Widespread Panic

Cell 2607

Penance Penitentiary

Reckless-Wrecker-of-Lives Block

Pervert Purgatory

8/25/2020

I’m balefully back. It’s time for my next contaminated confession. I’m still stagnantly stuck in the Hell Adjacent Hilton and yammeringly yearn for a heavenly reprieve. I’m still stuck with the fucked-up and failing body I had when I crapped out, back in ’92. It’s still confession/repentence/atonement. It still comes down to that. Here’s the draconian drill:

I’ll repugnantly reprise some shit I pulled in phantasmagoric ’54. I’ll be freewheeling Fred Otash at thirty-two. ’54 was a ring-a-ding-ding year. I’m going to diiiiiiiig going back.

So, succumb to the seditious soul of a scandal-rag scoundrel — because wicked words on paper are pop-pop-popping your way.

Freaky Freddy O. rides again.

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

2/14/54

It’s a wind-whipped winter nite. It’s cloudless clear all the way to noxious Nevada. Uncle Sambo is detonating a payload-packed A-bomb in some deserted desert burg. We’re here to grok, groove, flip, flash, and gas on the show.

We’ve got a ripe rooftop perch. I’m here at Bondage Bob Harrison’s behest. Confidential’s running a farkakte feature on radioactive waste as a dick-enlargement bonanza. Bob’s got a mad chemist brother. He’s calling his priapic product “Megaton Man.”

We’re here. That means me and my Marine Corps mastiffs: Race Rockwell and Ward Wardell. Mattress Jack has slipped his gilded guests binoculars and Hyannis Port toggle coats. My cool contingent carries burglars’ tools and comes with B and E know-how. The plan: burglarize Senator Jack’s bungalow in the wiggy wake of the blast.

Dig the guest list. There’s Jack the K. and insolent Ingrid Bergman. There’s Bob Mitchum and Juicy Jane Russell. There’s Tarzan-toned Lex Barker and liquor-looped Lana Turner. Jimmy Dean’s on my guest card. He’s still peddling snapshots of Marlon Brando with a dick in his mouth. Jimmy’s got director Gadge Kazan in tow. He’s this close to snagging the top role in East of Eden. Gadge is a maladroit midget. His flicks send me somnambulistic. He ratted some Comintern cads to HUAC and earned Confidential’s fevered fealty. He snitches recidivistic Reds to Bondage Bob, subversively sub rosa.

Senator Jack served rum drinks topped with floating hashish cubes. I opted for the Benzedrine-spiked reefers. Jack Baby loves my larcenous Lebanese ass. I flew a bitching bevy of call girls down to Acapulco last year. They trashed Jack’s paparazzi-pounced honeymoon and made Jackie jump into my bed. Jack’s a c’est la vie, Daddy-O, noblesse oblige sort of guy. Jackie was grovelingly grateful.

A portable radio announced the countdown. Waiters stood by with postblast drinks and hors d’oeuvres. A doomsday disc jockey intoned: “ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one — zero.”

Bombs Away, Motherfuckers!!!!!

A magnificent mushroom cloud morphed into mauve and pink. Man, what a suck-your-soul sight!!! My balls contracted. My boys and I hopped off the roof, down to ground level. Ground zero popped pink particles high in the sky. The gilded gang applauded and roared.

We deviously ditched the party. None of the bomb babies saw us. Jack’s bungalow was right there, off the roof. I demobilized the door lock with a celluloid strip. We locked the door behind us and worked with pocket penlights. Chop, chop — fuckers. I’m giving us eight minutes, tops.

Our top target was address books. They were stashed in handbags and overcoats discarded for Jack’s toggle togs. It’s a scandal-rag caper. I’m out to notch names/numbers/addresses. The lurid love shacks of the heavy-hung and hard up. Nubile names and fuck-struck fone numbers. Noxious names and homo-hideout addresses. Non sequitur names that might mandate bracing break-ins themselves.

It was all for Confidential. Knowledge is power. You naïve nudniks know that. My misanthropic motive? A demonic desire to know the world’s secret shit and hoard said shit for my personal titillation and shakedown potential.

The clock’s ticking. We crisscrossed the crib. Ward and Race went for all the boss booty. Ooooohhh — overcoats draped on hotel-suite chairs, high-line handbags galore. My job was forensic frame-up. I secretly secured three fingerprint cards from Beverly Hills PD Burglary.

Dig: three hot-prowl/rape-o/459 men. Bad lads, already ID’d. At large for six Beverly Hills jobs. Forced oral cop/straight rape/thirty-four thou in stolen furs and jewels.

It gets wicked worse. There’s a Little Lindbergh Law kidnap. She’s a Beverly High cheerleader. There’s multiple motel-room rapes before she’s cut loose. The BHPD wanted these fucked-up fiends, baaaaaaaaad. Heh, heh — I made Scotch-taped transparencies of the three print cards. George Collier Akin, Durwood N. M. I. Brown, Richard “Rattlesnake” Dulange. Fred O. judge-and-juries a frame job on YOU.

I got out my print cards. I laid the treated transparency tape across three thumb and full-fingerprint spreads. I pulled off my single-digit tapes. I laid prints on chair backs, waist-high wainscoting, touch-and-grab bedroom planes.

J’accuse — Akin, Brown, and Dulange — you were here. You robbed Senator Jack Kennedy’s hotel suite. You done been FRAMED.

Ward and Race dumped furs and address books. They stacked them in Senator Jack’s ostrich-skin suitcase. We were six minutes in. I saved the best booty for last.

Mattress Jack was a hellacious hophead. He had legal scripts from half the pharmacists in L.A. I made for the bathroom and Jack’s mad medicine chest. Oh yeah — Dilaudid, Dexedrine, Dolophine sulfate. Ooooohhh — the nifty new Nembutal suppositories!!!

Jack collected lissome locks of women’s pubic hair. He traveled with them and kept them in unscented sachets. I found his stash in an attaché case under the bed. They were lewdly labeled. I’ve always gassed on La Bergman and Anna Magnani. I left the attaché behind. I took two love-lashed sniffs on my way out the door.

Ward and Race left me the address books. Bomb blasts and burglary — the total take vibed ten g’s. Don Wexler knew a fence. We’d lay off the furs soonsville. We split the wallet cash three ways.

I popped two of Jack’s delectable dexies and leveled the load with a one-grain Dilaudid. I drove to Googie’s to log tattle tips from the late-nite legions who lingered there.

Tipsters crept up and crowded my table. Here’s baritone sax Gerry Mulligan. He lays out alto sax Art Pepper’s yen for lush high school chicks. Pepper pounded his pud at the sight of pom-pom-girl garb. He haunted Hollywood High and Hami High and left drool stains on the football field bleachers.

Comme ci, comme ça. I laid twenty clams on Gerry. He amscrayed to score some Big “H.”

Billy Eckstine dropped by to schmooze. The mellifluous Mr. B. was mad for miscegenation. He played all the colored clubs on 46th and Central. He loved Confidential and lauded its sheer linguistic flair. He called it the “scatterbrained scat of white men working hard to be hip.” Billy was right. I told him I’d insert the quote in the next issue. Billy went on to coonfide his own recent affairs. And, Freddy, dig — all these bints want to see themselves linked to me in Confidential.

“All these bints.” As in Ava Gardner, Bette Davis, ex — U.S. Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas. Lezbo basketball player Joan “Stretch” Perkins — hiding her secret yen for men from her sapphic sisters on the USC team. Plus the Misty June Christie, Anita O’Day, four boss bitches on work furlough from Tehachapi, and smack-back Chet Baker’s willowy white wife.

I laid two yards on Billy. He showed me a pic of Stretch Perkins. She’s sinking a loooooong hook shot against UCLA. I emitted low growls. Stretch ran six-six and 190. Billy grokked my Landing Strip antics. He affirmed that Stretch dug threeskies. He said he’d set Joi and me up with her.

Low growls and bilious boredom. Billy bopped off. Jilted lovers bopped up. They ratted out their cheating wives and hubbies as the Black Dahlia killer. The Dahlia was stale bread. I fobbed them off with a five-spot apiece.

It was 2:00 a.m. My dope cocktail coursed through me. My thoughts tumbled and tossed. That A-bomb blast blazed behind my eyelids. I saw three big squarejohns in gray suits by the bar. They vilely vibed fuzz. I thought of William H. Parker, still running spot tails on me. I blinked, the squarejohns squiggled, they might have been A-bomb/dope fantasia.

I thought about the magazine. Sales were up 16 percent for January ’54. Shame shot through me. I thought about my thump job on Johnnie Ray. Johnnie was tight with Joi. They koffee-klatched and gal-talked. Johnnie threatened to sue Confidential. He refused to desist. I had one rancid recourse. Johnnie gave Joi the blow-by-blow. Joi was righteously repelled. She resisted my rigorous romancing and refuseniked threeskies with Liz Taylor. Maybe Stretch Perkins would loosen her libido and liberate her heart.

Another jacked-up Joan jumped me. Joan Hubbard Horvath. Ralphie’s widow. I had two grand in my pocket and no place to go at 3:00 fucking a.m.

So, I cadged an envelope from my waiter.

So, I went by the penance pad.

Lower Hollyweird. Camerford between Vine and El Centro. A smudgy small wood-frame job, just short of a shack.

I parked across the street and bopped over. I popped the envelope in the mailbox and bopped back to my sled. A light popped on. The Horvath hut glowed internal and infernal.

I’m a devious dipshit. I made too much noise on purpose. Hey, lady — I killed your husband. It’s been five years and eleven days now. I’ve never seen your face.

Just newspaper pix. Pixilated pokes at you in wilted widow’s weeds. The Herald ran headlines. Wounded Cop Survives Shoot-out. Gunman Slain In Escape Attempt.

There’s a biiiiiiiig pic of Fractious Freddy. There’s zero per throwdown guns and Ralphie’s unarmed status.

I lit a cigarette and sat there. I played “Willow Weep for Me” in my head. Time tipped by. Joan Hubbard Horvath walked out on the porch. The front-room lights boffo backlit her.

She wore a dark wool dress and brown loafers. She sported a short shag hairdo and wire-rimmed specs.

She looked toward me. I looked at her. I’m a good whistler. I whistled “Willow Weep for Me” all the way through. I made the crescendo a cri de coeur and a long-suppressed sob.

Joan Horvath looked in her mailbox. The song went soooooooooo soft—

The Security Office at the Sleazoid Hollywood Ranch Market

2/15/54

Jimmy Dean and I lolled by the two-way mirror. We looked down at the dregs and the dreck and the dreamy drag queens dragging themselves through the aisles. Shifty shoplifters shot their gaze to our opaque eye in the sky.

Jimmy said, “Aisle six. That fat guy slid a Swanson’s TV dinner down the back of his pants.”

I lit a cigarette. “The checkstand guy will spot the bulge and nail him.”

“You’re abstracted today, Freddy.”

“I had a late night, and I don’t feel like messing with chumps.”

Jimmy pulled a chair up. I collapsed on my couch. Jimmy tossed a magazine on my lap.

“I talked to Billy Eckstine after you left Googie’s. He told me you’re entranced with a certain lezzie athlete. I heard she frequents Linda’s Little Log Cabin, and I thought you might appreciate page twenty-six.”

The Trojanette Sporting News. Glittery glossy and a boss booster rag. Page twenty-six: a fulsome foldout of Joan “Stretch” Perkins.

Woo-woo!!! She’s a Viking Valkyrie. She’s a blitzkrieg blonde with bleached-blue eyes. She’s bigger than Barb Bonvillain — richly revealed to be a man some quack diced and dehomoized.

There’s Strapping Stretch. She’s Stunning Stretch in USC crimson-and-gold silks. She wears no makeup. She looks heavenly wholesome. She’s smiling because she’s bigger than everyone — men insistently included. And I know and dig that that means ME — you towering temptress.

I tossed the magazine back to Jimmy. He said, “Something’s eating you.”

“Joi moved out last night, while I was at Googie’s. She left me a note: ‘Fuck you and go to hell. You’re a storm trooper, and the world is wise to your shit.’ ”

Jimmy yukked. “Joi’s vivid, but I found you a new roommate — at least for a while.”

“Stretch Perkins?”

“No such luck. Liberace called me. He wants you to look after his leopard while he goes on tour. You’re the only man for the job. The fucking leopard would kill anyone else.”

I yukked. “I’ll consider it. Tell me some other shit I don’t know, and make it entertaining.”

Jimmy lit a cigarette and blew concentric smoke rings. Gadge Kazan told me the trick got him East of Eden.

“I did two days on Ride Clear of Diablo, at Universal. Lew Wasserman knows we’re pals, and he chatted me up on the set. He said Rock Hudson’s going batshit with boys of all races, colors, and creeds, and Morty Bendish at the Mirror’s getting ready to blind-item it, and he’s passing the specific dirt and some motel-room infrareds on to some guys at Transom and Whisper. He wants you to put the squelch on it and find Rock a wife, so maybe the appearance of being married will put the skids to all those persistent and wholly accurate rumors.”

I roared righteous and laffed lewd. I folded my fitful funk and tossed Jilting Joi and Jittery Johnnie Ray aside. I popped two of Jack Kennedy’s Dexedrine and went rippled and revitalized.

“Call Lew, and put him on your side in all matters pertaining to your career. Tell him we’re in. I’ll lean on Bendish and the Transom and Whisper guys. We’ll negotiate the wife search when I glom the infrareds, and we’ll split Lew’s paycheck fifty-fifty. Hit the studio casting pools and hustle up some good-looking skirts who know an opportunity when they see one, and who know how to keep their mouths shut. No semipros, nothing garish. Withhold the ‘He’s a fruit’ punch line until we’ve narrowed down our list of candidates. Call Rock now and tell him to be discreet and order in his woof-woof, for the time being. Tell Lew that he’s the one to break the news to Rock — and to tell him the good news that as far as women are concerned, nothing lasts forever.”

Rippled, revitalized, ready to roll. Bam!!!!! — scratch a righteous and reptilian American, and the lines between OPPORTUNITY and LOVE blur.

Jimmy split to find Rock Hudson a wife he’d never pour the pork to. I checked the a.m. papers and ran the radio. As expected — the 459 at Jack Kennedy’s suite went unreported. As expected — a BHPD Burglary dick called me. As expected — he called everybody on Senator Jack’s A-bomb-bash guest list. As expected — he mentioned the burdensome B and E in sooooo-discreet terms. But — he laid the vivid verismo on ex-cop Otash, X-clusive.

“We know who did it, Freddy. It’s those rape-o shitheads who kidnapped that cheerleader chick. They left prints up the wazoo. Those humps are bought and paid for.”

Don Wexler called half an hour later. Dig: we got 11.6 thou for the furs and jewels in Jack the K.’s hotel suite.

I went through the five address books we stole. Confidential thrived on insider tattle. I had pink and red leather books for Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner, and some society sob sister named Connie Woodard. She scribed for the Hearst rags and wrote up the pampered party lives of the L.A. elite. I had black books for Baaaaaad Bob Mitchum and Senator Jack his own self.

I tapped La Grande Bergman first. The names and numbers were prissy predictable. Fat voyeur Alfred Hitchcock. Yawn-meister Gregory Peck. Dago directors Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Michelangelo Antonioni. So far, so what? Ingrid swung with Rossellini, circa ’50. She popped his out-of-wedlock whelp and caused a stir. So what? Confidential ran that stale story already. The rest of the numbers? Studio stiffs, fag hags, anonymous suck-ups to the stars. Plus — Jack the K., biiiiiiiiig surprise: Ingrid was a WOMAN — if it mamboed, he’d move on it. Plus this: all the dizzy data was in Confidential’s master file already.

I tapped Bob Mitchum’s black book. It was all call girls/all day and all nite. Note the boffo bust measurements next to the numbers. Half these babes peddled their poon out of Googie’s. Yawn. They were all in Confidential’s comprehensive call-girl file. Note to Bondage Bob Harrison: run an All Call Girl Issue soon!!!!

Next up: Hearst hack Connie Woodard. Aha — here my hackles hopped.

Call girls to Commies. That’s a puzzling parlay. Note these noxious names. We’ve got Joe Losey and John Howard Lawson. We’ve got Comintern cultural commissar V. J. Jerome. There’s dyspeptic Dalton Trumbo. Don’t stop now. There’s blustery blowhards blasted and blacklisted, Moscow’s minions all, plus all the mock martyrs known as the Hollywood Ten.

We had all the names and numbers in our “Known Commo” file. So what? It’s the confounding connection to the Woodard cooze that made it all pop!!!

And — here’s a hot one. Gnaw on this non sequitur. He ain’t no apoplectic apparatchik. He ain’t no rank Red, no way.

Steve Cochran.

Steve the Stud. Mr. Twelve Inches. B-movie thug and cad supreme. Star of dreary drive-in drivel like Highway 301, White Heat, and The Damned Don’t Cry. Steve the Stud’s ruff and tuff, on- and offscreen. He’s a brawler and a sicko psychopath. Men fear him, women crave him. He’s the hungest among us. He treats women ruff and tuff — like they licentiously like it. He beat two pachucos who tried to mug him half dead. A fruit honked him at Grauman’s Chinese. He bit the guy’s nose off and spit it back in his face.

Woooo-woooo!!!!

A hunch hit me, hard. Call it the Cochran Confluence. I had two address books left. Lana Turner’s and Jack K’s. Said books would yield boring bupkes. Except for this: said books would unify the Cochran Confluence.

I cracked the books and riffled pages. Steve the Stud’s right there, alphabetical.

Bingo. Both books. Add on Commophile Connie Woodard. Here’s my hunch: it all meant Something Big.

I drove back to my pad. I brooded and worked the phone until 10:00 p.m. sharp. Then I dressed sharp and drove out to the Valley.

Something Big.

My phone work confirmed it. I tapped my contact at PC Bell. I gave him four names and pledged him a thou to run phone bills. Dig this, demonic:

Jack Kennedy called Steve Cochran nineteen times the past two months. He called from his Senate office and his Hyannis Port home. Steve the Stud called Jack fourteen times. He called from his well-known fuck pad in West Hollyweird.

Connie Woodard called Steve Cochran twenty-four times the past two months. She called from her crib in high-rent Hancock Park. Steve the Stud called Connie twenty-one times.

Lana Turner called Steve Cochran thirty-four times the past two months. She called from her Holmby Hills manse. Steve the Stud called Lana twenty-six times.

I logged the insidious info and let it pulse and percolate. Dumb domestic shit ditzed me. Joi left a note, taped to the bathroom mirror. She called me a “Merchant of Hate and Violence” and preeningly prophesied my short and loveless life. I checked my answering-service messages. Liberace begged me to babysit Lance the Leopard. I left a message with his service: “Okay, I’ll do it.”

I popped two dexies and leveled the load with four belts of Old Crow. I put on my choice chalk-stripe suit and spritzed on Lucky Tiger. I pondered the Cochran Confluence and Joan “Stretch” Perkins, nonstop. I called Bernie Spindel on my way out the door.

I said, “We’re working tomorrow. It’s a bug-and-tap on Steve Cochran’s place.”

Bernie said, “Oy,” and hung up.

Linda’s Little Log Cabin: a lezbo lair and rustic rendezvous raft. A shadowed shack. Shellacked wood beams and show tunes tuned low. A make-out mood. Wraparound booths wrapped in cigarette smoke. Butch bunkers and fetching femme nests.

I walked in. I knew the drill. Central Vice validated the dive and took 5 percent. Linda Lindholm owed me. She liked lewd Latin stuff. She went through wetback wenches, mucho mas. Linda laid las chiquitas low. Linda went from burning love to boredom in six seconds flat. Frame-up Freddy stepped in then. I reefer-rousted the girls and bounced them back over the border.

Linda saw me. She stood at the bar and made that gimme sign. I dipped a double sawbuck her way. She pointed to a back booth.

I walked over. I smelled Jungle Jaguar perfume — straight up/no chaser. She stepped out of the booth and stood up to meet me. Gilded goddess, I’m yours.

She towered tall. She backlit and bashed my base desires and made me simmer sooooooft in her glow. She wore a sleeveless madras shirtdress and saddle shoes sans socks. She emitted Valkyric vibrations. She looked like Kirsten Flagstad sang Tristan und Isolde. She said, “Hello, Mr. Otash,” and held out her hand.

I took it and bowed. She had a husky kid voice. It was cool contralto cut with prep school — straight up/no chaser.

We slid into the booth. We sat across from each other. A table lamp lit Stretch, A-bomb mauve and pink. Her bare arms were my size. She raised a hand and tossed her hair. Her underarm hair showed. Her craaaaazy credentials crackled by torchlight. Kirsten Flagstad to Anna Magnani. She took on an Italian Neorealist glow.

She said, “Billy told me that you wanted to meet me. I like meeting new and interesting people, so I said okay.”

I said, “I saw your picture. That’s why I’m here, and I know you can guess why. But my intentions went out the window the second I saw you.”

Stretch smiled. “Billy said you’re the man to see in L.A. He considers me trouble-prone, because I sort of like girls. I’m training for the ’56 Olympics, and I don’t want to bollix that up.”

