spent the war at Parris Island, South Carolina. There’s a periscope affixed to my back porch. I use it to spy on neighbor women.

I’ve always voyeurized.

I’ve always studied people.

I’ve always wanted to know their secret shit.

My bedroom featured a walk-in closet. I blew my burglary stash on Sy Devore suits. My dresser drawer was full of lacy lingerie. My lynx-like lovers left me magnificent mementoes.

I’ve got a file on Ralph Mitchell Horvath. I culled it from PDs and penitentiaries statewide. I knew all Ralphie’s secrets.

He poked a Mexican sissy in reform school. He fathered two half-wit kids. He pimped his wife to cover his poker debts. He scored prescription goofballs from a Chink pharmacist.

It bought me some distance on Ralphie. The more you know about people, the less they get to you. I’ve known that godless gospel since my crib.

I dressed sharp for Joi Lansing. I wore my crocodile loafers and slipped my heater into a shoulder rig. A spritz of Lucky Tiger — and a two-minute stroll to the meet.

Googie’s was a coffee cave on Sunset and Crescent Heights. The Space Age aesthetic rubbed me raw. Fluorescent lights, Naugahyde, chrome. A hopping hive for showbiz shitheels headed for hell.

I walked in and watched Joi Lansing table-hop. She wore a too-tight gown and a mink stole with a pawnshop tag attached. The joint was bustling about a sneak peek in Glendale. A Googie’s regular had an on-screen love scene with Bob Mitchum. Bad Boy Bob kept slipping her tongue. They shared a reefer in the RKO backlot. She blew him in Howard Hughes’s limousine.

A hubbub juked the joint — I knew I radiated FUZZ. I crashed into a booth and unbuttoned my jacket. A fag flamed by and ogled my piece. He joined a hen party one booth over. More dirt spilled: the barman at the Cockpit Lounge ran an all-boy slave auction. Adlai Stevenson got enthralled and embroiled. The hens hooted — ha, ha, ha!

Joi sat down. I pointed to the pawnshop tag. She pulled it off and dropped it in the ashtray.

I said, “Thanks for the invitation.”

Joi said, “Thanks for the revenge. That guy fractured my left wrist on Saint Patrick’s Day ’49.”

“You’re too young to have an ex-husband.”

“Yeah, and I’m estranged from number two. I’d head to Reno for a quickie, but it might not work. We got hitched in TJ, so the paperwork could get dicey.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Well, you’re a policeman.”

I lit a cigarette and held the pack out. Joi shook her head.

“He’s on parole, and he’s a grasshopper. You could call Narco.”

I shook my head. “Give me his address. I’ll think of something.”

“He’ll be here at 9:30. He’s been living at the Y since I kicked him out, and the fry cook takes his phone calls. He’s a non-union grip. I stiffed him a fake message after I met you. You’re a producer at Fox with a job for him. You’re meeting him in the parking lot.”

I laffed. “You just assumed that I’d do it?”

Joi laffed. “Come on, Freddy. That stunt you pulled downtown and ‘Mr. Nine Inches’? What won’t you do for money or gash?”

A Mex busboy sidled by. I grabbed a belt loop and stopped him. He saw my roscoe and got the wigged-out wetback shakes.

I stuffed a twenty in his shirt pocket. “Go to the kitchen and get me a bag of weed. You’ll be on the night train to Culiacán if you don’t deliver.”

Pancho genuflected and took off. Joi laffed and bummed a cigarette. I blew a high smoke ring. She blew a higher one. It hit the ceiling and mushroomed.

The Mex came back with the goods. I told him to scram. The hen party squawked a new nugget: Ava Gardner dumped Sinatra for a heavy-hung shine.

I said, “What’s your real name?”

Joi said, “Joyce Wassmansdorff.”

“Give me the fill-in.”

“I’m from Salt Lake City. I’m 24. I went to the MGM school and went nowhere.”

“But now you’re up and coming?”

Joi stubbed out her cigarette. “I’m uncredited in six pictures and credited in four. I’ve got Racket Squad, Gangbusters, and a comedy with Jane Russell in the can.”

“Give me some dirt on Russell.”

“What’s to give? She’s a goody two-shoes married to that quarterback for the Rams.”

My stomach growled. I noshed a breadstick and eyeballed the room. Easy make: the two crew cuts by the takeout stand were Parker boys. Harry Fremont pointed them out to me last month. They were purse-lipped Puritans out to bag bent cops.

Joi said, “You’ll need money to enjoy my company.”

I smiled and re-eyeballed the room. A punk I popped for flim-flam made me and beat feet. Joi said, “It’s 9:30. Look for a little guy with a big pompadour.”

I walked back to the parking lot. Pompadour lounged on a ’51 Merc. I got close to him. He orbed my shoulder rig and went Oh, shit. He wore light-colored slacks. Piss coursed and covered his cuffs. I deferred to diplomacy.

“Don’t contest the divorce. I’ll negotiate your alimony payments. Send the check directly to me. I’ll take my cut and deliver the rest to Miss Lansing.”

Pompadour held up his hands — Don’t hit me, hoss. I pulled out the bag of weed and caught his left mitt in one motion. I pressed hard to ensure a full fingerprint spread.

It started drizzling. I gestured toward the street. Joi Lansing’s second ex-hubby took off running.

“Hollywood could use a guy like you.”

I turned around. “You mean I could use Hollywood.”

Joi gave me a big kiss.

It all started just like that.

4

I heisted a bookie room a week later.

A Hitler mask concealed my identity. I entered with an empty grocery sack and exited with four grand. I spent half the swag on Joi and bankrolled my biz with the remainder. A Beverly Hills pharmacist fronted me a pill pusher’s Parthenon. Harry Fremont sold me eight ice-cold roscoes. Joi hipped me to a discreet scrape doctor. I gave him a signing bonus and told him I’d be out seeking nice-girls-in-a-jam. Guns, dope, and a felonious physician. My girlfriend as conduit to a corrupt culture.

