Widespread Panic Read online

  ALSO BY JAMES ELLROY

  The Second L.A. Quartet

  Perfidia

  This Storm

  The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy

  American Tabloid

  The Cold Six Thousand

  Blood’s A Rover

  The L.A. Quartet

  The Black Dahlia

  The Big Nowhere

  L.A. Confidential

  White Jazz

  Memoir

  My Dark Places

  The Hilliker Curse

  Short Stories

  Hollywood Nocturnes

  Journalism/Short Fiction

  Crime Wave

  Destination: Morgue!

  Early Novels

  Brown’s Requiem

  Clandestine

  Blood on the Moon

  Because the Night

  Suicide Hill

  Killer on the Road

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2021 by James Ellroy

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Part I originally published (in slightly different form) in ebook format as “Shakedown” by Byliner Fiction in 2012.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ellroy, James, [date] author.

  Title: Widespread panic : a novel / James Ellroy.

  Description: First United States Edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020050847 (print) | LCCN 2020050848 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593319345 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593319352 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593320310 (open market)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3555.L6274 W53 2021 (print) | LCC PS3555.L6274 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020050847

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020050848

  Ebook ISBN 9780593319352

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art and design by Chip Kidd

  ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by James Ellroy

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Shakedown

  Cell 2607

  Nate & Al’s Deli

  Robbery Division Squadroom

  My Fucked-up Foot Beat

  Liberace’s Swank Swish Pad

  The Beverly Hills Hotel

  Pervdog

  Cell 2607

  Atop Mattress Jack Kennedy’s Boss Bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel

  The Security Office at the Sleazoid Hollywood Ranch Market

  Bernie Spindel’s Bug Van

  The Security Office at the Sleazoid Hollywood Ranch Market

  Ollie Hammond’s All-Nite Steakhouse

  Outside the Horvath Death Pad

  Central Division Detective Bureau

  Infernal Intermezzo

  Outside Constance Woodard’s Hancock Park House

  The North Campus Library at UCLA

  Rogue FBI Field Facility

  Infernal Intermezzo

  The Sweetzer Listening Post

  The Downtown L.A. Public Library

  The Googie’s Parking Lot

  The Den Mother’s Red Bedroom

  The Malinow-Silverman Cemetery

  Gonesville

  Cell 2607

  Shell Gas Station

  Googie’s All-Nite Coffee Shop

  My Boss Bachelor Pad

  Griffith Park

  Security Office

  Outside Nick Adams’ Rustic Rental Pad

  Outside the Chateau Marmont

  My Boss Bachelor Pad

  My Boss Bachelor Pad

  Sub Rosa Investigation (187 PC)

  Outside the Chateau Marmont

  Outside Fat Boy Mazmanian’s Hideout

  Googie’s All-Nite Coffee Shop

  Infernal Intermezzo

  Bondage Bob Harrison’s Suite

  Shell Gas Station

  Listening Post

  Outside the Hall of Justice

  The Sweetzer Listening Post

  Outside City Hall

  Nabob Nick Ray’s Office

  KKVZ Radio

  Infernal Intermezzo

  The Green Room

  A Note About the Author

  To

  Glynn Martin

  and to

  Lois Nettleton, 1927–2008

  CELL 2607

  Penance Penitentiary

  Reckless-Wrecker-of-Lives Block

  Pervert Purgatory

  7/16/2020

  I’ve spent twenty-eight 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 and disobeyed has played out 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 sicko system and caused catastrophe. I’ve sizzled in my sins for two decades plus. I’ve relived my earthly life in dystopian detail. My cunning keepers are currently dangling a deal:

  Record your jaundiced journey. Trumpet the truth, triumphant. Hop to Heaven, and hit that 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 wilt-your-will women. Violated victims bop by my cell. They remind me of my many misdeeds and jab me with red-hot pokers. Gay gauchos hurtle down from Heaven and scold me for outing them back in the homo-hate ’50s. It was my job. I entrapped soiled celebrities and putzo politicos, and cornholed them in Confidential. I sold my soul to that maladroit magazine. Now, I’m sordidly SORRY.

  So what?

  Sorry’s for limp-dick losers. Confession salves the savage self and rips it to righteous redemption. Hear my plaintive plea, O watchful world:

  Get me the fuck out of here!!!!!