Drinks appeared. On the house. Linda brought them herself. A Manhattan for Stretch. Old Crow for me.

We tipped glasses. “You’re nineteen. Everyone’s a new and interesting person to you. That leaves you vulnerable. Lezzie girls, and colored guys like Billy, and guys like me are trouble, so if you’re trouble-prone, you should consider who you let into your life.”

Stretch sipped her drink. I held my hands back and tried not to touch her.

“If the stern-big-brother routine is a ploy, it’s a new one. People usually don’t meet me and start warning me away in the same breath.”

“I like the idea of you being reckless, and me getting you out of jams. Here’s my first bit of advice. Billy told me you want to be linked to him in Confidential. That’s a dumb move. It’ll mess you up with the USC regents and the Olympic people.”

Stretch shrugged. “I’m nineteen. I’m restless. I’m as notable as an intramural athlete who happens to be a girl can be. I’m big, and I’m rather awkward, and a certain type of man and woman go for me, and want to meet me and test themselves with me, and I’m very curious as to who those people are.”

I folded my hands on the table. Stretch folded her hands over them. Her hands were bigger than mine.

“So, I go for you. I wanted to meet you, and I’ve met you. I’ve explained my intentions, so here’s something you might find interesting. I’m looking after a real-live leopard for the next three weeks. You can visit my pad and meet him, and I won’t let him maul you or kill you.”

Stretch laffed. She temptress-tossed her hair. It was straight and dirty blond and center-parted. She had big buck teeth.

I locked up our fingers. It went to a cute tug-of-war. Her hands were stronger than mine.

“Are you in a jam right now?”

“No.”

“Can you sniff out bad intentions and walk away, fast?”

“Yes.”

“Will you call me if you’re unsure about somebody?”

“Yes.”

“Have you got enough money to live on?”

“Yes, and I’d never let man, woman, or beast set me up in a place and expect favors.”

I yukked. “It’s a code you’ve got, right? It’s like me. I’ll do anything short of murder, and I’ll work for anybody but Communists.”

Stretch yukked and unlaced our hands. The booth was warm. We popped sweat. Stretch wiped her brow and her underarms. She tied her hair back with a rubber band and gave me This Look.

“I’m glad you like me there. It means that you’re discerning, and that you dig the offbeat.”

My nerves were shot to shit. Stretch scared me and scattered me and lust-lashed me some new way. Stretch read me her restricting riot act.

“I like to make out and take naps with men. I’m putting the rest of it off until I sort some things out.”

I lit a cigarette. Stretch lit up out of my pack. She blew four concentric smoke rings to my three. I felt dope-ditzed and sex-socked — and lost-lifed some new way. I laid my head on the table. Stretch ran her hands through my hair.

“You’re okay, Uncle Freddy. I know you killed a man when you were a policeman, and Billy said maybe you shouldn’t have. I’m forgiving with people, if they don’t mess with me directly.”

I raised my head and pulled her hands down and kissed them. I caught her scent and my scent, all merged up.

“What else did Billy tell you about me?”

“He said we were both curious and lonely, in the exact same way.”

Jungle Jaguar. The widow’s withered scent. The Joan-to-Joan parlay at 1:00 a.m. A penance payment in my pocket and a picture in my head.

Liz Taylor in A Place in the Sun. The final shot. Monty Clift walks the last mile. The mad mise-en-scène goes silky subjective. There’s a climactic close-up. Liz looms, laaaaarge.

She parts her lips. Transposition/transfiguration. I kiss the merged Joan Perkins and Joan Horvath for the fade-out.

Camerford and El Centro. There’s the house. There’s late living room lights.

I parked and walked over. I mimicked Monty’s last mile and made the mailbox drop laaaast. I looped back to my sled and waited. I whistled “My Funny Valentine” at dirge speed.

Joan Horvath walked out. She wore the same stay-at-home ensemble. She held a cigarette and a highball glass. She tossed her dumb wool skirt and sat down on the porch.

She caught me mid-chorus. I hit a high note and made the secondary theme soar. I looked at her. She looked toward me. The moon moved out of a cloud bank. I saw gray flecks in her shag cut.

Those steel-rimmed glasses gave her 3-D vision. She saw through me like some creature in a monster matinee. I shut my eyes to shut her gaze out and deploy the big close-up. A black curtain closed off her kiss.

Bernie Spindel’s Bug Van

Outside Steve Cochran’s Apartment Complex West Hollyweird

2/16/54

Bernie said, “I’m wary of this job. This psycho cocksucker scares me.”

Studly Steve lived on Havenhurst between Fountain and the Strip. Three sparkle-Spanish buildings/one cool courtyard. Six pads per building. Call girls and minor movie minions ensconced within.

It’s 9:14 a.m. now. Steve’s home. His coon maroon Merc’s parked out back.

I lit a cigarette and gargled Old Crow. I had a case of the yammering yips and the mean megrims. I kept seeing things. Strongarm cops in surging surveillance. Women I wanted wicked baaaaaaaad and weren’t there. Waiting wilted me. I wanted WORK. I popped two Dexedrine to goose things along.

Bernie said, “He’s got four rooms, plus bathroom. I checked with the County Planning Office. The walls are soft stucco, and all rough-finished. They’ll be easy to drill and respackle. I broke in last night and carved some paint chips. It’s a new paint job, so it should be easy to match.”

We wore TV repairman jumpsuits. Master keys would get us in. Steve the Stud was filming some crime lox called Private Hell 36. Bernie spot-tailed him yesterday. He said Steve got his all-day calls at 9:30 a.m.

I said, “We’ll piggyback the listening post on Sweetzer. Burt Lancaster’s got his torture den in the same building. My Marines will monitor both locations. We’ll have a man hot-wired in at all times.”

Bernie went Oy. “Burt swings both ways. Ward Wardell told me. He buys his boys from a swish named Dwight Gilette.”

I said, “To each his own. You’re a big cheese at your synagogue, and you’ve got eight schvartze girlfriends.”

Bernie went Oy. I pointed across the street. Studly Steve’s rolling. His cherry Merc’s wheeling southbound.

We loaded up. Drills, spackle paste, paint and brushes — check. Wire rolls, condenser mikes, friction tape — check. Wire clamps, spatulas, industrial vacuum — check. Toolbox packed with close-work tools — check.

We packed two big metal cases. They were marked “Acme TV Repair.” We vacated the van and coursed through the courtyard. We hit Steve’s door at a sprint. Bernie jabbed keys at the door lock. Key #3 got us in.

I popped through the pad. It was cool, cozy, and tidy tight. Living room/ bedroom/kitchen/bathroom/washroom. One connecting hallway. One demented decorating motif:

World War II. Ripe real regalia. Booty from Berchtesgaden and Jap flags salvaged from Saipan. Swastika wall banners. German helmets as cereal serving bowls, sunk in the sink. SS-motif ashtrays. Rising-sun rugs. Showy shadow-boxed Lugers. Beaver pix of Eva Braun — der Führer’s freaky Frau. Choice tchotchkes on chairs/tables/wall racks. Dig this, deranged: Jap shrunken heads, beady-eyed beasts, all wearing fit-to-size Brooklyn Dodger hats.

Bernie slavered, slack-jawed. I got out my Minox spy camera and shot it all. I smelled Smear Job. Let’s foto-fuck this creep.

Steve Cochran, the Big Dick Bürgermeister of the L.A. Reich. Nazi nests at Warner’s, Metro, and Fox. We’ll loose-link it to last year’s Nazi/flying saucer piece. Bondage Bob Harrison partied with Paraguayan parasite Alfredo Stroessner and wicked Juan Perón. They hid hordes of Hitlerites, circa ’46. Commie columnists called Confidential “fascistic,” “nativistic,” “hucksteristic,” and “the voice of vile volition in the vox populi.” The coruscating Cochran exposé would lash those leftist lies!!!!!

Bernie jerked at my jumpsuit and jacked me half off my feet. “Freddy, let’s go. Quit gawking. We’ve got work to do.”

So, yeah — we worked. We whipped wires to wainscoting and wiggled them under rugs. We drilled white walls and wedged in bug mounts. We rigorously respackled and repainted. We vacuumed up Spackle dust. We planted microphones in cracks, crevices, crawl spaces. We ripped the receivers off the two telephones and planted condenser mikes. We studied standing lamps and stuck bug mounts under the shades. We bugged the bedroom and looped the living room. We supersocked in the sound.

Tick, tick, tick. Four-plus hours’ work. I was sweat-swacked and dexie-ditzed and stomp-the-stars elated. We repacked our gear. Bernie sighed and went Oy. Opportunity is love. That maladroit maxim moved through me.

The Sweetzer listening post. A two-bedroom flop in a Deco dive off Willoughby. We recorded Burt Lancaster’s torture tilts with stacked starlets there. Plus three call-girl cribs. Plus an opium den in the back of the Hunan Hut — “Home of the Shanghai Shipwreck Cocktail.”

The pad was wire-whipped, floor to rafters. Cable cords and outlet plugs jammed up the joint. We manned tape rigs round the clock. Bernie set up a transceiver in Steve Cochran’s living room. It went optimum operational at 6:00 p.m. 6:00 sharp came and went. I slipped on headphones and listened to dead air.

Jimmy Dean dropped by. He brought nudie pix and brief bios for Rock Hudson’s wife candidates. Dig: six backlot babes who cadged coffee for cast and crew and blew select directors. I told Jimmy they looked gooooood. Jimmy donned earmuffs and manned the Hunan Hut rig. He passed on choice sinuendo. The delivery dinks pushed pills packed in with their pupu platters and pork fried rice. Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre toked “O” in the den. They schmoozed their guest shots on Vampira’s late-nite TV show. Vampira went lez in the Los Amigas home for girls. She was running a lez string out of Googie’s, as we speak.

More dead air. I got bored and called my answering service. Oooooh — Miss Joan “Stretch” Perkins called. She wanted to know if she could pick up Lance the Leopard and install him at my crib. I called Stretch back and set it up. I urged caution. Stretch blew me a fone kiss and said she’d make out with me soon.

Joi called. Johnnie Ray called. The answering-service girl said they got catty. “Tell Mr. Otash he’s hung like a cashew — and who knows better than me?” “Tell Mr. Otash he’s an evil storm trooper — and soon the whole world will know.”

Fuck that shit — I went back to line hiss and dead air.

Time ticked. I chain-smoked and scratched my balls. The Hunan Hut delivered dinner. I noshed Noodles à la Chang and China Joe’s Chop Suey. Steve Cochran’s phone rang at 8:29.

Steve picked up. The voice activator vibrated. “It’s Lew’s War Surplus. We’ve got a clearance sale on Schmeisser machine pistols, Nazi daggers, and Jap shrunken heads — flamethrower-fried on Iwo Jima.” Steve bought three daggers and three heads. The guy said he’d fix them up with Dodger baseball caps.

More dead air. I doodled on scratch paper. I wrote “Freddy & Stretch” and drew a heart around it. Time ticked. Steve’s phone rang at 10:52.

I picked up. Static and line fuzz futzed with the call. I got a woman’s voice. I got Steve’s voice. I got static, fuzz, garbles, line lint, lewd laffs, and static stew.

I cuffed the console. I hit the squelch switch. I ditzed dials and got this:

The woman said, “Well... I don’t know... are you... can sign up the talent?”

Steve said, “Are you kid... concept... time has come... Celebrity smut. You want to talk—”

The call static-stuck, fuzzed and futzed, and diminuendoed to dead air.

Googie’s hop-hop-hopped. The Iris Theatre ran a sneak peek of some 3-D dog. The Googie geeks retained their 3-D glasses and goofed themselves out of their gourds.

Jejune jerkoffs. Their revelry ran rampant and rubbed me raw. Tattle tipsters took note of me. I got stuck with stacks of stale bread.

Yawn. Orson Welles sliced the Black Dahlia. Check The Lady from Shanghai. Grok the symbiology. Yawn. Bill Holden’s in the DT ward at Queen of Angels. He’s banging night nurses two at a pop. Yawn. I’ve got morgue pix. The Carole Landis suicide, back in ’48. All-nude. Full bush. Kodachrome color — if I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’!!

Snore. There’s a plot to throw the ’54 World Series. The Jewnited Nations is pulling the strings. Snore. Grace Kelly’s a nympho. She turned Johnnie Ray straight in a mop closet at the Crescendo. Snore. I know you won’t believe this — but Pat Nixon hatched Count Basie’s mulatto love child!!!!!

I believed all of it and none of it. I was back at the listening post. Unknown woman: “Can sign up the talent?” Steve Cochran: “Concept... time has come... Celebrity smut.”

Quivering question marks broiled my brain and skimmed under my skin. I couldn’t stop the scurrilous scroll.

Then:

The Googie’s geeks froze. I froze. Four fuzz walked in and waltzed the floor. Not just any cops. The LAPD Hat Squad. Sergeant Max Herman. Sergeant Red Stromwall. Sergeant Harry Crowder. Officer Eddie Benson.

LAPD Robbery. Hunter-slayers of heist men. All six-four and 220. All in pearl gray suits and white panama hats. The PD’s hardest hard boys. Chief William H. Parker’s personal pit dogs. Mastiffs on a mission to maul for their master.

I stood up. They whipped up and braced me. Red Stromwall said, “Hi, Freddy.”

Max Herman said, “The Chief wants to see you, Freddy.”

Harry Crowder said, “I like your suit, Freddy. Where’d you steal it?”

Eddie Benson said, “You were always a dipshit, Freddy.”

Max Herman tugged a belt loop and made me his bitch. Red Stromwall poked me with a beavertail sap. Harry Crowder and Eddie Benson flanked me and dwarfed me and made me mince minuscule.

We marched out to the parking lot. A PD plainclothes car rumbled, off by itself. Bill Parker sat in the backseat. I looked in. He looked out. I said, “How’s tricks, Bill? Your wife still doing her act with the mule?”

Harry Crowder kidney-punched me. Red Stromwall sapped me. Max Herman said, “Don’t screech, Freddy. You’ll sound effeminate.” Eddie Benson tossed me in the backseat.

I caught my breath and caressed my kidneys. Parker wore civvies. Parker spoke in his foghorn South Dakota drawl.

“Joan Hubbard Horvath, the widow of the man you killed in the line of duty, was murdered in her home last night. Her kids were off on a school trip. It appears to be a hot-prowl sex snuff. The house was ransacked, and the woman was strangled and stabbed. We found a total of fourteen envelopes bearing your fingerprints. Two of them were stuffed with twenty- and fifty-dollar bills.”

Parker paused. He evil-eyed me. He made with the malocchio.

“The victim fought. We found beard and skin fragments under her nails, and I can see that you’re unmarked. Her assailant had AB-negative blood. Your PD file reveals that you have O positive. This exonerates you as the actual killer, but not as an accomplice or a material witness. I would advise you to provide me with a plausible explanation for your prints on those envelopes.”

I evil-eyed Parker. I made my malocchio more hopped-up and hateful than his.

“I killed Ralph Mitchell Horvath under the PD’s implied dictum that cop killers must die. He was unarmed. I planted a throwdown gun on him and shot him in the back. Then the cop he shot recovered, which rubbed me the wrong way. I’ve been laying penance payments on Joan Horvath, going back five years. I’ve never spoken to her. You’re a good Catholic boy, Bill. You get the guilts sometimes, so you know how it is.”

Parker lit a cigarette and blew smoke in my face. I coughed the smoke back in his face.

“There’s more to this, and most of it makes you look bad. First off, we’ve seen you talking to the Beverly Hills PD, and we make you and your boys for the 459 on Senator Kennedy’s hotel suite. You screwed up the print transparencies, though. You laid down prints for all three of those shitheels who’ve been terrorizing Beverly Hills. That was a big mistake. George Collier Akin left the gang two weeks ago. We have very sound intelligence on this. He insisted on killing the girl they kidnapped, but Brown and Dulange held him back, and the girl was released. George Collier Akin is alleged to be casing solo hot-prowl jobs in my jurisdiction, and I’ve told Max and the boys to find him and kill him. They may seek to consult you in the course of their investigation, and I would advise you to cooperate. It might prevent the Beverly Hills PD from filing charges on you.”

Parker paused. Parker went Shoo, you cockroach. I stepped out of the car. The Hats surrounded me, hail-fellows all.

Max Herman shook my hand. “Here’s to you, Freddy.”

Red Stromwall shook my hand. “Be good, kid.”

Harry Crowder shook my hand. “We miss you, Freddy. Keep your chin up.”

Eddie Benson shook my hand. “Stay clean, dipshit.”

I cut free and stumbled back into Googie’s. I beelined for the front door and plowed busboys and waiters, en masse. I knocked over drink trays. Customers went eeeek and crap-your-pants cringed. I grabbed a double scotch off Gene “the Mean Queen’s” table and guzzled it, sans consent. I capsized a waitress and sent milk shakes and club sandwiches airborne. I crashed out the front door and snagged my Packard pimp sled at the curb.

The Strip was one block north. I blew a red light and whipped westbound. Ciro’s was close. I floored the gas and flamed through late-nite traffic. I swung hard right and racked my undercarriage all up the porte cochere. I fender-bended Ferraris and Facel-Vegas and didn’t give a fucking shit. Two car-park kids tried to corner me. I decked them and downed them and bashed them in the balls. They went ball-bashed falsetto and mewed for their mamas in Miami and Milwaukee.

I crashed into the club. The floor was packed tight-tight. Johnnie Ray stomped the stage. He woman-wiggled and wanton-warbled his hit song, “Cry.” He wiggled the mike and wailed like a jilted fishwife. He sobbed, he sighed, he tossed his spit curl and spun his hearing aid out into the crowd.

Joi and Liberace sat front-row center. I charged up. Patrons saw me. They stood up and went Whoa and Halt now!!!!! I dumped waiters and a fat broad at Bing Crosby’s table. I made the front row. Joi and Lee looked up. Joi lip-synched, “You loser cocksucker.”

I poured her Tom Collins down her dress and ice-cubed her chichis. Joi roundhoused me and fell flat on her ass. Patrons yowled. Johnnie blew his crescendo and cried for real. I dumped Joi’s purse and found her Seconal stash. I guzzled out the contents. I chased five fat red devils with Lee’s double martini. Lee looooved it. He pinched my cheek and swooned. I lurched and lunged and levitated my way out of the club. I slid into my sled and sluiced eastbound on Sunset.

Some new solar system subsumed me. Streetlights went mauve and pink. A-bomb particles parsed and pierced my windshield. I eyeballed passersby. Every man’s face went gargoyle, every woman’s went succubus. Steve Cochran sang “Das Horst Wessel Lied.” I ripped Nazi flags off his walls.

There’s Vine Street. I cut south and cut east on Camerford.

The Horvath house was hot-lit, postmidnite. Nosy neighbors gawked. Outside arc lights glare-glowed the pad and strafed the sky. I parked behind a row of black-and-whites and K-cars. Plainclothesmen and bluesuits pounded the porch. Kids’ toys and furniture were loose on the lawn. The front door stood open. Print men dusted walls. Foto men snapped fotos. Lab men fiber-swept the floors.

Burglary dicks checked window openings and cluck-clucked. I saw Harry Fremont at work. The red devils ripped me and turned it all topsy-turvy. I went blank. Arc-light glare burned my eyes. Joan Horvath and Joan Perkins kissed me like Liz in that close-up. I went black-blank and blinked. I saw Bill Parker and Red Stromwall pass a flask on the porch. I slid my car seat back to deflect the arc light. I got snug and supine. I said, “Please, God — make me safe,” and passed out.

I passed out cold and woke up windshield-warmed by the sun. My windows were up. A cop type stood in the street and eyeballed me. I didn’t recognize him. He got into an unmarked unit parked in front of me. I grabbed a stray piece of paper and wrote down the rear plate number.

It all came back. I prayed my way out of the sunlight and blinked back to black. Rosie Clooney sang, “Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes.”

The Security Office at the Sleazoid Hollywood Ranch Market

2/17/54

I made the Mirror. Niteklub Inferno: P.I. Fred O. In Frantic Fracas. I made the Herald: Confidential Cop Otash In Ciro’s Brouhaha. The hot headlines heartwarmed me. They instilled instant pride. Joan Horvath dead-deadened it. Freddy, what thou hath wrought.

Bondage Bob called and congratulated me. The insidious ink spiked Confidential’s early-morning sales. Ciro’s was Sheriff’s turf. Bob called Gene Biscailuz and pledged ten thou to his reelection campaign. It covered the cost of my ten-minute tantrum and frosted out possible beefs.

Joan Horvath got a bleary blip in the Herald’s local spread. Widow Woman Slain in Hollywood Home. Burglary-Sex Motive Cited.

Bob and I biz-talked. I tossed him the tattle on the Rock Hudson wife hunt and laid out the lowdown on the would-be wives. Bob knew candidate Claire Klein. She played shakedown shill at Whisper, back in ’51. Her part-time gig at Universal was a plain ploy to meet extortable men. I weighed in: We’ve got to scoop the fan mags on this one. Dole out the dish on Rump Ranger Rock’s disingenuous dates with real women. Sock in the subtext. It’s a shadow shuck. Hollywood will fuck you when no one else will.