Joi hit Hollywood in ’42. She was 14. She matriculated at MGM and met everybody. She was both low-rent and confoundingly connected. She knew everything. She was a one-babe Baedeker. She knew bartenders, bellhops, busboys, call girls, casting directors, and cads. She knew pornographers, pushers, and pimps. She knew troves of tramps in trouble. She knew that this soiled city lacked a single fix-it man. That was my role.

Joi greased Holly-weird with my handouts. Scores of scurrilous scamsters licked up my largesse. We were buying potentially profitable dirt.

I worked LAPD. I got an off-duty gig as security boss at the Hollywood Ranch Market. It was licentiously legendary and open-all-nite. I bagged shoplifters and check kiters. I lived within my means and never gave Bill Parker’s goons a hook to entrap me. I took Joi to Ciro’s and the Mocambo. I saw intelligence-squad cops dead-eying the scene. I braced them as a brother and ballyhooed my big nights financed by big days at the track.

I sold guns, I sold pills, I brokered abortions. I mail-order-hawked a filthy film called Mae West’s Menagerie. Shack jobs were verboten for LAPD men. Joi and I trysted at her mom’s pad in Redondo Beach. She said the word was moving out and metastasizing: Fred O.’s the man to see.

Assignments rolled in. I pounded a perv who’d whipped out his whang on Duke Wayne’s wife. Duke paid me five yards and gave me the skinny on Red Hollywood. Dino Martin called me. That’s amore: he knocked up his Mex maid with soon-to-hatch triplets. I bribed a customs official and got Dolorous Dolores deported to Mexico. Dino paid me two G’s and dished the dirt on a stunning string of starlets. They bounced on my bed two at a time and dug up dirt on my regular retainer. Want C-notes and riotous ruts in the hay? Call Mr. Nine Inches.

I got Lana Turner a scrape. She banged an alto sax named Art Pepper in a bout of bebop abandon. Putzy Pepper wanted her to keep the kid and threatened exposure. I planted two reefers in his sax case and got him six months at Wayside Honor Rancho.

Joi knew a classy clique of Hancock Park housewives. They were unbearably unbodied and entrenched in ennui. They needed furtive fucking. She saw money in it.

Franchot Tone’s girlfriend was banging a boogie. It was something out of Ramar of the Jungle. I covered the Congo and caught the cat in a gassed-hair joint on Slauson. I kicked his black ass back to Biloxi.

That Fred Otash — he baaaaaaaaaaad!

Joi said Liberace had a job for me. We were in the sack at her mom’s place. Her eyes twinkled and twirled me some all-new way. She drew dollar signs in the air.

The moment vibrates in VistaVision and fabulous Fag-O-Scope. There’s calendar pages and sheet music. A piano noodles a nocturne and pounds a polonaise.

Liberace’s Swank Swish Pad

Coldwater Canyon

4/29/53

A fairy factotum met me. The yard was tropically tricked out and football-field size.

Flamingos flitted. Toucans tooled and bit at bugs. A path cut through ten-foot-high fronds and floral explosions. Everything was green, purple, and pink.

We hit a clearing. It was paved with stones embossed with musical clefs. The pool was shaped like a piano. Liberace sat in a deck chair. A leopard with a mink collar was snoozing at his feet.

The factotum sashayed off. I pulled up a deck chair. The leopard stirred and snarled at me. I scratched his neck. He went back to sleep.

Liberace said, “You’re fearless. You’re the kind of man I need.”

“I’m here to help you out, sir. Joi said you’ve got a guy bugging you.”

The factotum sashayed back with cocktails. Two highball glasses emitted nuclear pink foam. The guy served us and skedaddled. My drink tasted like high-test bubble gum.

Liberace said, “Bottoms up.” Pederast patter — yuk, yuk.

“A kid’s putting the boots to you, right? Pay up or he’ll rat you to the Legion of Decency. All those dago mob guys that book your act in Vegas will hightail it. Your TV show will be canceled if word gets out you go Greek.”

Liberace sighed. “Inimitably candid, and so, so true. He’s a dishwasher at Perino’s. What was I thinking?”

I sipped my pink drink. “Pictures?”

“Of course, dear heart. He lured me to a motel with a wall peek.”

A hi-fi speaker by the pool kicked on. Judy Garland belted, “Someday he’ll come along, the man I love.” The leopard woke up and licked his balls. Liberace goo-goo-talked him.

“Five thou, sir. You get the pictures and negatives, along with my assurance that it won’t happen again.”

Liberace pouted. His chest heaved. Sequins popped off his toga, caught the light, and shined. The leopard ambled to the pool and hung his ass over the edge. A giant shit ensued.

The factotum ran up with a scoop device. Liberace reached under his chair and pulled out a scrapbook.

“Ex-convicts are a weakness of mine, I’m chagrined to say. I’ve got mug shots of him and quite a few other rough-trade conquests. It’s my new hobby. I paste pictures when I’m not wowing my fans or practicing Chopin.”

I grabbed the book and leafed through it. It was the fucking lavender lodestone. I counted 26 KY cowboys wearing neck boards. Names, dates, penal-code numbers. A smutty smorgasbord of malignant maleness. Parole holds and prosty beefs galore.

Liberace jabbed a pic of one Manolo Sanchez. The guy was a Filipino flathead.

“He broke my heart while his evil lezzie sister took snapshots. Feel free to get tough.”

I nodded and flipped ahead. Three glum glamour boys beamed baleful off the page. Ward Wardell, Race Rockwell, Donkey Don Eversall. All booked for possession of pornography.

I pointed to the pics. “Blue movie actors, right? They peddle it on the side. You see the movies, you get a yen, you make a phone call.”

“That’s correct. I went to a screening at Michael Wilding and Liz Taylor’s house. Michael screened Locker Room Lust and Jailhouse Heat and supplied the referral.”

“Referral” buzz-bombed me. “Could these guys get it up for women?”

Liberace whooped. “Could, can, and do, sweetheart. And Donkey Don is the eighth wonder of the world, if you follow my drift.”

I tingled. I thought parlay. I saw dollar signs and movie-star movement on my Landing Strip.

“So, Michael Wilding’s a gay caballero?”

“In spades, love. His house is known as the ‘Fruit Stand,’ which perturbs lovely Liz no end.”