  My keepers have poised me with pen and paper. They’ve compiled a complete run of Confidential. My synapses soar with a million malignant memories. Freddy Otash, 1922–1992. I’m a rogue cop, a private eye, a shifty shakedown artist. I’m the demonic deus ex machina of my tattered time and place. I’m the hellhound who held Hollywood captive. I’m the man with the sex-scorched 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. We popped the pooh-bahs. We hurled t
he hurt, wholesale. We voyeur-vamped America and got her hooked on the shivering shit. WE CREATED TODAY’S TELL-ALL MEDIA CULTURE. We crazily crafted a lurid language and made it our own.

  It’s the lexicon of the lowdown. It’s the dialogue of the dish. It’s the slithering slur and the thrill of the threat. I think and write in algorithmic alliteration. Language must lambaste and lay on the lash. Language liberates as it offends. Confidential taught me that. My confession will make this dizzy dialect divide you in two. There’s Sin and Atonement, fuckers—there’s nothing else.

  Purgatory’s a punitive proposition. Montgomery Clift pitchforked me yesterday. Confidential labeled him “the Lavender Lilliputian” and “Princess Tiny Meat.” JFK followed Monty. I dumped the dish on his dope habit and call-girl cavalcade. Marilyn Monroe penance-poked me next. Marilyn was a snout trout. She dispensed head to rogue pharmacists, XXX-exclusive. They dispensed noxious Nembutal back. Maybe I shouldn’t have tattled the tale—but I was within my First Amendment rights!!!!!

  I’m consumed with candor and wracked with recollection. I’m revitalized and resurgent. My meshugenah march down memory lane begins NOW.

  NATE & AL’S DELI

  Beverly Hills

  8/14/92

  I was working Hollywood Vice in ’51. We got word on a fuck pad, operating out of a crib at the Villa Elaine. I hotfooted it over there.”

  We’re bopped back in my booth. There’s my audience: four showbiz machers in worse shape than me. Walkers, canes, and oxygen tanks clog the aisles to the kitchen. Fractious Freddy O.’s holding court.

  It’s late summer, ’92. I’m seventy and in baaaaad fucking shape. I’ve consumed scads of scotch and sucked three packs a day since I shot out the chute. I’ve got emphysema and a bum pump. I’m aching to make eighty. 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. He produced beach-blanket flicks in the sick ’60s. I pulled him out of the shit, circa ’66. He was reefer-ripped 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 three-hundred-pound chick. That was a boss beef, back in ’51. I told Sambo it’s dues time. It’s a morals bust, or a monthly donation to the Fred Otash Retirement Fund.”

  My pals yukked. I wrapped into my Reuben sandwich and felt a twisted twinge in my chest. I downed digitalis. I saw Jules Slotnick suck on his oxygen mask and light a Camel Light. Julie produced turgid turkeys about farmworker strife. Call him Mr. Guilt for Gelt. 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 schlockumentaries for Islamic TV. He was the King of the Chubby Chasers. He longed for it laaarrrge.

  I cruised my cranium cracks for a story. Two elderly gay cats sashayed by the booth. That fed me my cue.

  I pointed to them. “I got tipped to an all-male pajama party, back 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 booth roared and re-roared. Julie Slotnick gasped for breath. Al Wexler yukked out a bagel chunk. It flew and flopped to the floor.

  Alky Al owned six porno bookstores and nine nose-job clinics. He plowed a truck full of migrant Mexicans and left six dead. I got it mashed down to a Mickey Mouse misdemeanor. Al owed me, laaaaarge.

  I killed my sandwich. Alky Al blew a faux fanfare. I laid out my lifelong credo: “I’ll do anything short of murder. I’ll work for anyone but the Reds.”

  My boys clapped and guffawed. A bad twinge hit my heart. I downed digitalis and deep dips of scotch.

  Corned beef and sauerkraut socked my system. I got floaty and deep dyspeptic. I brought up a bread crust. It popped on my plate.

  The booth tumbled. My pals vaporized. My vision blurred black. Calendar sheets shot backward. Decades disappeared and devolved. Maybe I’m dead. Maybe I’m just dreaming this shit—

  ROBBERY DIVISION SQUADROOM

  LAPD Detective Bureau

  City Hall

  2/4/49

  There I am. I’m fetching fine in ’49. I’m beefcake, boss, and bangin’ them bonaroo bitches, three at a pop.