Bob agreed. He added, And we’ll double-cross Rock on his wedding nite and expose his boy bent. We yukked the irksome irony. I dumped the dirt on the Steve Cochran gig. Bob pooh-poohed the Nazi-Jap fetish trove and called Steve a history buff and no more. He himself paid five thou for a swastika-print bikini once worn by Leni Riefenstahl. His girlfriend turned heads at that big Polio Fund pool party.

“And, Freddy — I heard Cochran leans left, if anything.”

I closed with the cloying clue of “Celebrity Smut.” Bob told me to work the listening post my own self. “And — if it pans out, we’ll send in a female ringer to entrap Steve — Claire Klein might be good.”

Bob signed off with “Sayonara.” I offered “auf Wiedersehen,” boss. I shit, showered, shaved, and made myself march to the mirror. I saw myself and saw where all this was going. Freddy, what thou hath wrought. I called Harry Fremont and made a lunch date.

I drove home. A basketball hoop was nailed beside my front door. Stretch sank long hook shots. She wore her USC silks. Neighbor kids watched. Lance the Leopard lounged in my doorway. Kids patted him and fed him potato chips.

I snuck up behind Stretch. I said, “If you convince me you’re really nineteen, I’ll toss your hair and kiss your neck.”

Stretch laughed. She dropped the ball and pulled her hair to one side. The kids scoped the exchange. What’s this repob? She’s bigger than him.

“I was born January 18, 1935, at Good Samaritan. That means you can go ahead.”

I caressed her bare shoulders and kissed her neck. I stood tiptoed to do it. The kids clapped. Lance the Leopard looked over and growled.

Stretch sank three long ones and swiveled. She grabbed my belt and pulled me inside my own pad. Lance followed us in. He detoured to the front bathroom and guzzled toilet water. Stretch waved to the kids and kicked the door shut.

I crapped out on the couch. Stretch stretched out and laid her head on my lap.

“My mom showed me the Mirror. Did you have fun at Ciro’s last night?”

“Do you live with your mom and dad?”

“I live with my mom. My dad was killed on Saipan, when I was eight. What did you do in the war?”

“I was a drill instructor at Parris Island. I trained Marines who got killed at Saipan, but I never went overseas myself.”

“Why not?”

“Because I knew I’d get killed, and I didn’t have the stones to take the risk.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m fearful and selfish, and I have to get whatever it is that I want, and that’s as far as I’m going with this line of questioning.”

Stretch balled my hands into fists and kissed the knuckles. She kicked off her sneakers and dangled her feet off the couch. Lance hopped on my favorite chair and licked his balls.

“You’re watchful, too. You forgot to mention that. And you’re diffident and circumspect around me. And none of the girls at Linda’s hates you, even though you broke half the liquor bottles during that Beverage Control raid in ’48. And you’re chagrined for digging on me, even though you spy on people and expose them in print, and beat the crap out of people who threaten to sue your low-life magazine.”

I smiled. “I stole the bottles I didn’t break, and Billy Eckstine bought them off me at half price.”

“Billy likes you. I wouldn’t be here if he didn’t.”

“Billy’s Billy, and he’s not all moonlight and roses. He tried to promote you to me and my recently ex girlfriend.”

Stretch pried my fists loose and placed my hands on her breasts. Hey there, you with the stars—

“Billy overrates me, in lots of different ways.”

“You’re nineteen, and you’re looking around. I get that you’re bold — and you think the rules don’t apply to you. That’s as far as I’ll take that line of chat, until I see you start making mistakes.”

“You’re saying the only thing that you can teach me right now is efficacy?”

“I’m saying that for some people, opportunity is love, and you might be one of them.”

The dizzy duo at the listening post. Leashed Leopard and Large Lady. Race Rockwell and Ward Wardell swooooooned.

Stretch wore a tweed skirt, saddle shoes, and a pink oxford shirt. Lance wore a spiked collar that Bondage Bob bought him for Christmas. I brought three pizza pies and a cold case of Brew 102.

Stretch loomed and she-lorded it over three big men. Lance roamed the rooms and let people pat him. Race fed him anchovy pizza. Ward showed off our new corkboard. There’s Operation Rock Wife bold-bannered — with nude pix and dippy dossiers tacked below.

We snarfed pizza pie and went to work. Race worked the Hunan Hut tap, I worked the Cochran line. Ward worked Call-Girl Line #1. Stretch got Call-Girl Line #2. Cool kicks motivated me. It was the lez line. Bernie Spindel and I hot-wired the crib — Flores south of Sunset. The sinsational sapphic scene sang dusk to dawn and entrapped occasional big-name babes and butches. Let’s see how Stretch registers and reacts.

We pulled chairs up to the consoles. We plugged in. We donned headphones. Lance noshed pizza crusts and crapped out on the floor.

I sat close to Stretch. We played kneesies and lazy-linked hands. I got two hours of dead air. Some unknown male called Steve the Stud at 8:19 p.m. Steve called him “Cal.” They schmoozed Private Hell 36. Steve dished Howard Duff and wife Ida Lupino. Duff was a souse. La Lupino was a snout trout. She blew him behind the food truck. Dorothy Malone sizzled. “I’ve got this celebrity smut angle I’m working on. She’d be a prime candidate.”

Bingo!!! — Celeb Smut Lead #1/8:27 p.m.

The call capped at 8:33. Dead air dinged in its weary wake. I watched Stretch work the lez line. Her headset was clamped tight. She notched notes in her fone log. She evinced deep delight and entrenched ennui.

Boredom banged me. I snagged Claire Klein’s buff shot and dossier off the corkboard and sat back down. Stretch snatched the buff shot and studied it. She winked and went Oooh-la-la. She said, “Rock should marry her.”

I winked back. Claire was boss-built and credibly credentialed. Born: New York City, 8/11/21. World War II Wave lieutenant. Court-martialed and DD’d on a pandering beef. Emigrated to Palestine, ’47. Seduced and tortured Arab spies for the Irgun and the Stern Gang. Shit — the A-rabs are my put-upon people!!!!!

Claire hits America. She moves to L.A. and gets a California teaching credential. She teaches algebra at Le Conte Junior High. She gets part-time studio work. Claire’s a climber. She takes scalps and moves on. Bob Aldrich, Otto Preminger, Henry Hathaway, Willy Wyler. She visits Burt Lancaster’s torture den. Burt wants to spin her on his wall-mounted dartboard and toss darts at her legs. Claire won’t play. Burt comes on coercive. Claire shows him the shiv strapped to her left leg. Burt amps up the ante. Claire drops names.

Mickey Cohen, Lou Rothkopf, Sammy Dorfman, Baldy Stein. The kosher kowboys in the L.A. rackets. All zany Zionists. All demented and dyspeptic. Burt backs off — Claire’s bad to the bone and calamitously connected.

Steve the Stud’s phone rang. Log it — 10:21 p.m.

Steve picked up. Unknown Male #2 jabbered. Steve called him “Fritz.” They schmoozed the Jap sword and Jap-shrunken-head market. Fritz called it “a growth industry.” Biz was up, up. Biz was bullish per Nazi-knife cutlery, all swastika-embossed. Plus Nazi helmets recut into chafing dishes and soup tureens.

Steve said, “I’m moving out of my kraut phase, Fritzie. Find me some Makarov pistols and some NKVD memorabilia. I wouldn’t say no to daggers from some Ivan’s Lubyanka stash.”

The call droned on. I exhumed Bondage Bob’s dish: “Cochran leans left, if anything.”

The call capped out — 10:42 p.m. Dead air doused me and slid me into sleep. I went someplace safe and soft. I snored in sync with Lance the Leopard, laid out at my feet.

Time ticked. Safe and soft became wet and warm. I swam in the River Styx. Joan Horvath rebaptized me. She wore a Nazi-print bikini and swim fins. Stretch jerked off my headset. Such innocence, such glee.

“Dig this, Uncle Freddy. The dots connect. Claire Klein’s hooking, part-time. She tricked with that Communist Party cultural guy V. J. Jerome, who’s supposedly infiltrating Hollywood, and the third spoke of the wheel was Babs Payton, who’s been on the skids since she dumped Franchot Tone, according to the fan mags my mom reads. They went at it for two hours straight, and then they drank vodka and slurped borscht.”

Ollie Hammond’s All-Nite Steakhouse

Wilshire and Serrano

2/18/54

We drank lunch. My appetite was up, up. I kicked assiduous ass all morning. Morty Bendish at the Mirror. The Transom and Whisper guys. I told them Rock Hudson was my gig, X-clusive. They kvetched, moped, and moaned. Blood bloomed on my beavertail sap. I sacked their civil contracts and ratched their rights of free speech.

Harry badged our waiter. He slipped us a jug at the PD’s stock half price. Old Crow and Dexedrine — va-va-voom!!!!!

“Let’s get to it. You want in on the Joan Horvath snuff. You’ve been waxing sentimental on that nutty broad for years. The price is five yards to buy in, and a yard a pop for special favors.”

I flashed my flash roll and peeled off ten C-notes. Frazzled Freddy always comes flush. Harry cadged the cash and smiled smug.

“It looks like a hot-prowl 459, gone way bad. The guy came in a cracked window and left rubber-glove prints on the sill. He had Joanie’s purse in his hands when she woke up and fought him. She scratched him, and we took AB-negative blood spill and dark and coarse beard fragments out from under her nails. That’s good, so far. But there wasn’t enough blood to run individual comparisons on. In this case, that means that blood type can exonerate, but it can’t convict.”

I gargled Old Crow. “Go on, and tell me why you called Joan a ‘nutty broad.’ ”

Harry made the jack-off sign. “One, she married Ralphie Horvath, had two kids with him, and stuck with him. Two, she was overqualified for a low-life thief and punk like Ralphie. She had some big education, and was some kind of Russian-history scholar, but all she did was stay at home and tend to her snot-nosed kids.”

I lit a cigarette. “Here’s the big question. Did George Collier Akin do the job?”

Harry shook his head. “I’m not so sure. Bill Parker’s convinced himself, he’s convinced the Hats, and you know what that means. Parker saw the hospital pix of that girl that Akin, Brown, and Dulange abducted, and now he’s running hot, with a thermometer so far up his ass that it hurts. He wants Akin dead, the Hats want to kill him, and it’s true that Akin broke with Brown and Dulange when they wouldn’t agree to snuff the girl. Okay, we can assume that Akin — who’s a hot-prowl man from way back — is off working solo, and most likely in L.A. city. So far, so good — but I go back to ’43 with this evil cocksucker — and the Horvath caper doesn’t look like his kind of deal.”

I stubbed out my cigarette. “How so?”

Harry said, “Okay. He’s got dark and coarse facial hair, so that matches. I checked his Quentin file, and he’s got AB-negative blood, so that matches, and it’s pretty rare. But I popped Akin for eight hot prowls in ’43, and he always wore a rubber red devil mask, cut down low on his neck, to protect him from scratching and gouging, and to further terrorize his victims — because he is the most sadistic son of a whore I’ve ever met — so if the Hats want to put him down, who am I to raise a stink?”

I gargled Old Crow. It rerouted my dexie surge, molto bene.

“He wanted to kill the cheerleader girl, but he’s never killed any women, prior to that, that you know of.”

Harry twirled his glass. “Never. He spent ’43 to ’51 in Quentin. He paroled out in November, hung up his parole, and went rogue. We’ve had six more hot-prowl/assaults possibly attributable to the Red Devil Bandit since then — all with grievous bodily harm short of murder. Then this fuck hooks up with Brown and Dulange, and it’s the BHPD’s grief from that point on.”

I said, “He split from Brown and Dulange two weeks ago. You ‘assume’ that he’s working solo, but you’re ‘implying’ that he’s not strictly adhering to his Red Devil Bandit MO, and you’ve got no reported hot prowls that you’re sure he’s good for.”

Harry sighed. “You nailed it. Never let it be known that the infamous Freddy O. drew a dumb breath.”

I chained cigarettes. “What else? Describe the crime scene.”

“The pad was ransacked. I think he was looking for something besides purse cash and whatever else he could carry away. There was over six grand of your penance money stashed in Joanie’s clothes closet, and he didn’t bother to find it or steal it. This whole deal reeks of personal animus. It’s an I-hate-you-and-I’m-going-to-kill-you job, and that spells revenge.”

I flashed my flash roll and rolled off five more C-notes. Harry snatched them up.

“You’re a white man, Freddy. I’ll have complete background paper on Joanie by tomorrow.”

I got noxiously nostalgic. “Harry,” “Ralphie,” “Joanie.” ’49 to ’54. A kid cop THEN. A Pervdog of the Nite NOW.

“I remember that day in the squadroom. You were younger and not quite so fat. ‘Hey, kid, you look bored. Go shag this Ralphie guy and kill him.’ ”

Harry went nix. “Can it, Freddy. You can’t pull the shit you pull in your everyday life and think that this jive crusade of yours will render you squeaky-clean.”

“Clean,” shit. “Jive crusade” — malignantly more so. Harry Fremont was bent and bought and paid-for since the year one. He knew bewilderingly bupkes per Opportunity is Love.

I drove back to my pad. The door was whipped wide open. I heard screeches, yowls, growls, eeeeks, and roars. I ran inside and grokked on the grief.

Catfight. Lance the Leopard versus Joi Lansing — my exultant ex and extortion partner par excellence.

Joi was packing left-behind undies. Lance smelled thievery. He pinned Joi to the back wall and clawed her clothes to torn tatters. Her dress dripped off of her. He sharp-shredded her brassiere. His claws caught frayed fabric and rip-rip-ripped. I sensed sexual intent. Lance lashed at Joi. He orgiastically ordered up a cross-species striptease.

I laffed. Joi screeched, “Freddy?” I grabbed Lance’s spiked collar and pull-pull-pulled. Lance went sulky submissive. He cursory-growled and slither-slunk to the bathroom. I heard him lap up a toilet-water aperitif.

I said, “What’s shaking, baby?”

Joi said, “You loser shitheel.”

I stepped toward her. She stepped toward me. She launched a left hook and landed it mid-face. She ripped a right. I let it land and pushed her down on the bed.

She said, “One for what you did to Johnnie, and one for that stunt you pulled at Ciro’s. And tell Lee to get that rape-o cat declawed.”

I pulled a chair up. Joi grabbed her purse and dug out her cigarettes. I lit her up.

“It’s good to see you, kid.”

“You insouciant shitheel. I’m never coming back to you, and I’m never working with you again — not in this lifetime.”

I laffed. “How’s this sound? Rock Hudson needs a wife. Lew Wasserman’s protecting his reputation and Universal’s investment. I could let you be the girl, for ten percent of the alimony deal when you dump him.”

Joi kicked out at me. Her shoes flew wide and missed me. Her nylons were nicked and rife with runs. Lance clawed cloooose.

“I’m never coming back to you.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“No more shakedowns, no more bait jobs, no more three-ways.”

“Come on. You’re saying no more Liz Taylor in the sack?”

Joi blew smoke up at me. Her fierce façade cracked a tad. She’d landed two good ones. I wiped blood off my lips.

“The world’s hip to you, Freddy. Your ‘Tattle Tyrant holds Hollywood hostage’ shtick is wearing people thin.”

“Who’s ‘people,’ babe? Come on. Name some names that mean something to me.”

Joi rehooked her brassiere. “How’s Steve Cochran sound? He said he’s seen you and Bernie Spindel lurking around his place. He ran a bug check and came up empty, but he’s got you pegged as Public Cockroach Number One, and he said you’re heading for a good ass kicking.”

Steve the Stud. There’s a grabber. It’s an irksome inkling of Something.

I lied loud. “His building’s full of call-girl cribs. Bernie and I were planting some taps. ‘Lurking,’ shit. He’s talking out of his ass, and the magazine’s got no stake in him.”

Joi flipped her burning butt at me. It singed my Sy Devore coat.

“You’re jealous. Steve’s got all the goods you’re envious of. I know you, Freddy. You’ve got to know what’s going on with him, and you’ll pay me for the debrief.”

My throat clamped and closed tight. My hands shimmy-shimmied. I whipped my wallet out and tossed bills on the bed.

Joi culled the cash and counted it. Confidential comes up flush. A grand for a five-minute snitch.

“I ran into Steve at Johnnie’s. He told me he’s making a ‘message’ smut movie, based on a hillbilly song by Bill Haley and His Comets, whoever the hell they are. He’s trying to recruit some name actors and actresses, because the film will only be shown privately, so no one’s career will get hurt. The song’s called ‘Thirteen Women and Only One Man in Town.’ The atom bomb destroys the world, except for thirteen women and a man in this little desert burg, and the man has a giant dick, and he’s on a crusade to repopulate the world. Get it? Steve’s out of his gourd, and he’s the director, the writer, and very obviously the star. He said he’s got financial backing, but I don’t believe him. Get it? He wants to lure thirteen women to the desert and get laid, and odds are, there’s no film in the camera, and it’s all some pipe dream.”

“Celebrity smut.” Steve Cochran’s name in Jack Kennedy’s address book. The phone records. Steve calls Jack/Jack calls Steve/Steve calls Jack.

I smelled Something.

“Five grand, love. I’ll hot-wire you and send you in to bait him.”

Joi smiled. “You’re malleable, Freddy. You’ve always been easy to manipulate. It’s the only thing that attracted me to you.”

I rolled to the Ranch Market. A radio broadcast broiled, up in my office. Dig: sodden Senator Joe McCarthy rips Reds and socks out southland subpoenas. Dig, ditto: Jolting Joe and Bondage Bob are jungled up — larcenous land deals and sleazoid slum holdings. Heh, heh — Fractious Freddy knows all and holds all trump cards tight.

I turned off the radio and checked my in-box. Harry Fremont delivered, quicksville. Bingo! — a background brief on Joan Hubbard Horvath.

Joan, the big brain and undulating underachiever. She matriculates at UCLA, circa ’39–’45. She logs advanced degrees in Eastern European languages. She speaks fluent Italian, Polish, and Russian. She works as an interpreter for the California State Senate, circa ’46–’47. She marries riotous Ralphie Horvath, circa ’48. She hatches his second-rate seed. She’s got no visible means of support, then to now. But — this bodes BIG — Red Stromwall finds a Bank of America passbook tucked in Joan’s undie drawer. AND — the current balance exceeds fourteen grand.

That’s a brain broiler. That’s prongingly provocative.

I recalled that cop car parked at the crime scene. I recalled that rear plate number I wrote down. I buzzed Central Burglary and braced Harry Fremont. Who’s this cop cad working for? The plate number ain’t LAPD. Harry said the suffix denoted a Fed sled. Maybe FBI or Treasury.

I downed two Dexedrine and gargled Old Crow. Aaahhh — my bloodstream blossomed and swelled. I called my answering service and checked my messages. Aaahhh — the wide world wants Freewheeling Freddy!!!

Joi called. Her koffee klatch with Steve the Stud was set for 7:00 p.m. Stretch called. She said she’d pop by my pad later. Bondage Bob called. Update me, sweetheart — what’s with heavy-hung Steve? Jimmy called. It’s official — Claire Klein’s in for the Marry Rock gig. Midnite at Googie’s — be there for the meet and greet. I called Bernie Spindel. Six-fifteen at Havenhurst. Joi’s jamming up Steve the C.

Wow — Frantic Freddy’s in demonic demand!!! He’s THE man to see!!!

Joi kvetched. She emphatically emasculated my last stirring statement. We wire-whipped her in the back of Bernie’s bug van. Freddy, the mike-mount’s too tight. Freddy, the lead wire’s bunched up in my brassiere. Bernie, quit honking me — get your fat paws off my tits.

The wire job ate up fifteen minutes. We shooed Joi out and reparked on Steve Cochran’s side of the street. Joi broadcast static and high heels hitting pavement. Our earmuffs caught every rustle and riff. Bernie worked the transceiver. The live feed fed furtively in. Knock, knock — Joi’s at Studly Steve’s door. Creak/gnash — door-lock noise — Studly Steve’s letting her in.

Static/voice burble/sound overlap. Bernie ditzed dials and recalibrated the rustles and riffs. We got settle-in sounds. Glasses clink/Steve serves drinks/cigarette lighters click.

Joi sighs. That’s her “We’re seated” signal. It’s laying in, loud and clear. Incriminate yourself, shitbird. Smut’s a felony bounce. Confidential gonna get yo ass. San Quentin’s surging yo way.

Joi said, “Who decorated this place, Hermann Goering?”

Steve said, “It’s set decoration for the movie. I’m deep into the immersion aspect of it all. There’s this subplot I’m working on. The guy who’s out to repopulate the world is a former Nazi sympathizer, and he renounces Nazism and moves into a one-world mind-set. Apostasy is a major theme of this movie. It’s not all fun and games, and hide the salami.”

Joi hooted. “Baby, you’re avant-garde.”

“I’m beyond it, you mean.”

Joi: “Yeah? Well, who else thinks so? By that I mean, how many name people have you signed up, other than yourself as the star?”

Steve: “Anita O’Day and Barbara Payton have inked contracts, as they say in the trades. Lana Turner’s on the ropes and considering it.”