I yukked. “And Liz wants a divorce so she can move on to her next husband and break the all-time world record?”

Liberace slapped his knees. “Yes, and she’s pulling ahead of your girlfriend in that department.”

I cracked my knuckles. Liberace swooned. The fey fucker almost creamed in his jeans.

“Tell Liz to meet me at the Beverly Hills Hotel tomorrow night. Fill her in on my résumé.”

Liberace re-swooned. The leopard snarled and shooed a toucan up a tree.

Perino’s was high swank and old money. It catered to sterile stiffs and dotty dowagers who lived with 45 cats. I drove over at close-up time and parked by the back kitchen door. It was propped open. Manolo Sanchez and a fat beaner were scrubbing pots.

I got out of the car and hunkered low. I noted a row of lockers by a walk-in freezer. Fats opened his locker, grabbed a coat, and hit the road. I had the filthy Filipino alone.

He minced to his locker and primped. A mirror covered the inside door and threw his image back at me. I cop-read him: vicious little prick.

I squinted. Aaaaaaaah, the top locker shelf. A stack of photo sheaths.

He picked his teeth, he squeezed blackheads, he de-waxed his ears. I walked in. I crept up behind him. I pulled my beavertail sap. I saw his neck hairs bristle. He wheeled and pulled a shiv.

Flick — the blade sliced my Sy Devore blazer. He shrieked insults in Tagalog. They assuredly pertained to my mother.

He pirouetted and parried. We were in knife-fight tight. I risked a ripe stab wound and roundhoused him to the head. My sap hit him full force.

The seams ripped his face. The business end tore an eyebrow loose and smashed in his nose. He dropped the knife. I kicked it away. I grabbed his neck and squelched a scream. The deep-fry dipper was a few feet away. It was spitting hot grease and spuds Lyonnaise.

I dragged him over. I stuck his knife hand in the grease and French-fried it. I thought of all the Japs I would have killed if I hadn’t spent the war stateside.

He screamed. It was brigades of torched Japs on Saipan. I held his hand in the grease and burned it to the bone. Spatters hit my London Shop shirt.

I dropped his hand. I walked to the locker, grabbed the pictures, and flipped through them. Liberace Goes Greek — Kodacolor prints and negatives.

Sanchez screamed and careened through the kitchen. He overturned a dish rack and spastic-bounced off the walls. His hand was charbroiled. I saw flesh fall off the fingers.

The night was young. I was five thou to the good and hopped up on blood and aggression. Revelation ripped me. I knew I could mix my own fruit shakes. I decided to keep two of the negatives.

A call to R&I delivered the dish on the smut-film troika. The boys shared a pad in Silver Lake and a bent for things sex-soiled and seditious. Semper fi — they met in the Marine Corps and ran rackets out of a bondage bar down in Dago. They sold forged green cards, peddled Spanish fly, led Rotary groups to TJ for the mule act. Their bestselling item: dildo replicas of Donkey Don’s 16-inch whanger.

They fell in the shit in ’50. They sold Spanish fly to a high-school nympho and promised her a date with Donkey Don. The Donkster reneged. The nympho impaled herself on the gearshift of a ’46 Buick and hemorrhaged. San Diego PD filed assault one. The judge tossed the case. A ripe rumor: he was one of Race Rockwell’s regular tricks.

Their pad was a little wood-frame job overrun by bougainvillea. I rang the bell at 23:00 and got no answer. A loose window screen gave me quick access. I crept flashlight-first and inventoried.

The boys possessed Nazi armbands, Mickey Spillane novels, and combat-pinned Marine blues. Barbells, camera and lighting gear, nudist-colony mags going back to ’36. Souvenir snapshots from the Klub Satan, Tijuana, New Year’s ’48. Ticket stubs from the Manuel Ortiz — Harold Dade fight. A promotional contract for a nigger stumblebum named Junior “Knockout” Wilkins.

I walked out to the porch. I brought a pint of the boys’ Old Crow with me. I recognized the ribbons on their uniforms. I was training troops in Parris Island while they stormed Guadalcanal.

I sipped bourbon. I got a light load on. A jalopy pulled up at 1 a.m. The boys piled out and made for the door.

I whipped out my badge and held my flashlight beam on it. It was très dark out. I couldn’t see them cringe and capitulate. I imagined it, ghoul-like.

“My name’s Fred Otash. You’re going into business with me.”

Exuberant extortionist, enterprising entrepreneur. A round-the-clock roundelay as I licked my lips for Liz.

I got half-gassed with the lads and laid down the law: 20 percent of your smut biz in trade for police protection. And — you’re now the naughty nucleus of Fred O.’s stud farm. Get ready to bring the brisket to some housewives in heat.

Donkey Don laid a ladle of bennies on me. I buzzed through a tour of duty downtown. I broke up a fistfight at the Jesus Saves Mission. I chased a raft of Red agitators out of Pershing Square. I popped a whip-out man at the Mayan Theater. I busted a high-spirited kid setting winos on fire with a blowtorch.

My tour of duty tapped down. I went by the criminal-courts building and read up on divorce law. I reserved a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and scrounged refreshments off local merchants. Lou’s Liquor Locker supplied champagne. Hank’s Hofbrau coughed up cold cuts. Fast delivery was assured.

I swooped by my pad and traded my cop suit for a Cary Grant ensemble. Oh, yeah — it’s your ardent arriviste poised to pounce!

The bungalow was big and boss, flouncy and flamboyant. The bellman sneered at the baloney and cheese backlit by spotlights. He rolled his eyes and split. I paced and smoked myself hoarse. The bell rang at 8 o’clock on the dot.

There she is — Elizabeth Taylor at twenty.

She stood in the doorway. I fumbled for an opener. She wore a tight white dress that caressed her curves and clamored up her cleavage. She said, “If I move too fast, I’ll split a seam. Help me over to that couch.”

I grabbed an elbow and steered her. She felt my hand tremble and smiled. I sat her down and poured two glasses of ’53 domestic. We perched on the couch and offered up a toast.

Liz raised her arm. A dress seam split down to her hemline. She said, “Shit. I didn’t have to wear this. You’re just the bird dog for my divorce.”