  I’m handsome and heavy-hung. I’m a lustful Lebanese. Call me a camel cad from the get-go. I’m an ex-Marine. I trained troops at Parris Island and sent them off to Saipan, savvy. I joined the LAPD in late ’45. I went on the grift faaaaaast.

  I formed a 459 ring. They worked my downtown foot beat. They popped pawnshops and dumped dope-pushing pharmacies. I fingered the jobs. My gang cadged cash and dope. They were 2:00 a.m. creepers. I was their Rogue Cop Rajah.

  I’m corrosively corruptible and tempted by the take. I live for the scurrilous score. It’s my existential fate. I had a squaresville home life in bumfuck Massachusetts. My mom and dad loved me. Nobody butt-fucked me in my bassinet. I live by a cool-cat code. There’s shit I won’t do. My code got catastrophized on 2/4/49.

  I hogged a hall mirror. I combed my hair and noosed my necktie. Sy Devore tailored my formfit uniform. The squadroom buzzed baaaad all around me. It’s a Code 3 squawk—shoot-out at 9th and Figueroa.

  Two men down. One traffic cop/one heist geek. The cop’s nudging near death. The geek suffered superficial wounds. Both men—ensconced at Georgia Street Receiving, right now.

  The squadroom bebop buzzed. The squadroom phones rang incessant. The buzz bombarded me. I heard murderous murmurs laced with a lynch-mob gestalt.

  I heard heavy footfalls. Booze breath bristled me.

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

  I turned around. It’s a Robbery bull named Harry Fremont. Harry has a rancid rep. He stomped two pachucos dead during the zoot suit riots. He pimped transvestite whores out of a he-she bar. He was shit-faced drunk at noon.

  “Yeah, Harry?”

  Harry said, “Be useful, kid. There’s a cop killer at Georgia Street. Chief Horrall thinks you should take care of it. This is an opportunity you don’t want to pass up.”

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

  Harry rolled his eyes. He passed me a key fob. He said, “4-A-32. It’s in the watch commander’s space. Look under the backseat.”

  I got it. Harry locked on my look. He went Nooowww, he gets it. He winked and waltzed away from me.

  I steadied myself and stood still. I loaded up on that lynch-mob gestalt. I lurched through the squadroom and zombie-walked downstairs. I hit the garage.

  I found the watch commander’s space. There’s 4-A-32. The key fits the ignition. The garage was dark. Ceiling pipes leaked. Water drops turned wiggy colors and morphed into wild shapes.

  I gunned the gas and pulled out onto Spring Street. I drove sloooooow. The heist geek was jacked in the jail ward. It was a lockup-transfer ruse. It was forty-three years ago. It’s still etched in Sin-emascope and surround sound. I can still see the passersby on the street.

  There it is. There’s Georgia Street Receiving.

  The jail ward sat on the north side. The squarejohn ward sat to the south. A narrow pathway bisected the buildings. It hit me then:

  They know you’ll do it. They know you’re that kind of guy.

  I reached under the backseat. I pulled out transfer papers for Ralph Mitchell Horvath. I grabbed a .32 snubnose revolver.

  I put the gun in my front pocket and grabbed the papers. I slid out of the sled. I popp
ed down the pathway and went through the jail-ward door.

  The deskman was PD. He pointed to a punk cuffed to a drainpipe. The punk wore a loafer jacket and slit-bottomed khakis. He sported a left-arm splint. He was acne-addled and chancre-sored. He vibed hophead. He looked smack-back insolent.

  The deskman did the knife-across-throat thing. 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. My heart hammered on overdrive. I lost my limbs somewhere.

  There’s no telltale windows. There’s no pedestrians on Georgia Street. There’s no witnesses.

  I pulled the gun from my pocket and fired over my own head. The gun kicked and lashed life back in my limbs. My pulse topped 200 rpms.

  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. He dropped. I placed the throwdown piece in his right hand.

  He tried to say “Please.” This dream’s a routine reenactment. The details veer and vary. The “Please” always sticks. I’m alive. He’s not. That’s the baleful bottom line.