Joi: “That’s week-old bread at half price, sweetie. Anita’s a junkie, and Babs is turning cheapie tricks out of Stan’s Drive-In. And, Lana — she’s just jerking your chain.”

Steve: “Hang on to your hat. I’ve inked Gene Tierney. You’ve got to gas on that one. She scored in Laura and Leave Her to Heaven, and she was Jack Kennedy’s fiancée, back before he married that lockjawed stiff Jackie.”

Ooooh — Jack the K. jumps in. Ooooh — his name in Studly Steve’s address book.

Joi: “My ex, Freddy, sent some girls down to Acapulco, to spice up Jack’s honeymoon. I know from Jack, believe me.”

Steve: “And I know from Freddy O. My pals in politics have been passing along rumors. The studios are putting together a slush fund to put the skids to Confidential. Freddy and his storm troopers have been ratting out all these fags, dykes, and politically enlightened people. The boom’s coming down on Freddy, mark my words.”

Bernie made the jack-off sign and went Oy. The sweats swept over me. “Slush fund.” “Politically enlightened people.” That read RED in my book.

Joi: “Name names, lover. Your pals in politics. Who’ve I got looking over me, to make sure that the you know what don’t hit the fan, if I appear in this movie of yours?”

Steve: “Jack Kennedy, for starters. Joe McCarthy, even though he’s a fasco in the Confidential mode. Also, we’ve got Senator Bill Knowland, and Senator Hubert Humphrey. All these heavy guys are pals of mine, and these guys will put the squelch on any rumors that might seep out about the film, and you’ve got my word that it will only be screened for high-ticket people in politics and the industry — people who want to see — pardon my French — movie stars fucking and sucking and preaching the anti-A-bomb gospel as only I can write it. This is a high-ticket endeavor from jump street, lady — and you can get in on the ground floor.”

Bernie went He craaaazy. Bernie grabbed his crotch and went Oy. Static broke through the broadcast. I doused dials and cleared the feed.

Joi: “...and it’s not like I don’t need the coin. But I’ll tell you, though — the idea of screwing on film flips my switch. As long as the film doesn’t make the rounds, like that photo of Marlon Brando with his mouth full.”

Steve: “Marlon wants to appear in the film. I have this on good authority.”

Joi hooted. “You’re out of your gourd. As Bondage Bob Harrison says, ‘I’ve got your good authority swinging.’ ”

Steve scoffed. “Mr. V. J. Jerome’s my good authority. How’s that for naming names? All the Group Theatre actors take their orders from him. And don’t give me that fasco smear that he’s in the employ of the Comintern. V.J. knows quality entertainment when he sees it.”

Joi scoffed. “Okay, we’re naming names. Okay, name me one name that can do me some good if and when my movie and TV career goes in the tank.”

Steve: “Harry Cohn. How big is that? He runs Columbia, and he’s bankrolling my film. He will personally see to it that nobody outside of a very elite circle of people see this movie. This is not a smut flick like you see at those Elks Club smokers.”

The transceiver fritzed and glitched and broadcast stark static. It consumed the conversation. Bernie doused dials and replugged the console. I snared snippets of chat.

Steve: “Come on. It’s not like you’ve never auditioned.”

Joi: “Well... it’s... not like I’m in any kind of ordained situation.”

Line buzz/fuzz/stuck static. Wire warp and burned bulbs — the console’s coughing smoke—

I dumped my headphones and hauled out of the van. I ran across the courtyard, rapidamente. I circled Steve the Stud’s building and peeped ground-floor windows. I saw Steve’s noxious Nazi regalia and Joi’s skirt and shoes, shorn in a heap. I saw Jap flags and shadow-boxed shrunken heads, and heard gruff growls in bass-baritone. I tracked a trail of nylon stockings and men’s Jockey briefs. I peeped one last Walpurgisnacht window—

And saw Joi gobble Steve the Stud, tonsil-deep.

Call me Cornuto. Call me shame-shattered and shit-shorn of power and agency. I made the midnite meet at Googie’s. I surged with self-pity. Stretch called my answering service. She dumped our date and cited early practice. The Pervdog of the Nite knows better. Stretch now roils recumbent in savage sapphic embrace.

I sat alone. I nursed a numb-your-soul highball. Joi walked in the back door. She saw me and glimpsed my sick sorrow. I was l’étranger out of cool Camus — gallows-bound of my own device.

Joi went oooh-la-la. She rolled her eyes and held her hands two feet apart. She shot me the finger and walked back out the door.

I bebopped to a boo-hoo beat. Cuckold/Cornuto/jilted Johnny left in the lurch. Somebody save me. I’m sunk in this sink of self-hate.

Jimmy Dean and Claire Klein walked in the back door. La Klein wore blue jeans, Bass Weejuns, and a baleful Beethoven sweatshirt. She was rangy, busty, dark-haired, and unadorned. She had that proud/New York Jew/don’t-fuck-with-me look.

I stood up. I primped. I blew off the blues and bloomed in the glow of new love.

They ambled over. This was biz on Bondage Bob’s timecard. I snapped my fingers. My funk went finito.

A wetback waiter wafted into view. I ordered a pitcher of off-the-menu/high-test lemonade. 150-proof bourbon. Some ambiguous amphetamine. Pounded potions from Hop Ling’s Hormone Hutch.

Jimmy played emcee. “Claire, this is Freddy. Freddy, this is Claire. I’m here as a full partner in this enterprise, and to ensure that Rock doesn’t get hurt.”

Claire said, “I’m here to marry him, not skin him alive.”

The waiter bopped back. I played host and poured drinks. I said, “Don’t smoke. This stuff tends to ignite.”

We settled in. I studied Claire. I gassed on her crooked teeth and bold brown eyes. Here’s my first fitful impression:

She’s an agent provocateur. She lives to make shit shimmy to her own beat and bounce to her terms.

She said, “Jimmy’s been briefing me. Steve Cochran, and all that.”

She lived to pry. I caught that. I rerouted a reply.

“All that’s the Rock deal, for the moment. Now that I’ve seen you in person, Miss Klein, I’ve got some ideas.”

Jimmy sipped laced lemonade. “We’re listening, boss.”

I sipped lemonade. Claire sipped lemonade. Her pupils popped, instantaneous. Her brows broiled with sweat.

“Here’s the drift. Six dates, covered in Confidential. Atypically wholesome by Confidential’s standards, but we’ll lay in some anti-Commie repob, to justify that. You play yourself. You’re the bohemian algebra teacher at Le Conte Junior High. You meet Rock at Scrivner’s Drive-In. You were sipping a pineapple malt, and some pachucos hassled you. This works an antipachuco message into the text. Rock walks into this fracas and beats up the pachucos. A flame sparks. He gives a pep talk to your algebra students. It’s heartwarming. You have six dates. Your separate worlds collide and merge. Rock takes you to Ciro’s and the Mocambo. You take him to culture caves and groove on le jazz hot. He proposes, you accept, the squarejohn press covers the wedding. You shack for the foreseeable future, and Jimmy watchdogs Rock and diverts him off boys. There’s some bylaws I’ll run by you when I know you better, and I’m not so afraid you’ll scratch my eyes out.”

Jimmy hoot-hooted. He eye-strafed the room and pupil-popped a built boy with bleached-blond hair. He ducked off to cull contact. I had Claire Klein to myself.

She said, “Let me guess the bylaws. Then I’ll tell you what’s acceptable, and what’s not.”

“Shoot, baby.”

Claire said, “No side deals with Rock, his boyfriends, or any men I meet through him. No obvious extramarital liaisons with men I want to work on my own, or men I just plain like. Quit my job at Le Conte, or turn it into some jive fable of me helping underprivileged kids. Fink out all the skeevy goings-on I see in my swanky new Hollywood life.”

I sipped laced lemonade. I made This Gesture. It meant bravo/stalemate/your move, mama-san.

Claire lit a cigarette. Bold girl. Brilliant girl. She understands chemical combustion. Her lemonade fails to ignite.

“No deals. Your bylaws stink. And, before you ask, yeah — I did pull a knife on Burt Lancaster. And, before it comes up, I was at Ciro’s the other night, and caught your act with Joi Lansing, and if you think she’ll ever play bait for you after the Cochran gig, think again. I’m better at this line of work than she is, and I’m not letting you lay down restrictions, even if it means blowing this ‘Rock’s wife’ caper sky-high.”

I took it in. I lit a cigarette. Freon Freddy. My lemonade fails to ignite.

“Okay. Do what you want. And, before you ask, yeah — I’ll consider you for any bait gigs that might come up for the magazine.”

Claire blew smoke rings. “It’s not all a one-way street, baby. I’ve got quite a bit of inside dirt, and I’ve got no qualms about sharing it, especially as it pertains to the Reds and their sort of filth. I’ve finked to HUAC, and I’ll fink to you — and at least you’ll properly compensate me.”

I made This Gesture #2. It meant capital C capitulation and wrung-out relinquishment.

Claire laughed. She flashed her crooked teeth. I went all woo-woo. Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes.

“Freddy O.’s a pushover. It’s the last thing in the world I expected.”

I said, “Let’s go someplace and fall down. Let’s crawl into a hole and not come out for a while.”

Claire said, “Not tonight. I’ve got test papers to grade, and I can’t let those disadvantaged kids down.”

Outside the Horvath Death Pad

2/19/54

Late nites become me. They obfuscate and overtake me. They send me where I’m supposed to be.

I pulled up and parked on Camerford. LAPD yanked their crime-scene guard. The shit shack now stood dark. The clock marched toward midnite. I ran my radio and notched Nachtmusik.

Stan Kenton’s “Machito.” Jimmie Lunceford’s “Uptown Blues.” Gonesville, Daddy-O. Mad music to B and E by.

I ditzed the dial and extended the interlude. I got bop, by way of Bird and Deranged Dizzy. Bop bops me and sends me where I’m supposed to be.

I brought my evidence kit. I brought my burglar’s tools. I was jazzed and jacked-up exhausted.

I’d worked Operation Rock Wife all day. Sexville, Daddy-O. Close contact with Claire Klein had me gooooooone.

Jimmy handled Rock and played director. Confidential supplied a foto man. I called Harry Fremont and brought him into the gig. Harry sprung three badass beaners from the Lincoln Heights drunk tank. They portrayed the pachucos who mob-menace Claire. We staged our stirring scene at Scrivner’s Hollywood. Claire sips a pineapple malt in her ’51 Ford. Rock lurks nearby. Swish carhops swarm him. He signs mucho autographs.

Jimmy feeds the cholos their motivation. He stamps them Stanislavskiites at the gate. Dig it: you want white pussy baaaaaaad.

They surround Claire’s car. They coochie-coo her and weenie-wag her. Claire shrieks. Rock rocks to the rescue. He pounds the three pachuco punks to the pavement. LAPD rolls up and rousts the beaners. Harry Fremont cued them in advance.

It all worked, perfecto. Our fotog shot film and stills and got it all in four takes. Rock meets Claire. It’s love at first sight. Jimmy counseled reluctant Rock. Brother, you have to. Lew Wasserman decrees that you take a wife.

I called Harry and pledged him five yards for his work. Harry shot me leads per the Horvath snuff.

Lead #1: he ran the plate number on that cop car I saw at the crime scene. Bip — it’s a Fed sled/FBI/on loan to serpentine Senator Joe McCarthy and his L.A. Commie hunt. Lead #2: the Hats pulled in a shitbird pal of George Collier Akin’s. He was a hump hot-prowl man himself. The Hats were hammering him haaaaaaaard.

Bird bopped me. Dizzy dinged me. I pulled on rubber gloves. I grabbed my evidence kit and rolled.

Shadows shrouded me. Streetlights were dim. I poured across the porch and braced the front door. I pulled a #4 pick and jammed the jamb upside the latch spring. The door popped open, faaaaast.

I pulled my penlight. I locked myself in. I laid my evidence kit on a chair. Harry got me the PD’s print manifest. Joan’s prints and her kids’ prints were inked in.

Smudge-and-smear locations were noted. No other known or verified prints were found and logged in. Here’s my job: roll overlooked touch-and-grab surfaces. Contrast and compare.

Chez Joan. It’s all there for you to touch and taste. She’s there for you as your own. Go forth, Pervdog — contrast and compare.

I roamed. I spread print powder on unlisted surfaces and pulled up dust and palm sweat. I worked back toward Joan’s bedroom and saved it for last. I hit the kids’ bedroom. It broke my hard heart. I pulled an unlogged little-kid print off a bed rail. I checked shelves and drawers for stashed booty and got zilch.

The kitchen reeked of overripe food and dumped trash. I rolled it, regardless. I dusted the breakfast-nook table and pulled up a full-digit print. I checked the print manifest and compared tents, arches, and whorls. Eureka — it’s an unknown.

I inked it on a fresh print card. My pad prowl was now two hours and ten minutes in. My heart hurtled on overdrive. I stepped into Joan’s bedroom and stood there.

Stale perfume stung me. It was Tweed or Jungle Gardenia. The Pervdog’s a scent dog and knows whereof he speaks. I caught Joan’s underscent. It jazzed me and fucked me up, in caustic concurrence. I penlight-flashed the walls and saw something.

A small borehole. Right there. The east-facing wall. Just above the floor. White Spackle paste caked at the edges. One frayed wire sticking out.

I knelt and flashed a close-up. I’m a bug-and-tap pro. I know bug-and-tap work when I see it. This was a bore-and-tap access point. The frayed wire was old. The bug-and-tap mounts had been removed. The Spackle paste was old and crumbled. The bug-and-tap removal man did a shit camouflage job.

Stale perfume. Tweed or Jungle Gardenia, mixed with her—

I went through the bedroom drawers. Joan’s underthings were stacked neatly. The stale perfume scent became her scent, all by itself.

I racked out at the Ranch Market. Bondage Bob called early and drilled me out of a dream. Joi rolled her eyes and held her hands two feet apart. Joi flipped me off and walked out of my life.

Bondage Bob reprised my dreary dreamscape. He demanded dish on the Steve Cochran gig. I laid out the lowdown on Joi’s bait job. Bondage Bob popped his perceived punch line:

Luscious Lana Turner On Skids — Soon To Sign Smut Contract!!!

We discussed Steve the Stud’s phone bills. He called Jack Kennedy and society scribe Connie Woodard. We discussed my address-book thefts at Jack’s hotel suite. Connie’s a Hearst hack. But — she’s got listings for the blustery blacklist boys of the Hollywood Ten. Plus V. J. Jerome and other Red rogues. Bob considered Commophile Connie the key to my perceived Something Big. Joi’s bait-and-bug job confirmed it.

Steve the Stud blathers per his “political pals.” The address book/phone bill parlay. Connie Woodard calls Steve twenty-four times. Steve calls Connie twenty-one times. Jack Kennedy calls Steve nineteen times. Steve calls Jack fourteen times. Commophile Connie’s once removed from Jack the K. Bondage Bob called it all a “pinko porridge” — now running into Red.

I told Bob I’d jump on Connie Woodard, and hung up. I omitted the time-consuming cost of my Horvath-snuff crusade. Time tumbled down on me. I reflex-popped two Dexedrine and turned time my way.

I had a pile of pilfered paper from the L.A. DA’s Office. Writs and rejoinders, summonses and subpoenas — all signed, sealed, and loaded with legalese. I crafted a subpoena for Joan Horvath’s college transcripts. I stamped it and forged it under the seal of DA Ernie Roll. I filled in the blur of blank paper and laid in the lawyeresque. I figured the UCLA admin hacks would kick loose within one week.

Rain and wild wind whipped me west on Wilshire. The run to Westwood Village took an hour and a half. My Packard pimpmobile carved a course westbound. Water-wilted pedestrians got out of my way.

I parked and ran into the main admin building. I flashed my Special DA’s Investigator badge at a wowed desk lady. Ernie Roll shot me the shield. I’d pulled him out of the shit with two Jailbait Jills at a Jonathan Club soiree.

The desk lady pledged quick compliance. I winked to seal the deal. L.A. was winter storm — struck. The haul back to Hollyweird would take two hours plus. I had time to kill. I schlepped over to the north campus library and ordered up microfiche.

The Hearst-hack Herald. Constance Woodard’s column. Look for pro-Commie calumny cloaked in society slush. Look for Steve the Stud and Jack the K. puff pieces and mere mentions. See what jumps out.

The microfiche ran from December ’53 back to August ’51. Connie’s column was called “Connie’s Column.” A small pic denoted all her one-page spreads. I recalled La Woodard from Jack K.’s A-bomb party. She was a knock-kneed redhead of the spinster-idealist ilk. She’d be richly ripe for Red recruitment.

I moved microfiche through a machine. I read Connie’s columns. My hackles hopped at the start. Every Hancock Park hoedown, every debutante do and cutesy cotillion contained a rip on the Reds. It was tooooooooo much of a good thing. It was waaaaay out of print proportion. I scrolled back and hit May 16, ’53. Jack K. attends a lawn bash. It fetes limp-wristed loser Adlai Stevenson. Connie properly prongs Adlai and calls him “pink in more ways than one.” Ooohhy, Connie — you got dat right. But — she singles out Jack’s kid brother, Bobby the K. She suck-up cites his tight ties to Joe McCarthy. And, dig: McCarthy has already disgraced himself. He’s now anathema to astutely informed anti-Reds.

Tooooo much of a good thing. Waaaaay out of print proportion.

What’s going on here? Connie’s got Jack’s name in her address book. It’s right beside John Howard Lawson and V. J. Jerome. She calls Jack. She calls Steve Cochran. Steve’s anti-A-bomb. That’s suspect in itself. Steve’s making “celebrity smut.” He’s “leaning left these days.”

I scrolled back through Connie’s columns. I skimmed for Jack and Steve worked into the word stew. ’53, ’52, ’51. There — August 18.

Steve’s captivating kids at a Shriners wingding. Connie’s ever the muddled muckraker and gooey gadfly here.

“B-movie heartthrob Steve Cochran broke hearts at the Shriners last night, and not the hearts of the willing women so often attributed to him. No, readers — and he didn’t brawl his way through the corridors of Children’s Hospital, nor did he hit any doctors or slap any nurses who got in his way. He simply showered affection on those less fortunate than he, and in the process he claimed the hearts of many, including myself. Isn’t it time the world looked at this very talented and humane young man as the gifted and sensitive artist that he is?”

I was floored, flabbergasted, and flipped into a rage. It’s the Parthenon of Puff Pieces. It’s the deus ex machina of disingenuousness. Connections, deflections, lies unworthy of me. I sensed it was Something Big at the start. Now I knew it was Something Wrong.

I levitated out of the library. Something Big/Something Wrong. I surfed the tsunami east on Sunset. It was some mad monsoon. A homing instinct homed me in on Havenhurst Avenue. I cut south and pulled up by Steve Cochran’s courtyard.

Sit-still surveillance. Hard rain to hide me, couched curbside. Old Crow to kill the cold.

I dialed down the defroster and kept the windows clear. I strafed eyeball paths to the rear carport and Studly Steve’s door. Time faltered and failed to trample my trance. Hours passed. Steve Cochran and Joi Lansing came out of the carport and headed for home.

His home. Her home now. They lugged her luggage. The matched set I bought her. Monogrammed at Mark Cross.

Some cute couple. A matched set. The Stacked and the Hung. Joi wobbled on too-high heels. A Band-Aid on Steve’s right cheek set off his jawline and failed to mar his good looks.

Boo-hoo. Nobody knows de trouble ise seen, nobody knows my sorrow. Somebody, save me. Who said size doesn’t count? I’m sunk in this sink of self-hate.

I bolted. I cut down to Fountain and came back up Crescent Heights. I parked in the rear lot and entered Googie’s. I saw her, straight off. She wore her culture-cave ensemble. Blue jeans, Bass Weejuns, baleful Beethoven sweatshirt.

I primped. I popped two Sen-Sen for instant fresh breath. She was alone. She sat in a back booth. I feigned the nonchalance of the cool and the callous and walked straight up.

She twirled her ashtray. She sipped absinthe on the rocks and nibbled french fries.

“Joi’s shacking with Steve Cochran. Jimmy called and told me. He said he helped Joi pack the rest of her stuff.”

I said, “The Teletype travels fast. I just found out myself.”

“I hope this consoles you. Jimmy said there was a very big girl asleep in your bed. She’s about as tall as that colored guy from KU. Joi hexed her and poured liniment on her basketball shorts.”

I laffed and took a jolt of Claire’s absinthe. It stung my too-taxed liver and looped to my head. Claire tossed french fries on my place mat.

“Bondage Bob cut you a check for your wardrobe. He wants you dressed to the nines for your Mocambo date next week. You’re doubling with Rock and Jimmy. Jimmy’s bringing Liz Taylor. He’s inked for some big oater set in Texas, soon. Rock and Liz top-bill him. Jimmy and Liz are strictly platonic. They’ll make sure Rock doesn’t light out after some hunky chorus quiff.”

Claire lit a cigarette. “I’ll sell Liz some Israel bonds. She’s devoted to the cause now. She’s sub rosa with this wheeler-dealer, Mike Todd. She never stays unmarried for long. Mike’s a landsman of the old school. Liz is forbidden fruit to him.”