I yukked. Liz said, “Don’t marry me, okay? I can’t keep doing this for the rest of my life.”

“Have I got a chance?”

“More than you think. Hotel heirs and queer actors haven’t worked out, so who’s to say a cop wouldn’t?”

I smiled and sipped champagne. Liz reached around, snagged a slice of baloney, and snarfed it. The dress was still constricting her. She looked plainly plaintive.

I unzipped the back and gave her some breath room. She sighed — Aaaaah, that’s good.

The shoulder straps went slack and fell down her arms. She deadpanned it. Our knees brushed on the couch. Liz retained the contact.

“How do I cut loose of Michael? I can’t cite mental cruelty, because he’s a sweetheart, and I don’t want to hurt him. I know you have to show just cause in order to sue.”

I refilled her glass. “I’ll bug your house. You get Wilding looped and get him to admit he digs boys. I levy the threat in a civilized manner, and he consents to an uncontested divorce.”

Liz beamed. “It’s that easy?”

“We’re all civilized white folks. You probably earn more money than him, but he’s older and has substantial holdings. You broker the property split and the alimony along those lines.”

“And how are you compensated?”

“I get 10 percent of your alimony payments, in perpetuity. You keep me in mind and refer me to people who might require my services.”

Liz laid an arm across the couch cushions. Her dress collapsed past her brassiere. Our eyes found a fit. The rest of the room vaporized.

“And how will I keep you in mind? There’s lots of people vying for my attention.”

“I’ll do my best to make this a memorable evening.”

It was, for me.

Liz passed away a few years ago.

If I get to heaven, I’ll grill her per that first time.

It started out clumsy and sweet. My punch line cued the first kiss. Liz was already victimized by too-tight attire. She shrugged her dress off down to her waist. Our kisses multiplied.

I carried her into the bedroom. She popped off three buttons on my shirt. They zinged across the room. We laffed. I heard the radio a bungalow over. Rosemary Clooney sang, “Hey, there — you with the stars in your eyes.”

We got naked. State it stark: we were built boss, stratosphere stacked and hung homewrecker heavy. We were the boffo best of L.A., circa ’53.

We made love all night. We drank champagne with Drambuie chasers. We smoked two packs of cigarettes and spritzed gossip. We put on robes and climbed to the roof of the bungalow at dawn.

An A-bomb test was scheduled in Nevada. The newspapers predicted some dazzling fireworks. Other bungalow dwellers were up on their roofs. There’s Bob Mitchum and a young quail smoking a reefer, there’s Marilyn Monroe and Lee Strasberg, there’s Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini. Everybody looks fuck-struck and happy. Everybody’s got a jug for the toast.

Everybody laffed and waved hello. Mitchum brought a portable radio for the countdown. He turned it on. I heard static and “... 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

The world went WHOOSH. The ground shook. The sky lit up mauve and pink. We all raised our bottles and applauded. The colors receded into bright white light. I had my arm around Elizabeth Taylor. I looked Ingrid Bergman straight in the eyes.

5

L.A. ’53 was my ground zero. That A-bomb blast still shoots shock waves through me. My calendar pages are radioactively roasted. You can’t read the dates as they swirl.

There was smog in the air then. People coughed and gasped citywide. I never noticed it. The bomb-blast colors stayed with me. My L.A. was always mauve and pink.

I worked LAPD. I walked a downtown footbeat. I rousted Reds during the “Free the Rosenbergs!” fracas. I pinched pervs, purse snatchers, and pickpockets in Pershing Square. My smut-film biz laid in loot. Donkey Don Eversall plied his python all over Hancock Park. Joi was Donkey Don’s dispatcher. She coffee-klatched with horny housewives and set up the dates. Liberace gave me girl-talk gossip. Liz Taylor and Michael Wilding went to Splitsville. I got 10 percent of Liz’s alimony. Joi, Liz, and I threeskied on my Landing Strip. Liz knew a Pan Am stew named Barb Bonvillain. She flew the L.A. — to — Mexico City route and had half of Hollywood hooked on Dilaudid and morphine suppositories. Bad Barb was 6'3", 180, 40-24-36. She scored high in the women’s decathlon, Helsinki ’52. All four of us locked loins. The Landing Strip lurched. We murdered the mattress and banged the box springs down to the floor.

L.A. ’53 — ring-a-ding-ding!

Joi and I hit the Crescendo and the Largo most nights. Cocktail waitresses fed me slander slurs in exchange for my titanic tips. It was my kid-voyeur days, rabidly redux.

A fragmenting frustration set in. I had the dirt. It would take an armada of shakedown shills and photo fiends to deploy it. I racked my brain. I knocked my noggin against the bruising brick wall of unknowing. Extortion as existential dilemma. A confounding conundrum worthy of those French philosopher cats.

My cop life could not compete with the lush life. I was a double agent akin to that Commie cad Alger Hiss. Liz Taylor drove me to Central Station and signed autographs for the blues. I knew that word would leak to Chief William H. Parker. I was full of a finger-stabbing Fuck you.

Ralph Mitchell Horvath still haunted me. Nightmares nabbed me as I slid into sleep. Joi and Liz nursed me with yellow jackets and booze. My bedtime mantra was He Deserved to Die. It was beastly bullshit. I couldn’t convince myself that what I did was right.

The Rosenbergs fried at Sing Sing. That was justified. They sold A-bomb secrets to Russia. They got what they paid for.

I developed my personal credo: “I’ll work for anyone but Communists. I’ll do anything short of murder.”

Morally sound in L.A., circa ’53. Equally sound in purgatory today.

I spent nuke-bomb nights at the Hollywood Ranch Market. My office was two-way-mirrored and overlooked the aisles. I scanned for boosters and looked down at legions of the lost.

Their pathos pounded me. Bit actors buying stale bread and Tokay. Six-foot-two drag queens shopping for extra-long nylons. Cough-syrup hopheads reading labels for the codeine content. Teenage boys sneaking girlie mags to the can to jerk off.

I watched, I peeped, I lost myself in the losers. A goofy ghost came and went with them.

He was about 23. He slouched in windbreakers and wore cigarettes as props. He breezed through the aisles at 3 a.m. He always looked ecstatic. He talked to people. He cultivated people. He studied people the way I looked in windows as a kid. I saw him out on the sidewalk once. He played the bongos for a clique of fags and junkies. A girl called him “Jimmy.”

The fucker appeared intermittent. I made him for an actor living off chump change and aging fruits. I saw him kiss a girl by the bread bin. I saw him kiss a boy in the soup aisle. He moved with a weirdo grace. He wasn’t froufrou or masculine. He was in on some exalted joke.

I saw him boost a carton of Pall Malls. I cornered him, cuffed him, and hauled him upstairs. His name was James Dean. He was from Bumfuck, Indiana. He was an actor and a bohemian you-name-it. He explained that Pall Mall cigarettes were queer code. The In hoc signo vinces on the pack meant “In this sign you shall conquer.” Homos flashed Pall Malls and ID’d each other. It was all-new shit to me.

I let Jimmy off with a warning. We started hanging out in the office. We tipped Old Crow, looked down on the floor, and gassed on the humanoids. Jimmy habituated the leather bars in East Hollywood. He ratted off pushers and celebrity quiffs and filled a whole side of my dirt bin. I told him about my smut-film and male-prosty gigs. I promised him a date with Donkey Don Eversall in exchange for hot dirt.

We’d hit silent stretches. I’d scan the floor. Jimmy would read scandal rags.

They were just popping up. Peep, Transom, Whisper, Tattle, Lowdown. Titillation texts. Lurid language marred by mitigation. Insipid innuendo.

Politicos got slurred as Red — but never nailed past implication. Jimmy loved the rags but said they weren’t sufficiently sordid or precise in their prose. He called them “timid tipster texts.” He said, “You’ve got better skank than this, Freddy. I could give you three issues’ worth from one night at the Cockpit Lounge.”

A bell bonged — faint and far-off. Memory is revised retrospection. Oh, yeah — fate fungooed me that night.

A newsboy pulled a red wagon into the market. It was stacked with magazines. He began filling the racks.

A cover caught my eye. Primary colors and big headlines screamed.

The magazine was called Confidential.

6

Beverly Hills Hotel

8/14/53

Joi woke me up. I was nudging off a nightmare. Double dip: Ralph Mitchell Horvath shot in the mouth, Manolo Sanchez with skeleton claws.

I looked across the bed. Shit — Liz was gone.

Joi read my mind. “She had an early call. She said to remind you that Arthur Crowley wants that phone date.”

I lit a cigarette. I chased three bennies with Old Crow. Aaaaaaah, breakfast of champions!

“Remind me again. Who’s Arthur Crowley?”

“That divorce lawyer who needs your help.”

“I’ll call him when I go off-duty.”

Joi stepped into a skirt and pulled her shoes on. She dressed as fast as most men.

“No more girls for a while, okay, Freddy? Liz is great, but Barb is like Helga, She Wolf of the SS. Really, that stunt with the armband and the garters? That and she hogs the whole bed.”

I laffed loud and lewd. My wake-up whipped through me and canceled cobwebs. Summer in L.A. — ring-a-ding-ding!!

Joi kissed me and bopped out of the bungalow. I shit, shaved, showered, and put on my uniform.

The bedroom phone rang. I snagged it. A man said, “Mr. Otash, this is Arthur Crowley.”

I buffed my badge with my necktie. A mirror magnetized me. Man, oh Manischewitz, I looked good!

“Mr. Crowley, it’s a pleasure.”

Crowley said, “Sir, I’ll be blunt. I’m swamped with pissed-off husbands and wives looking to take each other to the cleaners. Legal statutes are in flux, and divorce-court judges are demanding proof of adultery. Liz Taylor told me you might have some ideas.”

I lit a cigarette. Benzedrine arched through my arteries and piqued my pizzazz.

“I do have ideas. If you have flexible scruples, I think we can do biz.”

Crowley laffed. “I’m listening.”

I said, “I know some Marines stationed down at Camp Pendleton. I was their DI in ’43 and ’44, and now they’re back from Korea and looking for kicks. It’s a parlay. Hot rods, good-looking shills, walkie-talkies, phone drops, and Speed Graphic cameras.”

Crowley hooted. “Semper fi, sir. You’re a white man in my book.”

“Semper fi, boss. We’ll work out the details at your convenience, and I’ll round up my boys.”

“And in the meantime? Is there anything you need?”

Benzedrine was a groin groper. One thing came to mind.

“My Landing Strip’s got two empty runways tonight. Liz told me you’re conversant with the concept.”

I heard voices outside the bungalow — male and brazenly brusque. I thought I heard foot scrapes and coughs.

Crowley said, “Liz explained the concept, so I called you prepared. I’ll send two stenos over.”

“Mr. Crowley, you’re a pisser.”

“It takes one to know one, sir.”

We hung up. I heard the voices again. A key-in-lock noise followed. I walked into the living room. The door opened wide.

William H. Parker.

Two plainclothes bulls. Maladroit mastiffs on a mission to maul for their master.

“Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

I unpinned my badge and tossed it at Parker. It hit his chest and dropped on the floor. The mastiffs moved. Parker gestured Get back. The mastiffs pawed the carpeting.

I unhooked my gun belt and dropped it on a chair. I called up some cool. Freon Freddy, the Shaman of Shakedown.

“Hit me, Bill. Shack jobs, living above my means, bending the rules here and there. My head’s on the chopping block, baby. Guillotine me.”

The mastiffs smirked smug. Pious Parker parsed out a grin.

“You are currently engaged in an intimate relationship with a Pan American stewardess named Barbara Jane Bonvillain, now in federal custody for possession of narcotics procured in Mexico. I must inform you that the outsized Miss Bonvillain is a Communist agent and a personal emissary of Marshal Tito, the Red boss of Yugoslavia. As if that weren’t enough, Miss Bonvillain is really a man. She underwent a sex-change operation in Malmö, Sweden, in late 1951, before her stellar efforts impersonating a woman at the ’52 Olympics. You fucked a man, Freddy. You’re a homo. Get the hell off my police force.”

“You’re a homo.”