I laffed. “Liz is low-hanging fruit of the new school. Confidential winks at divorces, and the magazine will always be kind to her.”

Claire tossed a changeup. “I shivved that Mex who whipped his chorizo out on me. Jimmy got him lit up on the Method, but he whipped it too close to my face.”

I tossed a changeup. “Harry Fremont saw a Fed intel file. He said you were in on the King David Hotel bombing, back in the British mandate.”

“I planted the bomb. And then I played girl sabra and lovingly carried out dead Englishmen.”

“The PD guys took the Mex to Georgia Street Receiving. You were kind. It was a superficial flesh wound. He got off easy.”

Claire twirled her ashtray. “You’ve got a history with Georgia Street. Harry loves to dish. He said your guy didn’t get off so easy.”

“Let’s not get into scalp counts. I couldn’t possibly compete with you.”

Claire smiled. “You’ve got lineage. The Lebanese come to fight. You’re a Christian, so your people were surely considered elites.”

I made the jack-off sign. “I fell off my camel and landed in L.A. My whole life’s nothing but a prelude to you.”

Claire yukked. “I’ll never say yes, and I’ll never say no. At some point we’ll want to fall down together, and we’ll both know the moment when it comes.”

I got chills. I chugged Claire’s absinthe. Wormwood whipped my wig and winged me back to Weimar Berlin. I joined a bevy of bohemians at the Hotel Adlon. We’re there to cull the cusp of the abyss.

“What are you doing in L.A.? You didn’t come here to teach school and see what happens next, and you’re overqualified for studio gigs and bait jobs.”

Claire said, “People here love to talk. Jimmy, Harry, Bob Harrison. I’ve come to understand that you’re interested in Connie Woodard, and I’m interested in her, too.”

I said, “Don’t stop now.”

Claire said, “I came to L.A. to kill a man. I don’t know his name, but I think Connie Woodard might. It’s all design and opportunity with me, as it is with you.”

I drove home. I drove home jazzed and jacked to the gills and SCARED down to my shit-stained shorts.

The pad was queerly quiescent. Stretch dropped her USC silks on the living room floor. She left a note propped by the phone.

“Harry Fremont called. Meet him at the Central DB tomorrow. 10:00 a.m. Hat Squad. A 459 suspect. Mandatory.”

I walked back to the bedroom. A bedside night-light was on. Stretch was crapped out on my bed. She was tucked in under the covers and dead asleep. Lance the Leopard was curled up on top of the duvet. Stretch was too tall for the bed. I covered her feet. Lance growled at me. Don’t mess with my woman, you hump.

I know when I’m licked. I walked back to the living room and fell asleep on the couch with my clothes on.

Central Division Detective Bureau

Interrogation Room #3

2/21/54

The Hats had a hump in the hot seat. A claustrophobe closet/one table/six chairs. One fat phone book in vivid view.

He’s Delbert Davis Haines/white male American/DOB 6-12-18. He’s tight with George Collier Akin. They met and compared notes at Quentin. Haines did a doomsday dime for 459 plus rape-sodomy.

Harry Fremont dragged a dragnet and hauled him in. He was alibied up for the Joan Horvath homicide. He blew blues clarinet at a round-the-clock romp at the Riptide Room. Dexter Gordon, Chet Baker, and Art Pepper alibied him.

Harry said he’d made pay-phone contact with Akin. Haines said Akin was casing cooze for a Red Devil Bandit comeback. He’s bidding Beverly Hills bye-bye. He’s back on L.A. city turf.

The Hats hovered. They straddled chairs and loomed over Haines. I kicked my chair against a side wall and scoped it. Haines was a junkie. He skin-popped Big “H” and held off a habit. He was snaggletoothed and pustule-pocked. He wore a Sir Guy shirt and slit-bottom khakis. He was one mean motor scooter and bad actor.

Max Herman said, “You could waltz, Delbert. We’ve got nothing on the books we can hold you on.”

Red Stromwall said, “Or we could concoct something and hold you indefinitely.”

Harry Crowder said, “Or we could get ugly.”

Eddie Benson said, “You know what we want and who we want, and the sooner you give it to us, the less likely it is that we’ll lay on the grief.”

Haines said, “Who’s that guy kicking his chair back? I think I’ve seen him before.”

Max Herman said, “That’s Mr. Otash. He’s a former Los Angeles policeman, currently employed as a private investigator.”

Haines said, “He’s a greaseball. I’m very much attuned to racial distinctions. I’m on the editorial board for the National States’ Rights Party, and I write for Thunderbolt Magazine.”

Red Stromwall said, “Let’s stick to the topic at hand. George Collier Akin. You know what we want.”

Haines picked his nose and ate the goober. He said, “I want your wife to suck my big dick.”

Red phone-booked him. Wham! — a big roundhouse shot. His face hit the table. His nose cracked. Blood blew out.

He tried to wipe his face. Harry Crowder grabbed his hands and cuffed them to his chair slats. The ratchets racked deep and drew blood.

Haines giggled and licked blood off his lips. He wagged his well-hung tongue at the Hats.

“I’m the Lizard of Love. Check my rap sheet. I’m a go-down man from way back.”

Harry Crowder said, “We like Akin for a burglary-homicide two nights ago. Lower Hollywood. Camerford off Vine. The victim’s name was Joan Horvath. Does that ring a bell with you?”

Haines said, “Your wife rings my bell, eight nights a week. She’s a go-down girl from way back.”

Harry phone-booked him. He sidled a sidewinder shot. Haines’ head whiplashed. Nose blood and mouth blood blew wide. Two teeth hit the far wall.

Eddie Benson said, “Joan Horvath. Camerford off Vine. The B and E snuff there. She wakes up and fights him. Does this sound like Akin? Has he mentioned the job to you?”

Haines licked his lips and torqued his tongue. He said, “Your wife mentioned that you’re hung like an amoeba. That’s why she brings me all the woof-woof.”

Eddie phone-booked him. He ripped a reverse sidewinder. It tore one eyebrow loose. Blood spattered the opposite wall.

I said, “Joan Horvath was pushing forty. She had some gray hair, and she was on the stout side. I bet Akin likes it younger and firmer, and Harry Fremont told me the Red Devil Bandit doesn’t range that far north and west.”

Haines licked blood off his lips. “Hey, the greaseball speaks, and he don’t speak with forked tongue.”

Max Herman said, “Tell us what you mean by that.”

Haines said, “I mean the greaseball speaks la verdad. The Red Devil Bandit likes young gash he can terrorize. He likes the pads off Washington and Jefferson, down near USC. I can get more specific if you give me that waltz and lay a big dinner-and-drinks chit for Kwan’s Chinese Pagoda on me.”

Max Herman said, “You’re on.”

Red Stromwall said, “We’ll throw in a shower and a run by Georgia Street. We know all the doctors there. They’ll fix you up.”

Harry Crowder said, “Delbert’s a white man.”

Eddie Benson said, “Let’s not go overboard.”

Haines looked straight at me. “Severance Street, the first block south of Jefferson. The Bandit’s casing a pad there. He might hit tonight. The chick’s a predental student. She’s got short dark hair in a pixie cut.”

Max uncuffed Haines and handed him his handkerchief. Haines wrung his wrists and grabbed the chair back. He staggered and struggled to stand up.

I said, “You don’t make him for Joanie? There’s no way he’d go for that?”

Haines haw-hawed. “ ‘Joanie?’ Do I detect something there?”

The Hats haw-hawed. They shared wicked winks. Max said, “We make him for Joanie, and that’s all that counts.”

Harry and Eddie took Haines to Georgia Street and ensconced him with the jail-ward doc. I went with them. Georgia Street, redux. I walked the wicked path I walked when I whacked Ralphie Horvath.

Eddie ribbed me. “Must bring back some memories. Eh, Freddy?”

Haines had no fixed address for George Collier Akin. The Hats preferred to hit hot-prowl men in the act. Max dug up a map of Severance south of Jefferson. Red stiffed cold calls to every house on the block. He pinned the pixie cut. She was one Louise Marie Vernell, age eighteen.

Red laid out the sick situation. Louise gave in to gasps. She rented a room in a coed boardinghouse. Max decreed evacuation. Red dispatched three patrol sleds. Patrol cops took the tittering tenants and their landlady to the downtown Statler. The PD picked up the tab. The girls gassed on the service and posed for pix with the cops.

We waited. The dead-of-winter day dipped to dusk. Max buzzed Bill Parker. I heard his side of the call. He said, “Yes, Chief” fourteen times and hung up.

I packed my .45 automatic. The Hats packed Python Magnums. Harry made the booze run. He brought back six short dogs of bonded bourbon and boocoo potato chips.

We rolled out in two K-cars. I rolled with Max and Red. Max laid in Ithaca pumps and a box of throwdown guns. We pulled ahead in the pole spot. Harry and Eddie bird-dogged behind. We hit South Severance at full dark.

Louise left her lights on, upstairs. They beamed I’m-home-alone/come-and-find-me rape rays. The pole car took the back-alley slot. The follow car took the Severance slot.

Max and Red played host. We shared short dogs and potato chips. The car was cold. The booze built its glimmering glow. Max and Red teased and taunted me.

You’re okay, Freddy. We miss you, Freddy. Confidential’s a shit rag, Freddy. How many felony extortions have you pulled this year, Freddy? The Chief’s got his four eyes on you.

It sailed sadly by me. I was off with Stretch and Claire and the mystery man she vowed to kill. Plus Studly Steve and Commo Connie Woodard. Claire per Connie: “I’m interested in her, too.”

Time ticked by. Tick, tick, tick. I entertain ripe revelations. Claire scares me more than Georgie Akin and the Hats. Tick, tick, tick. The hellhound Horvaths. They’ve haunted me and hurtled me here.

The teasing and taunting ebbed. Time ticked toward 10:00 p.m. Max and Red booze-dozed their way through ten-minute naps. I popped two Dexedrine and wound myself up.

I saw something. It was something evil and something wrong. The something walked northbound. In our direct direction. There’s a red blur where its head should be and black below that. It’s getting close. It’s veering toward the boardinghouse back gate.

The boys woke up. The Something’s très close. It’s got its hand on the gate latch. Said latch is unlocked. Our K-car’s shadow-shrouded. We see it. It can’t see us.

The Red Devil Bandit. That red-rubber mask. The fangs and horns. He rapes and maims. He didn’t maim and kill Joan Horvath. We’re past all that now.

Max and Red pulled their belt guns. I pulled mine. The Red Devil Bandit opened the gate and closed it behind him. Max mouthed One, two, three, four, five. We got out and followed him.

We were silent. We went tiptoed. The Red Devil Bandit heard zilch. He stood in the walkway and eyed the upstairs light. Harry and Eddie stepped out of a shadow. The Red Beast saw them. They held pump shotguns.

The Red Beast turned to run. He saw three more men and three more guns out. He saw me.

Max said, “Kill him, Freddy.”

I stepped up. I aimed. The Red Beast stood still. I fired at his face. It blew up, red-on-red. Red rubber and red blood exploded. The shot rang loud loud.

Harry and Eddie shotgunned him and tumbled him back off his feet. He’s dead now. He’s no danger. This is how this works. All five of us walked up and emptied our guns. We fired point-blank and shot him to bits.

Infernal Intermezzo:

My Furtively Fucked-up Life

2/22–3/18/54

Yeah, I did it. Yeah, it was wrong. Yeah, I enjoyed it. He got what he paid for. I knew I’d pay for what I did — somewhere down the line.

The Hearst rags loved it. Hats Slay Red Devil Bandit!!! Celeb P.I. Assists!!! Dig the fetching fotos. I stand with Max, Red, Harry, and Eddie. They dwarf me. We point to something red and dead on the ground.

More headline hullabaloo. Tipster tattles Red Devil Bandit!!! Daring Blastout Ensues!!! More fetching fotos. Georgie Akin’s 1943 mug shots. A posed my-hero shot. Fractious Freddy with Max Herman and Red Stromwall. We strut. Louise Marie Vernell smarmy-smiles up at us.

BHPD blew a stakeout on Durward Brown and Richard Dulange. The Hats hunted them down and killed them four days later. The Hearst rags loved it. More headline hullabaloo. Motel Massacre!!! Hats Gun Down Kidnap-Rapists!!! All Gang Members Now Dead!!!

Many more fetching fotos. The Hats with Chief Parker. Mastiffs maul for their master. Big backslaps and yuk-yuks. Many mentions of me. Max Herman sez, “We needed Freddy O. on this one. Freddy’s our boy. He’s the Man to See.” Red Stromwall sez, “God bless Freddy O. What’s a daring blastout without him?”

Yeah, I did it. Yeah, I knew it was wrong. Yeah, I loved the hack hullabaloo. Don’t fuck with Freddy O. He’s the Man to See. Too bad the world sees back. Too bad the world’s inside him.

The Googie’s gang saw me and tipstered me and fed me scandal skank. I scored scads of sinuendo for the magazine. Homos, lezbos, dipsos, hopheads. Underhung Untermenschen and big-dick barracudas. Heavy hermaphrodite action sunders the Sunset Strip!!!

Freddy O.’s the Shaman of Shame. He’s got to see you. Meanwhile, you see him.

I saw Joan “Stretch” Perkins and Claire Klein. We talked about things and around things. I saw them, they saw me. They taunted, tickled, and teased me. Stretch wanted kid love, with all the va-va-voom verboten. We slept in my bed. Stretch wore basketball silks. I wore pajamas. We necked to a naughty nexus and stopped cold. Lance the Leopard got between us. It was nighty-night then.

Stretch taunts and teases me. She knows things about me. She knows I killed the Red Devil Bandit in cold blood. She knows it all pertains to the hellhound Horvaths — and that I’m not done with them yet. Claire Klein taunts and teases me. She won’t fall down with me. We meet at Googie’s most nights. We smile and drink. Our hands often brush. We discuss Operation Rock Wife. I’ll be taking over Jimmy Dean’s stewardship soon. He’ll be off to shoot East of Eden with Gadge Kazan and that big Texas flick with Liz and Rock. Claire wants to kill a man. I see that. It consumes her. She sees that I’m going at the Cochran gig and the Commie Connie connection circumspectly. She’s an I-want-to-see-it-and-know-it-all-now girl. And most assuredly a psychopath. She withholds from me. I withhold from her. Our boundaries wiggle, wilt, and hold firm. She scares me. I don’t scare her. I’m not the Man to See. I’m the man to help her fulfill her murderous destiny.

Stretch provides innocence. Claire turns my lifelong voyeurism back in on me. I want to know her secret shit — but fear the price she’ll make me pay. She knows that I killed the Red Devil Bandit to impress her. She intends to kill a man. I intend to kill the man who really killed Joan Horvath. The hellhound Horvaths. It all comes back to them. Claire sees that and knows that full well. I told her that I killed a man so she’ll love me. She failed to reply. She won’t love me until I find the man that she wants to kill. In the meantime, my will to work rages.

I work the Cochran gig. Bondage Bob wants a wild and sex-soiled serialization. I live at the listening post. The bugs and taps work gooooood. I listen to Studly Steve fuck my ex-woman Joi Lansing. They deliriously defame me. They underestimate me. Joi tattles, taunts, and teases me. She knows there’s bugs and taps in place. She hasn’t told Steve. She knows I’m listening. She wants me to hear. That means she wants me to see.

Sound equals sight. My imagination seals the sensory gaps. Information insistently issues. Steve’s recruited Lana Turner and hunk hubby Lex Barker. Lurid Lex loooooves underage stuff. The casting-call aspect of the celeb smut film proceeds. I’m on it. I’m on the Connie connection just as assiduously.

I haunt the UCLA library. I bug the admin folk: where’s the Joan Horvath transcripts? The admin folk go Soon, soon. I read and reread Connie’s columns. Connie’s a codified Commie. She’s Comintern. She’s a Red Reptile couched in cold cover. She’s seditiously subtle. Her words work on a mini-microdot level. She’s linked to Steve Cochran. Steve rolls Red. I’m building a scandal-rag exposé and a damning derogatory profile. I’ll leak it to Joe McCarthy or some more rigorously responsible cat. I’ll get Claire the name of the man she wants to kill in the process. She’ll love me then or she won’t. I’ll love her whatever the outcome.

Work. Operation Rock Wife. Rock and Claire like each other and look good together. Lew Wasserman’s pleased. Rock orders in bunboys from a dial-a-dick service owned by Bondage Bob’s wayward kid brother. He gets his regular woof-woof.

I fotograph Rock and Claire’s at-the-doorway kisses. It’s sterile stuff. Rock’s a movie star and a very sweet man. He’s engaged to wed a batshit bomb thrower and more. Only in America, only in L.A., only in Hollyweird.

Work. Allies and adversaries. Old friends passing through.

The Hats hold their hands in. They swing by Googie’s and torque me as I tally tipster dish. How’s the boy, Freddy? Do you miss us, Freddy? The Chief misses you, Freddy. You’re always in his thoughts.

I looked for them when they weren’t there. I listened for them at the listening post. They imparted the impudent theme of We See You. I saw them everywhere. I popped pills and saw them. I drank and saw them. I adamantly abstained and saw them most of all.

Work. I got my FBI kickback on that Horvath house print. Bad news: there’s no file print extant. I lived at the listening post. I wore headphones and willed the next static-stung stammer that would tell me something big and something wrong. I waited for UCLA to call. Commie Connie confounded me. She never left her Hancock Park home. I needed to prowl the premises. I needed to booby-trap bugs and hot-wire the whole hut.

Connie hid from me and hindered me and immolated my imagination. I parked across the street and ran my radio. Joe McCarthy proclaimed his presence in L.A. Bondage Bob told me a Fed listening post had been set up someplace/somewhere. I saw my wires crossed with their wires, strung as strangling cords.

Work to constant communion. The Horvath house as soiled sacristy. I vowed vengeance. I exonerated the Red Devil Bandit and ran my rationale for his death. Joan heard me. I know that. Vigilance is love. I hold vigil most nights. I know that Joan hears me and sees me.

Outside Constance Woodard’s Hancock Park House

3/19/54

Connie’s casa: a cool contemporary job at 1st and Beachwood. Two stories. All aluminum and glare-glinted glass, up and down. Some dippy Dane’s idea of swank.

Sit-and-brood surveillance. A raging rainstorm brings a brainstorm. Hey, lady — we’ve got fone lines down. Let me in to check your fones, willya?

I perched in my Packard pimpmobile. Bernie was due. He had the pseudo repair tools and the know-how. He’d wing it, wham-bam. One fone/one condenser mike/one half-ass tap. No time to tackle bug mounts.

Raging rainstorms rip me, recollective. They wash my broiled brain and cleanse it clean. Last month. The Willoughby listening post. Stretch Perkins works Call-Girl Line #2. She hears Claire Klein and Barbara Payton trick with V. J. Jerome. The appalling apparatchik’s in Connie’s address book. That’s Cold Connection #1. Here’s Cold Connection #2:

Last month, ditto. Claire and I nosh the news and flare-flirt at Googie’s. Claire lights me large with this line:

“I came to L.A. to kill a man. I don’t know his name, but I think Connie Woodard might.”

Hence, my bristling brainstorm. Hence, my ripe resolve. Work the Connie Connection now.

I yawned. My ass dragged. I was up late last nite. My landlord lashed my lease and tossed me out, temporary. Lance the Leopard laid waste to his rose gardens and crotch-sniffed his crotchety wife. I rented a boss bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Stretch helped me move. We hung up corkboards and tacked on Confidential sales graphs. Plus notes for my tricky troika: Operation Rock Wife/the Cochran Gig/my Horvath Crusade.

Lance looooooved his new lair. Room service served his cheeseburgers and fries in a dog dish. Lance slept with Stretch. I slept on the couch.

I yawned. I dexie-dosed my case of the blahs. Bernie showed. He’d scrounged a PC Bell repair truck, for vivid verismo. He parked in Connie Woodard’s driveway and drilled her doorbell.

She opened up. There she is. She’s still rangy, nervous, and knock-kneed. She’s the Specious Spinster and Miss Soviet Suck-Up of 1924.

Bernie schmoozed her. I rolled down my window and heard it. He went Oy, lady. She went Oh dear — are you sure? Ooohhh — she talked butch bass like Lauren Bacall.

She let Bernie in. He shut the door. I timed the house call.

Twenty-two and a half minutes. Bernie tips his cap and walks back out the door. Connie holds the door. Her russet hair’s wrapped in a bun now. She waves toodle-oo.

Paydirt.

Bernie tapped the living room fone and shoved a short-range transceiver under the couch. We rented an upstairs office at a bank building off 1st and Larchmont. We laid in listening-post paraphernalia. Casa Connie to the post: two short-range blocks. We should get gooooood signal feeds.

Bernie donned earmuffs and manned the tap. I called Harry Fremont from a pay phone. I groused and proclaimed my predicament.

There’s this woman. She’s a shut-in. I’ve tapped her. I need to pad-prowl her. Rig me a ruse. I need four hours. She’s a Commie. Uncle Sambo needs you. Violate her sissified civil rights. I’ll pay you five yards.

Harry said, “Jawohl, boss.”

Babs Payton car-hopped and hooked out of Stan’s Drive-In. It was hard by Hollywood High. She hit her Hollyweird high with Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, circa ’50. She was Mrs. Franchot Tone for six seconds. Tom Neal beat Timid Tone half dead and battered Babs with his lurid love. Tattle told the torchy tale, circa ’51. Babs screeched into the skids. Yeah — she was ripe for Steve Cochran’s sexploitation.

I pulled into Stan’s. A comely carhop cadre caught sight of Big Freddy O. Babs and I go back. We badger-gamed businessmen in my cop days. Babs snared the schnooks at the Kibitz Room at Canter’s Delicatessen. She lured them to the Lariat Motel on Lankershim. She socked the saps into the saddle and made with the moans. I kicked the door in and played irate husband. I glommed the gelt and kicked the cads back out the door.

Babs roller-skated over. She wore red-and-white jodhpurs and a too-tight jersey top. She said, “Here’s trouble.” She hooked a tray to my passenger-side door.

I dropped a C-note on the tray. Babs got the gestalt. She got in and sat beside me. The C-note went poof!!!

“Okay, I’ll play.”

“I thought you might want to.”

Babs scooched down and swung her legs up. Her skate boots nudged her knees and fit fetishistic. She posed pouty and ran the rollers on my dashboard.

“I’m on my break for the next fifteen minutes. Before you start, let me state no more shakedowns. I’m not going back to the Kibitz Room or the Lariat Motel.”

I laffed and lit a cigarette. Babs bummed a smoke and lit it off my lighter.

“Freddy, the point of all this is—”

“Steve Cochran. The smut film he’s making, and don’t ask me how I know about it.”

Babs said, “Ha-ha. You’re jealous, because Joi’s in the flick, and she left you for Steve. I don’t blame you, I’d be jealous, too. Ha-ha, and too bad for Joi, because as crummy men go, she’s gone from the frying pan into the fire.”

I rebuffed the rude remark. “Update me. The film, who Steve’s conned into appearing, the start date, the whole schmear.”

Babs shrugged. “Smut’s smut, and I know from smut on an intimate level. Okay, Steve’s wrapping Private Hell 36 this week, so we’ll start pretty soon. Probably within the next two weeks. Lana Turner, Lex Barker, and Gene Tierney have dropped out, which I know don’t surprise you. Steve’s stuck with me, Joi, and Anita O’Day, and he’s recruiting an additional ten girls out of one of the call services some of us have been known to work for, which makes the full thirteen women that Steve and his big dick will repopulate the world with, after the A-bomb wipes everybody else on Earth out. Need I say that Steve’s hipped on the A-bomb like nobody I’ve ever seen.”

I went Don’t stop now. Babs rolled her rollers on my red leather dashboard. It rubbed me wrong. I nudged her knees and kiboshed it.

Babs tapped ash out the window. “The premiere is sometime later this spring, in Harry Cohn’s rec room. Smut’s smut, and what’s smut without some straitlaced boys to let their back hair down while they watch it. And since Harry’s Harry, and a tyrant, a perv, and, most especially, a suck-up, these are some powerful boys, as in Senator Bill Knowland, Senator Joe McCarthy — if he don’t trip on his dick between now and this so-called ‘premiere’ — and Senator Jack Kennedy, who I know you know from, but probably not on the intimate level that I do.”

“Why would Jack’s name be in Steve’s address book? Why would Jack and Steve be calling each other, regularly?”

“Because Steve’s Jack’s pimp and dope supplier in L.A. Because Steve rolls left, and Jack’s a barely suppressed bleeding heart, right below the surface.”

I dipped through the dish. I strung it and strained it and microscoped it minutely. Nothing surprised me. Babs bops banal, so far.

“Claire Klein. I know you trick three-ways with her, and don’t ask me how I know. If you start by saying she scares you, it wouldn’t surprise me — because she scares me, too.”

Babs made the hex sign. Babs waved faux wolfsbane. Babs made the sign of the cross.

“Claire don’t scare me. Claire terrifies me. She likes to shave men’s pubic hair with her switchblade, and half the tricks we go out on love it. She carries a Makarov pistol with a silencer in her purse, and we’ve been tricking with these Russian consulate guys, and they speak Russian with her, so I don’t know what they’re saying—”

I cut in. “And V. J. Jerome, that Commie culture-vulture guy—”

Babs cut back in. “Yeah, there’s him, and Claire’s cutting side deals, to swing with these Russian guys and shave their wives, and all the time she’s pressing them, and she’s digging for leads on some Commie scientist back in the ’30s and ’40s, who’s got this weirdo ‘Robin Redbreast’ code name, and then she’s pressing them on some society writer named Constance Woodard, and about this time I lose track of all Claire’s crazy shit, and start praying to the Good Lord that I never have to work with her again.”

I drove to Googie’s. I perv-peeped Claire through a back window. I trembled. I smeared nose prints on the glass.

Claire sat in her back booth. She sipped absinthe and nibbled french fries. She wore tight blue jeans. Note the knife bulge on her left leg.

I walked in. The dinner din diminuendoed. There was just my heartbeat and hers. I trembled and tumbled toward her. She saw me. She read me right and tumbled telepathic. She knew that I knew.

I sat down. She read me. Here’s fright-fraught Freddy. Freddy’s got the frets.

“I saw the bug mounts when Babs and I tricked with V. J. Jerome. I thought it might get back to you. Babs even joked about it. ‘Half these trick pads are hot-wired, and you never know who’s listening. Most likely it’s Freddy Otash.”

I guzzled her absinthe. I grabbed the goblet too hard. The glass sheared and shattered. Sharp shards cut my hand.

Claire pressed her napkin into the palm and balled my fist around it. Claire unbuttoned my shirt cuffs and rolled up the sleeves in one go.

She ran her hands up my arms. She tugged at the hairs. She removed the napkin and blotted blood off my hand.

“You should assume that I want you to know everything that I do and say, and that it’s all in our common interest. ‘Opportunity is love,’ as you’ve put it before. I’m sure you’ve spoken to Babs. And I’m sure she’s told you a few things. You know why I’m here in L.A., and I know you’re not here to deter me or prevent me from doing what I intend to do. From here on in, we should credit each other with the ability to learn and extrapolate. We’ll have our moment together when we’ve accomplished what we need to, and it will be all that much sweeter then.”

I said, “Robin Redbreast” and “Connie Woodard.” My voice sheared. Claire pulled her shiv and picked glass shards out of my hand.

Stretch said, “You’re scared. It’s like you’ve seen the world’s worst ghost.”

My bungalow bid me to safety. Stretch was safe. Lance was safe. I needed that. I wanted to be someplace dark and depraved with Claire Klein.

I held my hand up. I heal fast. My cuts had crusted into crisp little crosses. I’d been stigmatized.

Claire was a Navy nurse, circa ’43. Claire knew from knives. She cleansed my wound with high-test absinthe. She placed my hand on her breast and held it there. A part of me passed into her.

“Uncle Freddy, you’re shaking. And what’s with your hand? Don’t tell me you’ve had some kind of religious visitation.”

I walked up to my wall graph. Confidential’s daily sales had spiked spectacularly. I scanned my treacherous troika graph. I drew arrows between Operation Rock Wife and the Cochran Gig. I linked former to latter and wrote “Claire Klein & Babs Payton” below. I arrow-linked “V. J. Jerome” & “Connie Woodard.” I wrote “Russian consulate guys” & “Robin Redbreast” below that.

Stretch walked over. Her eyes grazed the graph and ran right to “Robin Redbreast.” She got goose bumps. They sprouted and spread up her arms.

I said, “The Sweetzer listening post. Monitor Lez Line #2, every chance you get. I’ll pay you two yards a week.”

She orbed my hopped-up hieroglyphics. She said, “As long as you tell me how all this plays out.”

The North Campus Library at UCLA

3/20/54

Transcripts. One fat file box. She was Joan Marcelline Hubbard then. She’s Joan Horvath of My Heart now.

The admin folks delivered. They called me this a.m. They stridently stressed that rules and regulations apply. View the contents here. Return the box by 9:00 p.m. Don’t snitch documents. Don’t mooch monographs. The honor system applies.

I took a table all by myself. I tallied tabbed file folders and crafted a chronology. Joan Marcelline Hubbard. DOB 11-6-18. She hails from the hellish-hot San Joaquin Valley. She’s farmworker stock. She graduated high school in ’35. She picks fruit with a wetback work crew. She digs her way out of the Depression. She applies to UCLA.

She’s accepted. She hits Westwood in the fall of ’39.

It’s all language labs and lit crit. She learns Russian/Polish/Italian. She flaunts her fluency in class and stages stirs. La Hubbard’s a hambone. She’s a distaff disc jockey on Bruin Radio. She shoves Shostakovich down the throats of the campus illiterati. She rewards them with reductive Rachmaninoff and cheesy Tchaikovsky. She riffs on Russki literature. She writes her own commercials for Russian restaurants. She’s a regular at Karlov’s Kasa Kiev. Karlov kicks back kash. She writes her own commercials for Polish Pete’s Pirogi Palace. Pete pays her in cold cash and kielbasa cutlets. She works her way through college in this mad manner. She’s a noted campus cutup. She’s a sinfully self-promoting cheerleader chick.

She gets the grades. Woooo!!! — Straight A’s across the board. She studies the Russian romantic poets. She cruelly critiques the movement. It’s all marginal and mystical malarkey. She links Polish piano pounder Paderewski to nattering Nazi composers of the oompah-band ilk. Her professors know that she’s a gallivanting gadfly — but stress the solid soundness of her rigor. ’39, ’40, ’41. Joan Marcelline Hubbard makes her mark and goes forth.

She graduates. She goes on to grad school. That crisp chronology cruised me through her academic life. Course names/dates/test scores/grades/the names of professors. The transcripts tripped by as La Joan’s light fantastic. File pages blew by in a blur.

I hit late ’41 and the cusp of ’42. I hit my first chronological misfile. Spring ’40: An Introduction to Polish Labor Movements/Professor Witold Kirpaski. I put the transcript aside and plowed through late ’41. Then this, then this, then THIS:

Fall ’39. The Political Content of the Post-Revolutionary Russian Novel/Guest Professor Constance Woodard.

The nite becomes me. I assume my Pervdog pose. My hophead side sidles forth and fuels me. I’m the Red Devil Bandit, one crazed chromosome removed. It’s kid shit shorn of pretense. I’ve peeped since I was fourteen years old in bumfuck Massachusetts. Thus, I peeped NOW.

I parked outside Connie Woodard’s pad. I popped three Dexedrine and adjusted my adrenaline load. Midnite marched to 1:00 a.m. All Connie’s lights were off. I pondered a B and E — but abstained.

My wall graph walloped me. Lives and lines linked on paper. Fall ’39. Connie Woodard links to Joan Hubbard. Connie’s linked to Steve Cochran. Claire Klein links to Connie. She’s marked a man for murder. She thinks Connie may know things. She knows I know things. She knows I’ve got L.A. hot-wired. I’m the Man to See. Claire talks to me through a mad medium. Listening posts broadcast two ways under her spell. She pounds me, paranoiac. Freddy, what thou hath wrought. She Bible-bashes me. The Book of Revelation 3:8. I know all the things you do, and I have opened a door for you that no one can close. She has made me the Man to Be Seen.

I eyeballed the Woodard house. I fought off B & E urges. I felt seen. I kept seeing things that might or might not be there. Cop cars clustered in close surveillance. Women wielding shivs. Claire stamped me stigmatized. We merged heartbeats. She marked me the Man to Be Seen.

I worked the phones all afternoon. I talked to Harry Fremont. He froze on the get-me-into-Connie’s-house front. “I can’t come up with a ruse or diversion, Freddy. Give me time to think this through.” I talked to Stretch. She reported from the Sweetzer listening post and Lez Line #2. She said Claire and some unknown Russki talked mucho McCarthy. Jabbering Joe and his feckless Feds were working L.A., through and through. Joe was set to serve subpoenas and roust Red cliques clicking back twenty years. Joe needed gooooooood publicity baaaaaad. Newspapers gnashed him. Radio reporters rebuffed him. TV pundits punished him for his sins. Brother, I empathize. We’re both Men to Be Seen.

I hid out at the Larchmont listening post and listened to listless dead air. I killed dusk and half the nite there. Connie called nobody, nobody called her. I dozed and dreamed of Stretch and Claire, nude like I’d never seen them. I woke up and drove two blocks to here.

Late nite becomes me. 1:00 became 2:00. I noticed empty milk bottles outside Connie’s front door. I got This Nutty Notion That Just Might Work.

Time ticked. I chain-smoked and chewed Chiclets. The milkman arrived at 4:13 a.m. He grabbed the empty bottles and left a fresh four-pack. I grabbed my sodium secobarbital stash and removed eight capsules. Connie might mix milk with her morning coffee. If so, she’s cooked.

I walked up to the door. I pulled off the bottle caps and whipped in my witches’ brew. Four bottles/eight pills/Freddy O.’s merry milk shake. I shook the bottles and condensed the contents. I slid back to my sled to wait.

Dawn dimmed nightfall. Low clouds closed in and reigned rain. Connie opened her front door at 7:14. It was quick. She filched the four-pack and went back inside.

I waited. Waiting wilts me and wears me thin. I waited, regardless. 7:14 to 8:14. One hour, no more. She’s had coffee or she hasn’t. The kitchen’s the likely location. It’s peepable. Note those low windows facing the driveway.

I peeper-popped over. I peeped one window, two windows, three. There’s Connie. She’s passed out flat on the kitchen floor. There’s spilled coffee au lait. She’s inviting me in.

My #6 pick fit the keyhole. The back door wiggled wide open. I cut into the kitchen. Connie snored. She should inhabit Dreamsville for ten to twelve hours. I had time for a top-end toss.

The kitchen. Chromium and bleached-blond wood. Nothing succulent or suspicious. The living room. All mid-century modern miasma and murky abstract art. A blitzkrieg of black leather. Glare off glass walls. A Kandinskyesque carpet, cobalt-colored and loaded with goofball gewgaw shapes. Nothing succulent or suspicious. Just Connie’s suspect taste.

I checked the downstairs bathroom. Nothing nudged me. I walked upstairs. No surprises sandbagged me, straight off. One bathroom/one bedroom/one office. I always work up to women’s bedrooms. I checked the bathroom first.

No, nein, nyet. Cold-cobalt walls and threadbare throw rugs. No medicine-chest mishpokeh — no dizzy dope/no ribbed rubbers/no diaphragm dusted with cornstarch.

The office. Here it gets gooooooood.

Note the red walls. They’re all poster-pinned. It’s a treasonous triptych. Free the Scottsboro Boys!!!!! Communism is 20th Century Americanism!!!!! Ben Shahn’s screechy screed: “You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.”

I grabbed my crotch. Hey, Connie — convert this, you Red Reptile!!!!!

There’s a desk/a swivel chair/a typewriter. There’s three drawers packed with dumb desk supplies. Connie’s column for today was tucked in the typewriter. The Marlborough School for Girls, the winter ’54 ball, the Hancock Park elite attends.

I checked the top drawer. There’s a red leather diary marked “1954.” Yesterday was March 20. I dipped to the date and read this:

“I fear what I presume will be Senator McCarthy’s last stand before a long-overdue U.S. Senate censure. I fear what will happen when less strident anti-Communists take up the cause that once he owned and has now all too overtly besmirched, and that those subtle fascists will assume an aura of respectability. I fear that my Party membership will be exposed, along with those in my cell — which seems likely, as Senator Joe has set up shop here in Los Angeles, rather covertly, and seems determined to do damage to those I love in the city that I love and call home. All of us have sworn allegiance to the Soviet Union. How could any sane person not? But I fear that we will never have the chance to put forth our public case, as we conduct our more pertinent tasks in secret. McCarthy has been our most consistent goad and the most persistent face of fascist vituperation since the early days in Korea. What will happen when he goes? We require intense persecution to prove the solvency of our war on capital. We must never be tolerated. Tolerance militates against revolution. We must be violently opposed, so that our reaction in kind will be considered the only true and sane reaction by the oppressed masses that we strive to liberate.”

Woooo!!!!! That is some dippy dialectic and convoluted confusion!!!!! Connie’s a stagnant Stalinist — with Uncle Joe now a year dead!!!!!

I dipped diary pages backward. It was more, more, more — maladroitly more of the same. I hit February 17. Simple sentiment stunned me and stopped me in my tracks.

“JMH is dead. She is dead, the only she I’ve ever known. It was in the papers and briefly on the radio. The police suspect a burglary gone awry.”

I flipped back to New Year’s. It was all agitprop and agitation. I got no more Joan jolts, no incriminating initials, no named names.

I bopped to the bedroom. I saw more red walls. They were garlanded with Goyaesque portraits of women. Ooooh — they were nuke-bomb nude and clad in the wicked wardrobe of revolution. They wore black boots and fur-trimmed hats emblazoned with hammer and scythe. They wielded whips and laid the lash on men marked “Fascist Oppressor.”

I got it. It’s Goya as comic-book artiste. It’s savage satire. It’s the annihilating antithesis of Connie Woodard’s toooooooo-tame life as a Hearst hack. It’s communism as contraband pornography. It’s a staggering strain of the jejune jive WE ALL jerk off to. It’s the jack-off juvenilia that has enslaved half the world.

I opened a closet door. Connie’s spinster threads channeled Chanel No. 5. A top shelf featured comely camisoles and slithery slips. I ran a hand under them. Scented envelopes slid out. I knew they were lesbian love letters.

I let the butch billet-doux lie. A file cabinet couched against the wall caught my eye. Three file drawers. All unlocked. I tornado-tore through them.

Red-leather diaries. Connie’s Red message, beaming back to ’38. The Moscow show trials. Connie justifies Stalin’s purges. She confoundingly cosigns death, death, and more death. There’s photographs tucked between pages. Connie cultivates young women and preens proud with them. Perdition, catch my soul — there She is.

Connie and Joan Hubbard. A UCLA backdrop. The foto is dated 8/12/41. There’s Joan. She’s twenty-two. It’s faded Kodachrome color. Connie’s russet-haired and knock-kneed at forty. Joan wears a red beret.

I tore through Connie’s August ’41 diary. I went to 8/12/41 and found this:

“I spent time with Joan H. today. I think she’s ready to join the Party. I told her my cell was small and all were utterly loyal to one another. She’d be safe there.”

It wasn’t enough. I wanted more of what all of this was. I found diaries dated up to 1946. Connie’s prose went crypto-clipped. Initials replaced names. “All of this” had to be Commie cell minutes.

I hit my first “JH” in May ’42. I followed “JH” at weekly intervals, up through V-J Day. “JH,” “JH,” “JH.” My Joan’s a certified subversive. I know who “CW” is. Who’s “SA”? Who’s “RJC”? Who’s “EPD”? I didn’t know and didn’t care. I only wanted Joan’s name and Connie’s scent on the pages.

JH, JH, JH. She’s mine throughout the war years. She’s left UCLA. I’m in the Marine Corps and dodging combat duty. She translates for the California State Senate. I join LAPD. JH, JH, JH. We’re into ’46 now. I’ll murder Joan’s husband in three years’ time—

Googie’s. My unfailing fallback and righteous retreat. The Tattle Tyrant held sway here. Confidential was king. Bondage Bob Harrison’s handouts bought me all the love I could take.

Late-a.m. tipsters almost toppled my table. Orson Welles snuffed the Black Dahlia. The rumor raged now. I told the tipsters to fuck off and bought them off with chump change. Joe McCarthy’s in town. No shit, Sherlock. Yeah — but he’s shacked at the Chateau Marmont with Danny Kaye. Okay — here’s ten scoots, don’t bug me, my heart’s heavy, and I’m all alone with some shattering shit.

Boo-hoo, boo-hoo. I’m in existential exile. I’ve got boocoo opportunity, but the love eludes me.

I wolfed pancakes and pondered my doofus dilemma. I told my wetback waiter to bring me a phone. I called Harry Fremont at the City Hall DB. Harry boo-hoo’d me. He hadn’t rigged a ruse or devised a diversion to get me inside Casa Connie. I told him I got inside. I trashed my tracks and blew a blistering shot at reentry. In the meantime, I’ll pay you to do this:

There’s Feds in town. They may be running rogue. They’re jungled up in jumpy juju with Joe McCarthy. They must have a field office somewhere. Find them and suborn them with Bondage Bob’s payola. I need three hours with their files.

Harry said, “And this pertains to Joanie?”

I said, “Yeah — it sure as shit does.”

Harry coughed up compliance. I hung up. Claire Klein and Rock Hudson sat down with me. They held hands. I held up my hand and showed them my stigmata. Claire laffed. Rock went Huh?

They looked good together. They glowed. They were actors to their core. They were Strasbergites maimed by the Method. The homo heartthrob marries the sicko psychopath. This mock marriage sends them, Daddy-O.

Rock said, “You’re green at the gills, Freddy. You should take a Bromo and hit the sack.”

Claire said, “Freddy has things on his mind.”

I laffed. “Have you set a date yet?”