“You’re a homo.”

“You fucked a man.”

“You fucked a man.”

“You’re a homo, you’re a homo, you’re a homo.”

I drank myself into a stunned stupor. I passed out on the floor. I got intimate with insects inhabiting the rug. They were dung desperadoes. They were my filthy fellow travelers, lower than lice.

“You’re a homo, you’re a homo, you’re a homo.”

I drank, I passed out, I woke up. I went eye to eye with a big beetle. We discussed the man-bug metaphysic, infused with frissons from that freaky frog Camus. The beetle explained that life was horrifically happenstance and that we were all fucked by fate. Bugs were bid by biology to live off larvae and leaves. Men were massacred by lascivious lust and bumbled into bed with he-shes. You didn’t know that she was a he. Hit your bennie stash and find your way out of this funk.

I obeyed the beetle. The Benzedrine outrevved the booze. I talked shit with the beetle for hours. We went feeler to feeler on the floor.

I called Abe Adelman at the State License Bureau. I promised him two G’s for PI’s ducat, quicksville. I bid the beetle adieu and climbed back into my civvies. I drove straight to the Hollywood Ranch Market.

L.A. looked like Pompeii, post-earthquake. The summer sun skimmed the sky and scattered death rays. Hes were shes and shes were hes and the most gorgeous girls were gargoyles. I got to the market and ran up to my office. Jimmy was scanning the August Lowdown.

He said, “You’re wigged out, Freddy.”

I said, “I’ve been talking to a bug.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Some shit you wouldn’t believe.”

“I would. It’s the basis of our friendship. We tell each other shit the world wouldn’t believe.”

I smiled. “Tell me something typical. I’ve had a jolt. I need to get my feet back under me.”

“The barman at the Manhole is pushing horse.”

“I’ll file it away in case I need him.”

Jimmy said, “I’ve got a picture of Marlon Brando with a dick in his mouth.”

“I’ll give you a C-note.”

Jimmy passed me the Old Crow. I took a pull and felt the floor meet my feet.

“How was your date with Donkey Don?”

Jimmy held his hands two feet apart. Jimmy said, “Ouch.”

I roared. We passed the jug back and forth. Jimmy lit a Pall Mall.

“I’m up for a role on GE Theater, but this Paul Newman punk will probably get it.”

“I’ll plant a bag of weed on him and lay on the fear. You’ll get the gig.”

“Thanks, Freddy.”

I thought about the talking bug. I looked down at the floor. I saw the kid with the wagon, unloading magazines.

“I’ve got all this good dirt and no place to put it. It’s driving me fucking crazy.”

Semper fi.

I assembled my ex-Marine cadre. My porno-prosty boys proceeded priapically apace. My Camp Pendleton pals came up to L.A. and joined Operation Divorce. The two crews crossed over. I had six certified psychos culled for my command. My Pendleton pit dogs were blood-blitzed from killing Commies in Korea. They were out for chaotic kicks and required tight tugs on their chains. Our marks were adulterous wives and husbands. Donkey Don lured ladies to hot-sheet hotels and instigated insertion. Flashbulbs flared as I kicked in doors, camera cocked. My Pendleton pits were adroit and adept at rolling surveillance. They tailed wayward wives and whorehound hubbies to hotels and walkie-talkied me. Joi was the mouthwatering man bait. She worked off Arthur Crowley’s craaazy crib sheets on his hubbies’ habits. Joi was sinful seductress and cold cock tease. I always kicked the doors in just as zippers dropped.

Operation Divorce was a Marine Corps maneuver and a mad moneymaker. Operation Otash was the ultimate umbrella command. I had an army of snarky snitches on my payroll. My PI’s license arrived in the mail and served to cinch my sinful sanction. I did not much mourn my severed service with the LAPD. I paid vulture vice cops for tips on quivering queers, jittery junkies, dipsos deep in the DTs. I built fat files on celebrity secrets and hoarded the horrors hard in my heart. Knowledge is power — the Beverly Hills Hotel bug reminded me of that. The one puzzle piece still missing: how to systematically carve cash from all of it.

Jimmy joined in. I kicked putzy Paul Newman’s ass and held a bag of Mary Jane primed with his prints. Jimmy got the GE Theater role and groveled with gratitude. I hired him to hump the husband of a divorce-seeking dowager sick of hubby’s hijinks. Jimmy was a swift switcherooer — if it mamboed, he’d move on it. He boffed five babes in one week — topping Donkey Don’s extant record. I camera-caught the wives as Jimmy shot them the schvantz.

L.A. ’53 — rampant ring-a-ding-ding! Calendar pages ruffling toward that date with destiny.

I was on the Landing Strip with Liz and a waitress from Biff’s Charbroil. I heard the mail slot open and an envelope hit the floor.

It was a Western Union telegram. I opened it and read:

Dear Mr. Otash,

We here at Confidential Magazine are looking for a man conversant in the celebrity secrets of present-day Los Angeles, preferably a man with prior police experience. Would you be willing to meet me in a week’s time, to discuss a possible collaboration?

Sincerely,

Robert Harrison, Publisher and Editor-In-Chief

7

“Ava Gardner’s Dusky Dee-lite.”

“Johnnie Ray’s Men’s Room Misadventure.”

“Bad Boy Bob Mitchum: Back in Reeferland AGAIN?”

I wired Harrison and confirmed the meet. I booked a boss bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I borrowed textbooks from Arthur Crowley’s library and studied libel, slander, and defamation of character. I learned to think and talk like a language-lucid lawyer.

Jimmy bagged back issues of Peep, Lowdown, Whisper, Tattle, and Confidential itself. I studied linguistic loopholes and cultivated codes of mitigation, equivocation, ambiguity. Innuendo, inference, implication. So many wicked ways to scandal-skin a cat.

I alter-egoed myself in a week’s time. I discovered sin-uendo and scanda-language. I moved into the bungalow a day early. That talking bug and I conferenced and concurred: Confidential was the grooved-out grail of this shook-up generation. Disillusionment is enlightenment. Confidential trafficked truth and harpooned hypocrisy. It was a devoutly decorous document. It was the meshuggener Magna Carta of our hopped-up and fucked-up age.

It’s now 9/21/53. It’s now precisely 10 a.m. The doorbell rings.

Caviar, canapés — check. Martinis mixed magnifico — check. My dossier on Bondage Bob — malignantly memorized.

I opened the door. The Sultan of Sin-uendo: a nervous nebbish in a dreary drip-dry suit.

He said, “Mr. Otash.”

I said, “Mr. Harrison.”

He walked in and went Ooh-la-la. I poured two mighty martinis and pointed to the couch. We raised our glasses. I said, “To freedom of speech.”

“The First Amendment. What it hath wrought.”

We clicked glasses. I sat facing Bondage Bob. He made the you-and-me sign. He said, “Strange bedfellows.”

You’re stranger, dipshit. You wear women’s lingerie and love the lash. You published Honeys in Heels, pre-Confidential.

“Get my attention, Mr. Otash. Open strong, baby. I’ve got a storefront called the ‘Hollywood Research Bureau.’ It’s been my primary source since we launched. We’ve floated the magazine on the few nuggets it’s panned, plus imagination. It’s been thin gruel, by and large. Hit me, sweetheart. Show me why the cognoscenti says, ‘Fred Otash is the man to see.’ ”

I pulled out my Marlon Brando snapshot. I passed it to Bondage Bob. He gasped and sprayed me with a mouthful of martini.

I let it drip-dry on my suit coat. Bondage Bob coughed and called up composure. He said, “Holy fucking shit.”

“May I give you a candid assessment of your situation and explain how I might best serve you?”

“Hit me, doll. I didn’t fly 3,000 miles for some namby-pamby chitchat.”

I shot my cuffs and showed off my Rolex. I buzz-bombed Bondage Bob with the Freon Fred stare.

“You publish what is rapidly becoming the premier scandal magazine in a very crowded field. You compete with Whisper, Tattle, Peep, On the Q.T., Lowdown, and others. Your competitors rely largely on true-crime exposés, reports of miracle cures for various diseases, and rehashes of your own articles on celebrity misbehavior. The specific strengths of your magazine are its staunch anti-Communist stance and sex. Frankly, I find your articles that play on the greed of your readers are both unbelievable and devoid of the heat that people turn to Confidential for. There are no emerald mines in Colorado and no Uruguayan herbs that triple the size of the male member in two weeks’ time. You’re lying, sir. You’re hoping that bilking your readers with stories like that will both boost your sales and help defray the costs of the libel suits that are being filed against you with greater and greater frequency in circuit courts all over America. My good friend, the esteemed jurist Arthur Cowley, has informed me that magazines that publish filler pieces chock-full of bold-faced lies create what he calls a ‘gap in credibility and verisimilitude.’ This calls into question the veracity of all the articles published in said magazines over time, leaving said magazines vulnerable to both individual lawsuits and the looming specter of what Mr. Crowley calls the ‘lynch-mob-like and Communistic specter of the emerging class action suit,’ wherein aggrieved parties band together under the aegis of left-wing Jewish lawyers in order to posit a common beef and destroy the First Amendment right of free speech that we hold so sacred here in America. The mitigating, equivocating, and temporizing language that runs through your groundbreaking articles on celebrity misconduct will not save you. You may use ‘alleged,’ ‘purported,’ and ‘rumored’ as much as you like, but they will not legally extricate you in the end. My first two salient points are these: you must dramatically boost your sexual content, and everything you publish in Confidential must be entirely true and verifiable.”

Wooooooooo! Bravura breath control and artful articulation! Bondage Bob: flabbergasted and flushed behind Beefeater’s gin.

He fidgeted. He licked his lips. He crossed his legs like a submissive sissy. I saw restraint-rope scars on his soft and sockless ankles.

“Nuisance suits are costing us 25 thou a month. Those Commie lawyers are coming out of the sewers like rats.”

I sailed into my second soliloquy:

“Informants must be both credible and coercible, as well as vulnerable to exposure of their own misdeeds. I served as an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department for close to a decade. I have access to every crooked cop in this town, and they will rat out any celebrity, socialite, Communist, miscegenist, or alluring lowlife that they know of for a simple retainer. The scum that they rat out will rat out six others to stay out of your magazine, and the mathematical equation that I am positing will extend indefinitely. I can tell that you’re thinking, Informants alone will not suffice, and that assumption is correct. You may know that we are entering a bold new era of electronic surveillance. I propose that we install standing, full-time bugs in every high-class hotel in Los Angeles. I will bribe the managers and desk clerks of said hotels to steer celebrity adulterers and queers to specific rooms, where their sexual activities and conversation will be captured on tape. The best bug man on earth is a hebe named Bernie Spindel. I will meet with him soon. Mr. Spindel would love to enter your employ and has a gift for you. He bugged a bungalow at the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica last week. The manager of the hotel is a masochistic child molester with a quite understandable urge to be punished for his aberrant behavior. I will physically chastise him on a monthly basis, which will deter him from hurting children as well as keep him under my thumb. He will have strict orders to place all celebs in bungalow number 9. Bernie’s gift is a tape of Senator John F. Kennedy fucking Ingrid Bergman and detailing his preposterous plans to run for president of the United States to her, while she yawns and prattles on about her kids. Be forewarned: the fucking is short-lived. I’ll be frank: Senator Kennedy is a two-minute man.”

Bondage Bob: Ga-ga, goo-goo-eyed, gone.

“So, we—”

I cut him off. “So we also bug all the fag bathhouses. So I have extortion wedges on the informants who supply the dirt for our most explosive pieces. So I polygraph-test them to assure their veracity. So I create a climate of fear in Hollywood, which is the most gorgeously perverted and cosmetically moralistic place on God’s green fucking earth. Because I have an unerring nose for human weakness and have sensed for some time that we have entered an era where the gilded and famous all secretly harbor a desire to be exposed. Because I am willing to burglarize any psychiatrist’s office in order to get the dirt on their celebrity patients. Because I am willing to quash lawsuits through the threat and application of physical force.”

Bondage Bob guuuuuuuulped. “What won’t you do?”