Rock lit a cigarette. “Jimmy’s working on it. He’s with Liz and me on Giant, you know. He thinks two ceremonies is the way to go. Claire’s Jewish, and I’m a Presbyterian. Jimmy wants to emphasize the interfaith angle. You know, one synagogue gig, and one church gig.”

Claire lit a cigarette. “There’s no need for Rock to convert. I know a rabbi who performs a good ceremony and works cheap. We met in the Sinai, back in ’48.”

Rock said, “Claire’s got a history.”

I said, “Don’t I know it.”

Autograph hounds hit the table. Rock threw up his hands and winked at Claire. I’m in demand, babe.

Claire winked at me. Rock signed autographs. Claire slipped me a note under the table. I peeped the piece of paper.

Tipster Claire. The insidious insider. She’s got news on the celeb smut film.

The start date had been moved up. They shoot tonight. Here’s the address. It’s an abandoned motel in Cathedral City.

The Jolly Jinx Motel. A desert dump. Off a deep-rut road between Indio and Palm Springs. It’s sandwiched by sand dunes and next door to nowhere. It’s a baleful bank foreclosure, circa ’31.

It’s a film set tonite. Thirteen Women and Only One Man in Town. Steve “L’Auteur” Cochran mans the megaphone. The Jinx is a horseshoe-shaped hellhole. There’s twelve beat-to-shit bungalows, sans doors. Note the parked cars. Note the arc lights outside bungalows 8,9, and 10. Note the camera up on casters and the boom mike. There’s a cameraman and a soundman. I’ve seen them at Googie’s. They’re headed-for-hell hopheads and rancid racetrack touts.

Dig: it’s finito. The A-bomb wipes out the world. It’s Steve the Stud’s delicious duty to repopulate it. He’s got titillating talent to siphon his seed and assist. Joi Lansing, Anita O’Day, and Babs Payton. Plus ten call girls headed for Hollyweird stardom and felony smut raps.

I hid hip-deep in a high sand dune. I brought binoculars and Bernie Spindel’s sound-receiver. It was battery-juiced and sent sound to headphones-cum-earmuffs. The set was forty yards down. I had open-door and smashed-window sight lines. The arc lights and malignant moonglow made me Johnny-on-the-spot.

The courtyard was Cochran’s command post. Steve mingled with the thirteen lucky ladies. They wore crocheted bikinis cut hairpie looooooow. The girls scrolled script copies and learned their lines. They moved their lips and traded quips.

“How can we live with such devastation?” and “I don’t want our kids growing up with Strontium-90 in their bones.” Joi said, “First, we’ve got to have the kids. Do you think Big Steve’s up to the task? The motel is the Garden of Eden. Big Steve is our Adam, and all thirteen of us are his Eves.” Babs said, “I heard he’s hung like a barracuda.” Anita said, “People blame the Communists and the Soviet Union for everything bad in the world. But I say, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ ” And, dig: “It’s the good old USA who A-bombed the Japs.”

Ooohhh — Studly Steve’s script toes the repugnant Red line. Shuddering shades of Red Connie Woodard!!!

Steve walked actress to actress. He pulled down their bikini tops and looooooow-leveled the bottoms. The arc lights lit hairpie glow. Steve lined up the cast. They stood thirteen strong. The nite was cold. Goose bumps popped pandemic. Steve microphone-mauled his talent pool.

“Achtung, meine Kinder. Comrade Steve speaks, and your job as my Fertility Guard is to listen. We’re shooting scene one now. Bungalow nine has been decorated with some Nazi gear I’ve collected. Babs portrays Hilda, She-Wolf of the SS. My job is to impregnate and reindoctrinate her. Chop, chop, comrades. Babs and crew to bungalow nine. The rest of you huddle up in your cars and stay warm.”

Twelve girls beat feet out of the courtyard. Steve and Babs as Hilda hit Bungalow 9. The camera guy and sound guy followed them. The setup took six seconds. I had live sound and a smashed-window view. Roll it, Big Steve.

Lights, camera, action. Big Steve rolls it. The camera caught the swastika wall banners and the rising-sun bedspread. Steve as Adam and Babs as Hilda squared off.

Steve/Adam: “Look, you fascist bitch, you’ve got to atone for your sins and submit to reeducation, like Comrade Stalin did with the Moscow trials in the ’30s.”

Babs/Hilda: “Don’t sound me, muchacho. The Moscow trials were a shuck — and I know it because I subscribe to Klansman magazine. I’m hip to geeks like you. If you think you’re going to repopulate the world with me, you’d better stow the lecture and show me what I’m getting into.”

Steve/Adam whips it out. Man, what a schvantz!!!

Babs/Hilda says, “I’m impressed, but der Führer was bigger. Eva Braun told me he packed a hard yard. But I guess twelve inches is better than nothing, especially if the fate of the world is at stake.”

Steve/Adam says, “I’m radioactive, baby!!! You know what I want!!!”

Babs goes woo-woo and shucks her bikini. Big Steve dumps his duds. They forgo foreplay. They hop on the Jap bedspread and instigate insertion. Steve’s a two-minute man. It’s over that quixotically quick. Steve climbs to a climax and wails in rapturous Russian. Say what? Babs/Hilda chortles and lights a cigarette.

The whole night went listlessly likewise. Up to the pustulating point that it changed.

Babs/Hilda does it with Steve. Ditto Anita as Nuke-Bomb Nellie. Joi plays Evil Eve. She does it with Steve — and fails to jolt me jealous. The collective call girls strip and dog-pile Big Steve. Half the sizzle sex fizzles. Steve can’t get it up. He’s a wilted wonder boy. His beast is bushed. He’s auf Wiedersehen, adios, sadly sayonara. His priapus is proschai.

I watched for hours. My vulturous voyeurism nudged toward its nadir. It bid me to boredom. Man, what a drip-dry drag.

The camera guy and sound guy packed up their shit. Steve moped around the courtyard and mumbled to his muse. I bent my binoculars to Bungalow #7. I saw Anita O’Day and Babs Payton prep jolts of Big “H.”

They cooked it. They fed a spike. They tied off tourniquets. They geezed and went smack-back. They hit Cloud 9 as Steve entered the room.

He backhanded Babs. She hit the floor. Anita backed up to the bed. Steve stood over her. Anita brandished the spike. Steve grabbed it and stabbed her in the leg.

Anita screamed and sobbed. I heard it high up on my dune. Steve stormed out of the bungalow. He glowed radioactive red. The red was Strontium-90. It’s got a half-life of ten thousand years. I glowed rage-red myself.

Stretch was asleep. Lance the Leopard cleaved close to her and snarled at me. They ordered room service. Lance left paw prints on the white tablecloth.

I changed clothes. I put on black gloves, black slacks, and a black turtleneck. I stopped at an all-nite novelty store on my way over. I bought a rubber red devil mask.

I tried it on. I posed in front of the bathroom mirror. I’m George Collier Akin, reborn. I capered and preened.

Havenhurst was a short shot up Sunset. I got my sled and slid there in the slow lane. I cut south and parked. It was 3:00 a.m. His lair lights still glowed.

I put the mask back on. The Red Devil Bandit resurrects. I beelined to his door and rang the bell.

He opened up. He screeched and backed away. Size isn’t everything. I pulled my beavertail sap and bitch-backhanded him.

It tore him a high harelip and took out some teeth. The reverse shot ripped him a new widow’s peak. He hit the floor like Babs Payton did.

I picked up a Russian-helmet ashtray and dumped butts on his head. I hurtled high and drop-kicked him. I heard ribs crack. Rib bones sheared out of his shirt.

He screeched. His eyes rolled back. I forced open the lids and put my red devil face upside his. He sputtered and coughed up Camels and Kool Kings. I wiped ash off my red devil face.

Rogue FBI Field Facility

Office Building at Wilshire and Mariposa

3/22/54

Harry said, “This is pricey. I’ve got palms to grease. Bondage Bob’ll have to dig deep on this one.”

Some office. One confined cubicle. Thoroughly threadbare. Bare-bones and strictly cut-rate. It’s twenty feet by twenty feet. There’s three desks/three chairs. There’s one file cabinet, no fone, no Teletype.

“These guys are black bag, all the way. McCarthy’s kaput. He can’t call old man Hoover and say, ‘Hey, Johnny — I need some men to hunt Reds.’ ”

Harry shrugged. “They’ve got some Federal motor pool vehicles. At least three, by the looks of this place. Remember that plate number I ran for you? That car was checked out to these guys.”

I said, “See if you can put a name to it, okay? The car might have been specifically assigned.”

“Sure, kid. You and Bondage Bob say, ‘Jump,’ and I say, ‘How high?’ ”

I thought it through. The word Hollywood hit me. I prowl Casa Connie. Her current diary drivel drills me. She fears jumped-up Joe McCarthy’s last gasp and fears for her cell. Joe’s working a Hollywood angle. It’s in tight and spicy specific. He thinks he’ll bag big names somewhere down the line. It’s his loopy last hurrah. It’s a Hollywood headline hunt. Here’s a hunch. He doesn’t quite know where it all is or what he’s got.

Harry harumphed. “Freddy, get to it. We’ve got three hours, not three weeks.”

I popped the top file drawer. It was Bug City. Bug mounts, bug mikes, bug transceivers and cords. Plus loooooong-range broadcast shit. I popped the middle file drawer. It was Hurt City. Brass knucks, rubber truncheons, ball-bearing saps.

I popped the bottom file drawer. It was Rat City. A file sticker spelled it out: “Security 1-A: Coded Informant Index.”

Four thin files. Thin gruel. Thin carbon sheets couched within.

File #1. Code name: “Big Duke.” These notes: “No remuneration. Subject has said his motive is ‘love of country.’ Has numerous contacts within the entertainment industry.”

I’ll say. It has to be John Wayne. He’s ratted Reds since the ice age. It doesn’t say he’s a cross-dresser. He’s strictly straight — but still. My Marines foto-fucked him at the Big Girls Boutique in Balboa. He bought his way out of a biiiiiiiig exposé.

File #2. Code name: “Mama Zee.” These notes: “Noted writer (Negro) turned anti-Communist zealot. Has numerous contacts within the Negro community in Los Angeles.”

I’ll say. It has to be Zora Neale Hurston. She rats Reds to Bondage Bob. She’s fetchingly featured in Confidential’s “Darktown Strutters’ Ball” clips.

File #3. Code name: “Mr. Webfoot.” These notes: “Subject hosts local L.A. kiddie show. In hock to bookmakers. Always needs $ & knows people within the CP.”

I’ll say. It has to be Jimmy Weldon. He’s a venal ventriloquist. Webster Webfoot’s a downscale Donald Duck. Jimmy’s a Googie’s geek. He peddles piles of the Carole Landis nude morgue pix.

File #4. Code name: “Redbird.” No summary notes. One bank-deposit summary.

The deposits ran from March ’47 up to last month. $150 per week. ’47 to ’54. Almost seven full years. Account #8309. The bank branch: the B of A at Melrose and Cahuenga.

I’LL SAY. Melrose and Cahuenga. It’s four blocks from the Horvath House of Death. Red Stromwall found a B of A passbook in Joan’s undie drawer. The balance: fourteen g’s. The weekly snitch pay stopped last month. Joan Horvath esta muerto.

I’ll say. What would you say? How does this sound to you?

My Joan. Communist Party infiltrator/FBI snitch.

I’m a Pervdog. We’re nativistically nocturnal. Our genus genuflects at moon fall and comes alive at nite. We seek succor in the scent of secret lives, half hidden. We peep, prowl, break, enter, SEEK.

Day dimmed to dusk. I parked across the street from Connie Woodard’s house. I was half gone on high-test lemonade. The Pervdog percolates.

I holed up at the Larchmont listening post, all afternoon. I called the B of A branch at Melrose and Cahuenga. I impersonated Joe Fed. I demanded the name attached to account #8309. The timid teller gave it up: Joan Hubbard Horvath.

It felt right. It felt wrong. I reacted, reflexive. I sought Connie Woodard’s scent.

I hooked on headphones. I caught calls. Connie called her cleaner’s and a Chevy dealership. I heard backup bips on my line. My hackles heaved.

The looooong-range transceiver. It’s packed at the pathetic pocket office. It’s expensive equipment. It hints of a centralized eavesdrop apparatus. Jolting Joe McCarthy. Not as pointedly pathetic as one might think? Communist Connie — quite possibly bugged and tapped?

Rain clouds eclipsed the moon I came to howl at. The sky unzipped and ripped rain. I ran my heater and warmed my canine coat. Connie Woodard walked out her front door.

She wore a formal kilt ensemble. A tartan sash was cinched across her embroidered black crepe blouse. Tartan pleats ran down to her knock-knees. White kneesocks and black brogues filled the ensemble out.

She shagged her ’52 Chevy and cut southbound. It felt right. It felt wrong. I felt summoned suddenly. Take note of what you are seeking, for it is seeking you. Some sweaty swami said that. I get it now, Daddy-O.

I walked across the street and picked the back-door lock. Connie left the kitchen lights on. She left lurid leads out in plain sight.

The broken milk-bottle glass and milk mulch in the sink.

The Milk of Magnesia bottle on the counter. Milk of Magnesia absorbs ingested barbiturates.

Connie’s coldly outraged. She’s been vilely violated. She’s left those leads out to address me. You contemptible coward — will you fling your hands high and flee?

I wimp-wavered. I almost flipped out and fled. Her summons seduced me. I ran upstairs instead.

Connie left the bedroom lights on. I went straight to her clothes closet and her scent. I opened her file drawers. She left her 1949 diary out and bookmarked for me. 9/10/49. Connie carves her pen across the initials JH and scrawls “Traitor” boldface.

I sat in a red leather chair. The red walls closed in on me. I pulled my roscoe and jammed it under the seat cushion. I looked over at the bed. She’d left those lezbo love letters out for me to read.

Take note of what you are seek—

I read at them and through them. I looked for the name Joan and/or the initials JH. They weren’t there. There were no torrid texts. It was all kiss and swerve and breath and scent. I failed to determine gender or genus — male/female/moon-mad beast.

I shut my eyes. I summoned seconds of safety and solace and slid into sleep. It was kiss and swerve and breath and scent and scent on wool and black crepe. Take note of—

I stirred and stretched and saw her. She stood by the bed. She held a Makarov automatic. The kilt ensemble caught me and held me. She was fifty-two. We’re May and September. She dressed this way to meet me. It’s some furtive first or one-and-only blind date.

I said, “Redbird. You must know that this is about her.”

She said, “There’s some high points here. She betrayed the Party, and you killed her husband. I saw your photograph in the paper. I thought, He is certainly a young man who intends to go places, and you certainly have. ‘Tattle Tyrant’ suits you, but ‘Peeping Tom’ and ‘Slander Merchant’ might be more apt.”

I sprawled. She stood. Her bed stood between us. I felt underdressed and outmaneuvered and called out in calm contempt. She’s verging on rude rebuke, and I still want to touch her.

“You’re wearing battle kit. I saw you at Jack Kennedy’s bomb party, and you didn’t evince this sort of flair. I’ve found some things out about you, and you know me by reputation. That stands as the basis of some sort of discussion. I’m a peeper, and you want me to see you. You left your diary and your letters out for me to read. You’re begging a stranger who’s assaulted your home and your person for intimate comprehension, and I want to know why.”

She messed with her Makarov. She had fast hands. She racked out the round in the chamber and popped out the clip. She tossed it on the red leather chair. My piece was stuffed under the cushion.

“ ‘Intimate comprehension.’ It works both ways, you know. Perhaps I should tell you what I know about you, so that we might turn this into an opportunity.”

I said, “Tell me.”

She said, “I was in love with Joan Horvath. You weren’t the only one inclined to park outside her house and moon. I’ve counted the money you left in her mailbox on more than one occasion, and I’m convinced that you intend to kill the person who killed her, since the man that you’ve already killed certainly didn’t do it. You have my consent for this, and my word that I won’t report the act, or any act that might have transpired between us up to this point.”

I said, “I’ve read your diaries. Comrade, your whole life’s a deception. Your word’s about as good as mine is, and that’s hardly an indictment.”

She put one knee on the bed. Tartan battle kit. The pleats/the wool/the scent. One long leg exposed.

“It’s all about Joan, you see. It’s your willingness to act, and my willingness to suborn your intention. I would never betray anyone who possessed the grit to do what you intend to do, despite my shoddy track record with veracity for its own sake.”

I stood up. Connie stood still. I reached under the seat cushion and grabbed my piece. I have fast hands. I racked out the chamber round, popped the clip, and tossed it all on the bed.

Connie said, “Say her name.”

I said, “Joan.”

She said, “Well, then.”

I said, “I intend to see you again.”

She said, “Yes, of course.”

I made for the door and brushed by her. I touched her back and nuzzled her hair. She leaned into me one mad moment.

Infernal Intermezzo:

My Furtively Fucked-up Life

3/23–4/4/54

It started like that. We were joined in Joan and forged in forgiveness. Sex saturated us. I’ve decided to dim the details by dint of decorum. “Freddy & Connie.” Initials cutely carved on a tree. I’m thirty-two, she’s fifty-two. You know what I am. Connie Woodard defies cloying classification. Commie, lezbo, sweltering switch-hitter. Take your punk pick. She’s all of it, some of it, none of it.

I’m being dizzy disingenuous. Connie’s a righteous Red. She’s a treasonous true believer with her hooks hitched into me. I’m foiled and fucked five thousand ways. Perdition, catch my soul. And she won’t let me all-the-way SEE her.

I needed names to know her and to know who killed Joan. Known associates, rancid Reds, fractured front-group front men. Fellow travelers, pusillanimous pinks, lily-livered leftists. Give me names/no, I won’t/Connie takes the farshtinkener Fifth Amendment. Tell me the names of your Commie cell mates. I’ve already memorized their initials. Who’s SA? Who’s RJC? Who’s EPD? I’ve scurvily skimmed your diaries — and I’m tweaked. I told you I killed the Red Devil Bandit in cold blood. You must reciprocate in kind.

No, Freddy. I’m your recidivistic refusenik. Besides, there’s one name that you’ve withheld from me.

Yes, that’s true. I refused to name Claire Klein. I equivocated here. I told Connie that a dangerous woman was orbiting her orbit. She wants to kill a man — but she won’t tell me why. She won’t name the man. She’s my other ripe refusenik. I’m not naming her. She’s one of the other two women that I love.

“Freddy & Claire.” “Freddy & Stretch.” More names cutely carved on a tree. Unconsummated communions. That’s fine for now. I’m beat-to-shit busy. I’ve got to find a man and kill him, myself.

Connie won’t name names. I vow to kill Joan’s killer. Connie won’t name names. I vow to jerk Joe McCarthy’s chain so that he won’t expose her. Connie still won’t name names. Why’s Jack Kennedy’s name in your address book? Oh, pshaw — Jack’s just an old pal. Why’s Steve Cochran’s name in your address book? Here, Connie withers and wilts me: he was my last tortured and torturing male lover — before you.

I’m thirteen days in with Constance Linscott Woodard. It’s tender and tortured. I’m beat-to-shit busy. I’m rolling lucky and unlucky thirteens.

Lucky 13: Harry Fremont frosted out my assault on Big Steve. He greased the Sheriff’s bulls investigating the caper. They put it off to a B and E man out to clout Big Steve’s Nazi gear. Unlucky 13: Thirteen Women and Only One Man in Town debuted a week later.

In Harry Cohn’s rec room. Popcorn and cut-rate booze. I’m there. Big Steve’s there. He’s beat-to-shit bandaged and mummified like Pharaoh’s granddaddy. Jack the K.’s there. Bill Knowland’s there. They yuk-yuk and wolf-whistle. Joe McCarthy’s there, his own self.

The flick made me squirrelshit squeamish. I’ve got no beef with the A-bomb. We should have mushroomed Moscow after we juked the Japs. Joi Lansing was my ex, and I had a wolfish wingding with Babs Payton. It was the sexploitation aspect. That’s what gored my goat.

Bondage Bob bagged me outside the rec room. He said he was killing the Cochran exposé. Big Steve was tight with some powerful pols. He pimped for Jack K. He juiced Jack’s pill habit. Freddy, let this one go.

I did. It rudely rankled me. I compensated, commensurate. I bore down big on the who-killed-Joan and the spare-Connie-from-Joe McCarthy fronts.

I gave Harry Fremont a gooooood gig. The rogue Feds had to have a long-range listening post. Find it for me, Dads. Lucky 13: Harry hit it, hard. Unlucky 13: I found bugs and taps in Connie’s living room and bedroom. Lucky 13: they were mismounted and mismatched and malfunctioned. The broadcast beams barely made it next door.

Lucky 13: Stretch worked my Sweetzer listening post. Unlucky 13: she picked up Lez Line #2 chat. Claire Klein tricked with V. J. Jerome. She pressed him on “Robin Redbreast” — but venal V.J. purported to know zilch. Claire pressured him on Connie Woodard. V.J. said, “Don’t sound me — she’s just a dilettante.” Stretch told me his tone was deadly demeaning. V.J., you speak with forked tongue.