I saw Ralph Mitchell Horvath. I said, “Commit murder or work for Communists.”

Hold now. Hear that pin-drop silence. Let it linger loooooong.

“Would you consent to an audition? To test your inside knowledge?”

I nodded. Harrison hit me. I bopped to his beat, beatific.

“Senator Estes Kefauver?”

“Whorehound. Shacks with Filipino prosties at the downtown Statler when he visits L.A.”

“Sinatra. Give me the latest.”

“Caught his new girlfriend muff-diving Lana Turner at the Beverly Wilshire, went on a six-day bender with Jackie Gleason, and wound up with the DTs at Queen of Angels.”

“Otto Preminger?”

“Mud shark. Currently enthralled with a sepia seductress named Dorothy Dandridge.”

“Lawrence Tierney?”

“Brawling, psychopathic brother of noted grasshopper Scott Brady. Digs the boys at the Cockpit Lounge and the occasional girl who looks like a boy.”

“John Wayne?”

“Quasi drag queen. Fucks women and looks stunning in a size 52-long muumuu.”

“Johnny Weissmuller?”

“King Schlong. Well known to have fathered nine kids out of wedlock with nine different women. Current holder of the White Man’s World Record.”

“Duke Ellington?”

“Current holder of the Jigaboo World Record.”

“Van Johnson?”

“The Semen Demon. Sucks dick at the glory hole at the Wilshire May Company men’s room.”

“Burt Lancaster?”

“Sadist. Has a well-appointed torture den at his pad in Beverly Hills. Pays call girls top dollar to inflict pain on them.”

“Fritz Lang?”

“Known to film Burt’s torture sessions and screen them for a select clientele.”

“The Misty June Christy?”

“Nympho size-queen. My shakedown bait Donkey Don Eversall gives her the big one on a regular basis. Donkey Don’s got a wall peek at his crib. My pal Jimmy Dean made an avant-garde film of their last assignation. It’s called The Stacked and the Hung. The premiere is Friday night, in my living room. You’re cordially invited.”

“Alfred Hitchcock?”

“Peeper.”

“Natalie Wood?”

“Child actress in transition. Rumored to be ensconced at a dyke slave den near Hollywood High.”

“Alan Ladd?”

“Dramatically underhung cunt hound. A man on the horns of an existential dilemma worthy of those Communistic philosopher chumps.”

He’s ga-ga, goo-goo, pulled into putty. He’s martini-mangled and mine.

“Mr. Otash, the job is yours.”

“Fifty grand a year and expenses. My operating costs will go at least double that.”

Now he’s green at the gills. Now he knows there’s No Exit. It’s a felicitous fait accompli.

“Yes, Mr. Otash. We have a deal.”

We shook hands.

Bondage Bob said, “Jean-Paul Sartre’s a pal of mine. He’ll love The Stacked and the Hung.”

That talking bug rocked across the rug and waved at me. I swear this is true.

8

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jimmy said, “The kid gets to you.”

“He shouldn’t be out this late.”

“You’ve got the same employer now.”

“I know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I said, “Hit me.”

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

Men’s Room Mishegas: Jittery Johnnie Strikes Again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parasite, parasite, parasite—

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

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

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

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

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

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

I said, “I’m sorry, kid.”

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

9

The market was 2 a.m. quiet. Jimmy and I quaffed Old Crow. I was spritzed with Johnnie Ray’s blood.

Jimmy said, “I’m up for the lead in East of Eden. Elia Kazan’s waffling. It could go either way.”

“I’ll lean on Kazan. He’s susceptible. There’s some pinkos he didn’t rat to HUAC.”

Jimmy walked to the mirror and pointed down at the floor. My hands hurt. My signet ring was missing stones.

“That kid’s down there, Freddy. You know, the one with the wagon.”

I got up and looked. The kid off-loaded magazines. The wagon was positioned sideways. red ryder was painted on it.

“Jimmy, do you know why you’re a freak?”

“I don’t know, Freddy. Do you know why you are?”

I thought about it.

I said, “I don’t know.”

10

I’m perched in purgatory. I’ve purged the most perverted part of my hellacious history. My brain waves broiled in seditious sync with James Ellroy’s. It was a carcinogenic collaboration. We collided over commas, colons, and alluring alliteration. Ellroy finally dumped his Otash TV show on a cable network. He’ll get more rich and famous. Did he do a deal with the devil? Has my heartfelt hope of heaven gone pffft?

It has.

My keepers have convened a kangaroo court. My transfer to heaven has been stamped “still pending.”

I’m deep in the dumps. They took my old body back. I’m perpetually 70 years old and dead.

My ass hurts. Johnnie Ray pitchforked me an hour ago. Kate Hepburn was next. Sweetie, you did do Rex the Rottweiler — all I wanted was ten grand for the pics!

Aaaaaah — I’ve got third-degree burns!!!!

I’ve petitioned my head keeper for a heaven day pass. A conjugal visit with Liz Taylor would put me up on my paws. More malignant memories are crawling through my cranium. I’m jumping Joan Crawford and socking it to Simone Signoret. Jerk-off James Ellroy would be digging this shit.

Where’s Ellroy when I really need him? Fuck — my ass hurts!

My head keeper just passed on the word: no heaven day pass. Consolation prize: I’ll have an hour in my cell with an earthly “old flame.”

I put on a spiffy sweat suit. I spritzed on Lucky Tiger cologne. I prepped some withering one-liners — L.A. in the ’50s, ring-a-ding-ding!!!!!

A tall woman approached the bars. Oooooooh — blasphemous-blond and boss-built! She got closer. She boded biiiiig and seemed fatalistically familiar. She wore stewardess blues, replete with pillbox hat. She smiled. What’s that bulge in her skirt? Holy Homo Hannah — it’s Barb Bonvillain, pre — sex change!

I screeched and screamed.

I cringed and crapped my pants.

I cried out for my keepers.

Am I hurtling to hell? Did this memoir make the prince of darkness send up for me?

Barb’s outside my cell now. Call it karmic comeuppance. You get what you pay for. I sure as shit learned it late.

Content

James Ellroy
Shakedown: Freddy Otash Confesses

Prologue

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