Thirteen days. I want names. Claire wants names. V.J. won’t name names. Connie won’t name names, most of all.

I vow to find Joan’s killer. Connie won’t name names. I vow to save her from Joe McCarthy. Connie won’t name names. We make love. We pillow-talk around the whirlwind woman who brought us together. Connie won’t name names. She won’t say whether she and Joan did or didn’t do the deed and were or were not rapture-rapt lovers.

I read Connie’s diaries. The sex sent me. It remained kiss and swerve, breath and scent. I read through years of Commie collusion. Delusion deluged me. Pathos pounded me. Connie and her cell siblings suck up Soviet yak-yak and proudly proclaim it as truth. They dialecticize purulent purges, cold conquest, mass murder. Connie says she’s Sovietizing me. I roll my eyes. It makes her laugh. She covers her mouth then. Some Central Committee of Kremlin kreeps might be listening.

Connie won’t name names. She won’t reveal Robin Redbreast’s real moniker. She won’t name names. I’m on her side as much as she’ll let me be — and more. She won’t name names in Joan’s memory. She memorializes Joan and tells me how much she loved her. She loves me with her body and won’t say the worshipful words. I explore the world’s secret shit. I excoriate it and explode it in Confidential. I live to do this. I’ve peeped windows since 1936. Connie joined the Party that same year. She joined the Party to run rogue in the squarejohn world and live baaaad bourgeois while she did it. We bit the same cancerous coin and spit it back at the world. Shared blood blooms in our veins. We both know this. She still won’t name names.

The Sweetzer Listening Post

4/5/54

The noxious nite shift. Torrid two-line tilts. Pizza pie and beer and Pink’s hot dogs. Stretch worked Lez Line #1. I worked Lez Line #2. We held hands and swapped nifty nuggets.

Gamal Abdel Nasser’s in town. He’s scrounging funds to overthrow Egypt. He’s a fellow camel jockey. He’s banging butch girls, three at a throw. Go, Gamal, go!!!

Biff Stanwyck’s ensconced at a hot-sheet hut on Highland. She likes it fresh and heavenly wholesome. There’s a dyke slave den near Hollywood High. The den doyenne’s an old studio scrape nurse. She “reeducates” nymphets and feeds them dope and the lewd lore of Lesbos. Currently embroiled: ex — kiddie star Natalie Wood. Jimmy Dean told me she’s hot to trot, across the sex spectrum. Biff’s got first dibs.

Art Pepper’s at it again. He’s gone foto fiend. He’s now the King of the Sapphic Snapshot. He’s snapping pix at a fuck pad on Fountain. Go, Art, go!!!

I was big-time bored. My headphones itched. Lance went home to Liberace. Stretch and I boo-hoo’d his departure. The lez line pickings were thin — but tasty. Then Harry Fremont called, two hours back. Go, Harry, go!!! Once again, Harry delivers.

That Fed car. The rear plate I saw. Outside the Horvath crime scene. It’s on loan to a Fed fuck named Charles Fullerton. He’s in Joe McCarthy’s posse. He’s a rogue Red basher from Jump Street. And, Freddy, dig: I’ve located the longrange listening post. It’s a shit shack in Silver Lake. They’re running bug-taps up the yammering ying-yang. I hit my PC Bell contact. Dig: the phone bills run three grand a month.

Woooo!!! — that’s one nifty nugget!!!

I yawned. I scratched my balls. I ogled Stretch in basketball silks. I got insistently itchy. I wanted to sloooooooow-cruise the Fed pad and lay some late-nite love on Connie.

I yawned. I scratched my balls. I ogled Stretch in basketball silks. She went Wowie-zowie and scribbled up her scratch pad. She hurled off her headset and went You, too.

I hurled my headset. Stretch glooooowed and dished this:

“Claire and Babs just tricked with V. J. Jerome. I got forty minutes of grunts and groans, and then Claire starts pumping V.J. on Robin Redbreast again. V.J.’s vexed and bored, but he finally cops that Robin Redbreast was a crackpot scientist and a CP flunky named ‘Sammy.’ But that’s as far as it went, because they all started up with the woof-woof again.”

—

We lounged in the red bedroom. Connie wore a half-slip and her tartan skirt. I was stripped down to my skivvies. We ran the radio. Some Russki piano putz rippled Rachmaninoff.

I was tooooooo tense and caught-up constricted. I went by the Fed pad and reconnoitered. I got a Big Dumb Idea. It was cold-calculated and meant to make Connie name names.

Connie lay languorous. We stretched and struck poses and draped off the bed. I kissed Connie’s knock knees. She ran her hands through my hair.

“Don’t start hounding me again, dear. My lips are sealed, and I won’t let you ruin this lovely moment.”

I parted her legs and tossed her skirt and kissed my way up a bit. Connie made this soft sound that she makes.

“I’ll name some names that you might recognize. You don’t have to respond, but I’d be happy if you would.”

Connie laffed. “It’s our ongoing game, isn’t it? Freddy interrogates Connie. Connie takes the Fifth. Freddy and Connie. Has it ever occurred to you that our names lack dignity?”

I smiled. Connie said, “I’ll indulge you, if you promise that you won’t press me too hard. I’m out to sustain this mood that I’m in.”

I pulled her skirt down and patted it back into place. I looked up at her and fixed on her eyes. I’d know if she dissembled or flat-lied to me. I’d know if she knew the names and went refusenik.

“Robin Redbreast. He’s allegedly a ‘crackpot scientist’ and a Party flunky named Sammy. There’s also an FBI man named Charles Fullerton. He was at Joan’s house with all the other cops, and I saw him there myself. You should know that he’s in Joe McCarthy’s posse — which is, quite frankly, out to get you, given the bugs and taps that I’ve pulled here.”

Bingo/Eureka/Three-Cherry Jackpot. The refusenik reacts. Tears fill her eyes. Her hands fly to her face.

I know you, Constance. You’ll wipe your face on a pillowcase. You’ll light a cigarette and blow smoke at the ceiling. You’ll say, “No comment” or “I’m not telling you.”

I nailed the first part. I blew the second part. Connie said, “You’re never going to quit, are you? You will always insist on this, and in the end, I’ll either lose you or never have a moment’s peace.”

I pulled myself up close to her. I got our eyes close.

“Sammy. Charles Fullerton. The ‘SA,’ ‘RJC,’ and ‘EPD’ in your cell. I want full names and confirmations. It’s all for Joan. You know that’s true, and since you’re a dialectical materialist who’s always looking for a payoff, I’ll offer you a doozy if you’ll do this for me.”

Connie kissed me. I wiped some tears off with my thumbs. She kissed me again. I pulled her slip up and kissed her bare back.

“ ‘A doozy,’ you said?”

“Yes. If you tell me what I need to know, I’ll burn down the McCarthy gig. You’ll never set foot on a witness stand. It’ll spare some other people a good deal of grief, whether they’re for-real traitors, or just bleeding-heart fools like you.”

Connie said, “It’s not nice to betray your friends, you know. People you’ve lived History with.”

I said, “Joan.”

Connie said, “We’ll always come back to her. She’s our deus ex machina.”

I said, “Joan.” Connie stubbed out her cigarette and turned back to me.

“Yes, we were briefly lovers, and that’s as far as I’ll go to sate your curiosity there. Charles Fullerton turned Joan out as an FBI informant, and served as her handler for years. He also introduced Joan to Ralph Horvath. Sammy is a physicist named Samuel Ahlendorf — and, yes, he was Robin Redbreast in our cell. ‘RJC’ was a Negro man named Robert Jones Crawshaw. He wrote for the Daily Worker, and now he writes cheap paperbacks about Negro pimps. I know that he’s friends with your friend Billy Eckstine, for what that’s worth. ‘EDP’ is Eleanor Price Donnell. She was one of Joan’s professors at UCLA.”

She snitched. It hit me six ways from Sunday. I rolled away from her. I stared at the red walls and faux-Goya garlands of women. Connie clung claustrophobe close.

“ ‘The citadel of my integrity has been irrevocably lost.’ That’s from T. E. Lawrence, in case you were wondering.”

I wasn’t. “Don’t shit a shitter, and don’t playact with me. It was the right thing to do.”

Connie stage-sighed. “I’m twenty years, one month, and nine days older than you. I was born in 1902, and you’re in love with two other women. Why did I do what I just did? Am I really that desperate to keep you?”

I stage-sighed. “You’re just self-absorbed. Are all Communists as self-involved as you?”

Connie laffed. “Frankly, yes.”

“Including Joan?”

“Yes, and Joan more than most.”

I said, “She made the rounds, didn’t she? Men, women — she had the appetite.”

Connie said, “She was faithless, yes.”

I said, “I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be, dear. You’re like that yourself.”

I pulled down her skirt. I caught her scent and kissed her breasts.

“I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain, dear. How will you derail the evil senator and save me?”

“I’ll do something brave and stupid, and it will damn well cost me a great deal.”

The Downtown L.A. Public Library

4/6/54

Research. Reading-room rigor. Know your foe. They might have YOU made, going in. You’re the Tattle Tyrant Who Holds Hollywood Hostage. You’re the Freewheeling Freddy O.

I felt gooooooood. Connie fed me a big breakfast. I chased it with three dexies and four jolts of Old Crow. I hit the library early. I collated a cavalcade of goooooood dish. I tapped solid sources.

The L.A. Herald and the L.A. Sentinel — L.A.’s colored rag. Who’s Who In America/1953. Who’s Who In American Academia/1953. Plus Downbeat magazine, the Daily Worker, and a call to LAPD R & I.

Dig:

Comrade Sammy Ahlendorf. Age sixty-three. That’s “Robin Redbreast” to you. He’s a physicist. He got doctorates in his native Russia and the U. of Chicago here. He’s also a kultural kommissar. He partied with bibulous bohemians in wicked Weimar Berlin and malignant Moscow. He knew Eisenstein/Nijinsky/Stanislavsky/Meyerhold/Okhlopkov. Sicko cinema, dipshit dance, stilted stage productions for the maimed millions enslaved by the Red Beast. Sambo emigrates to the U.S., circa ’36. He’s dumped off the Manhattan Project, circa ’44. He was pro-A-bomb then. He’s anti-A-bomb now. This guy gored my goat. I was hopped-up and out for Commo blood — baaaaaad. I might phone-book Sambo in the studly style of the Hat Squad.

Comrade Robert Jones Crawshaw/aka “KKKomrade X.” Age forty-one. Labor agitator and scurvy scribe for the Daily Worker. Would-be “Racial Reconciler.” Dig this: He tried to integrate the L.A. Klan, circa ’40. Close pal of my pal Billy Eckstine. The august author of Black Pimp, Black Bossman, Black Savior, Black Dictator, Black Kingpin, Black Bwana, and the KKKontroversial Black Führer. Comrade Bob renounces Communism, circa ’51. Comrade Bob heads hard right. He’s pals with nativist nudnik Gerald L. K. Smith. He’s got a righteous rap sheet. There’s three pops for receiving stolen goods. There’s the cancerous capper, circa ’48. Ralph Mitchell Horvath bails him out on a burglary beef.

Comrade Eleanor Price Donnell. Age thirty-eight. Tenured history professor at UCLA. She’s a shrill shrike and shrieky Soviet suck-up. She’s the author of Moscow Miasma — an apoplectic apologia for the show-trial sins of Uncle Joe Stalin. You think you’ve got this bilious babe pegged, don’t you? Well, fuckers, here’s the real reconstructionist riff:

She’s an ex — call girl. She pandered poon to the Party, circa ’44–’45. She sold sex to CPers with gelt. She was part of a poor-working-girls/Stalinist stable. She gets popped V-E Day. A cadre of Commie construction magnates celebrates Hitler’s surrender. It’s caviar and call girls for these cats. La Donnell and her sick sisters turn tricks for striking dock workers. LAPD Vice intervenes. They raid a fuck pad-cum-millionaire’s mansion. La Donnell and eighteen other confessed Commie girls get busted. La Donnell writes a memoir about her salacious sojourn. It’s called Party Girl. She wrote it under the pseudonym “Miss X.” Robert Jones Crawshaw’s publisher published it.

My Connie’s Commie cell. Add on the late Joan Hubbard Horvath: Commo, turncoat, licentious lover. Here’s the tattle-tabloid tilt of a lifetime:

I’m marching into the maximum maw of madness.

They all lived in L.A. I installed an itinerary — north/south/northwest. Comrade Sam lived in the Valley. Comrade Bob lived in Watts. Billy Eckstine set the meet at Club Zombie. Comrade Ellie lived on the Wilshire corridor. It was très close to UCLA.

Sambo and Party Girl were door knocks. Knock, Knock — trouble treads your way. I’d browbeat them. I’d bring them to tears. I’d dig for the dish on Comrade Joan Hubbard. I’d yank them through the war years. I’d push the Claire Klein angle. This dangerous dame is out to kill a man. She thinks Connie Woodard might know him. So, how about you?

I bopped out to bumfuck Van Nuys. The Valley Vista Villas — hotbox huts off Hastings and Harlequin Heights. I parked and popped up to the pad. Knock, knock — trouble treads your—

Sambo opened up. Ooohhh — he’s threadbare thin and cancer cough — consumptive. I flashed my State Police badge. All the HUAC humps had them. Cringe, you Red rat fink.

“Yes. I’ve seen that badge before. It’s not like you people haven’t sought me out in the past.”

I said, “This is a new wrinkle, boss. It pertains to the murder of a woman named Joan Horvath. You knew her as Joan Hubbard.”

Sambo let me in. He rolled an oxygen tank to his chair. He sucked air. He cancer-coughed and said, “Yes?”

I perched on a footstool. “I’m not here to nail you for your CP membership, pops. You should know that going in.”

Sambo said, “That’s white of you — and uninformed. I left the CP in ’44, before I got cleared for the Manhattan Project. I was the first one to abandon the cell I was in, although all of the others, except for our den mother, ultimately saw the light.”

The statement stunned me. Connie’s diaries ditzed me. I saw Sambo’s initials on cell minutes for the postwar period.

“I have documents, sir. These documents plainly state that you attended cell wingdings up to the late ’40s.”

Sambo sighed and sucked air. “Then they’re fabrications. Especially if the den mother proffered them to you. I’m an apostate, Mr. Detective. I renounced the Party, and I’ve been vetted by a great number of committees, both State and Federal. And if Mr. McCarthy should subpoena me for this latest pogrom of his, I’ll testify to that at the outset. You look like McCarthy, I might add. You share his black-haired, beetle-browed look.”

Fuck you, pops — I got your beetle brows swinging!!!

“Joan Horvath, sir. She was Hubbard when you knew her.”

“Yes, and I had an affair with that very lively and brilliant young woman, and I think you’re bright enough to have deduced that I’m in no condition to drive to Hollywood, break into a house, and commit murder.”

Esta la verdad, Daddy-O — I sound you loud and clear.

“What did you think of Joan?”

“I thought she was the single most self-absorbed human being I’ve ever met, and that she was a hot piece of skirt. I also thought that she was no sort of Communist, back when the rest of us were convinced that the Party was the light of the world.”

I snorted. “That’s it for Joan, huh?”

Sambo sucked air. “Yes, it is. Ask me about nuclear physics. I can talk physics all day long, but it might prove to be over your head.”

I snorted snide. “Okay. Why’d you get dumped off the Manhattan Project? That must have been an ace gig for a guy in your trade.”

Sambo sucked air. He rattled and racked. His lifespan loomed as next week.

“I’d made friends in the film colony, here in L.A. Young people — one in particular. I was antibomb then, even though I helped build the bombs the fascist U.S. dropped on Japan. It’s believed that I was fired for scientific ineptitude. That’s hardly the case. I was a political casualty, pure and simple. I may be a physicist, but I’m an idealist and a patron of the arts, most of all.”

Sambo, the idealist. Sambo, the ardent artist. I ran with that ball.

“I know you swung with all those swinging artists in Russia. Eisenstein, Stanislavsky, Meyerhold — those were some hotshot cats.”

Sambo laffed and coughed viscous vapors. Pops, you contaminate me.

“I knew them, yes. Their visions formed me in ways that you will never know.”

Sambo sickened me. The interview inflamed me. I bounced a new ball. Let’s get this over with.

“There’s a dangerous woman, circling your cell. I know she’s aware of your ‘den mother,’ who I assume to be Constance Woodard. Her name is Claire Klein, and she’s not to be trifled with.”

Ooohhh — did Sambo just glitch, twitch, shudder, cower, and cringe?

“No. The name Claire Klein means nothing to me.”

That’s okay, Sambo — I’ve registered your response.

“Constance Woodard. Your ‘den mother.’ Why would she fabricate cell minutes, after all the members of the cell had renounced the Party?”

Sambo sighed. “Because she was the only one of us who truly believed, and her belief transcended quite an onslaught of reality. And she was the loneliest woman I’ve ever known, and her fabrications must have convinced her that she still had comrades and friends.”

The Club Zombie. A double dose of darktown. A danger dive. Discordant bebop and the Baron Samedi Cocktail — “One Sip Leaves You Zombified.”

I knew the Zombie. I busted beboppers, mud sharks, and junkies here back in the ’40s. The big buck bartender made me. Fractious Freddy’s back. He still be baaaaaaaaaad muthafuckin’ juju. I’ll make him a Baron Samedi Cocktail. He gots to be Zombified.

He cooked up the cocktail. It glowed radioactive. I slipped him a Bondage Bob C-note. He went You the man. I guzzled the cocktail. It bebopified the dexies dosing my bloodstream. I went ZOMBIFIED.

Robert Jones Crawshaw walked in. He’s aka Comrade Bob and KKKomrade X. He bypassed the bandstand and bopped to a booth by the bar. I made him off old mug shots. He looked bad to the bone. I dug his purple porkpie hat.

I joined him. He snapped his fingers. Two Baron Samedi Cocktails appeared. He bolted his. I sipped mine.

He belched, he burped, he bypassed all amenities. He gave me the Big This Is It.

“The Party is a crock of motherfucking shit. Ask Richard Wright or Zora Neale Hurston. Money and fame is the name of the game. I’m raking it in off Black Bossman, Black Dictator, and Black Führer. Billy told me you’re investigating the murder of Comrade Joanie, and let me state at the outset that I liked her okay, but I never poured her the pork — not no way. Ralphie and me were tight — and I know you killed him, and it was a humbug deal, and now you got the guilts. I didn’t kill Joanie, because the fuzz know it was a white man, because Joanie scratched his face good. I also know you know that Ralphie bailed me out on a 459 charge, back in ’48. Are we all caught up, now? You think Bob Harrison would shoot me a gig, writing for Confidential? I’m hot shit in intellectual circles. Black Führer just went into its twelfth printing. Alfred Kazin and all them motherfucking intellectuals go for my shit.”

I was zombified. I was beatified and transmogrified. The booze. The bebop. The dope. Comrade Sammy’s sad take on my Connie. The mad musings of KKKomrade X.

“Known associates. Joan, Ralphie, or both of them. Can you come up with some names?”

KKKomrade X went haw-haw. “Some Fed mofo named ‘Charlie.’ He shot Ralphie the word on burglary scores. He knew Joanie, too, and he might have been her handler when she got hip and turned rat. Plus, I think Charlie might have introduced Joanie to Ralphie. That’s the only name that I can think of, off the top of my head.”

Charlie. Agent Charles Fullerton. It had to be.

“There’s a woman named Claire Klein. She’s got a very bad beef against a man in your cell, or in your general circle of the Party. Does her name ring any bells?”

KKKomrade X said, “Nein, Daddy. But there was only two men in the cell — me and old Sammy Ahlendorf. That said, there was this cast of thousands that the den mother knew, because she was always taking in strays. That also said, there was no man who jumped out of the crowd and said, ‘Hey, remember me?’ ”

I stood up. I was Zombified, Commified, RATified.

“Go home and sleep it off, baby. And remember to chat me up to Bob H.”

KKKomrade X called it. I took his advice and car-napped in my Packard pimpmobile. I woke up, unzombified. I remained Commified and RATified. My first thought was:

Lonesome Connie.

I pulled those taps and bugs at her pad. The McCarthy/rogue-Fed listening post was northeast in Silver Lake. Connie’s place stood within long-range broadcast beams. Comrade Sam lived in Van Nuys. His place was out of range. KKKomrade X lived in Watts. His place was out of range. Comrade Ellie lived in Westwood. Party Girl’s pad was out of range.

And:

Die Kameraden had ditched the Party and renounced Communism. Only my Connie carried the torch.

Ergo:

The Feds had targeted my Connie, solamente. Plus other Commos in cells unknown.

I whipped west to the Wilshire corridor. Party Girl had demon digs in a high-ticket high-rise. A valet parked my pimpmobile. I big-tipped him. He said Miss Donnell was in and walked me to the penthouse lift.

A glass rocket rocked me up twenty-four stories. It vibrated me, vertiginous. The door opened into Party Girl’s parlor. Party Girl welcomed me.

She was tall. She was blond and waif willowy. She looked like Lizabeth Scott in Pitfall. Dick Powell leaves his wife for her. Now I know why.

I flashed my Statie badge. Party Girl said, “I already testified, and I thought I blew all the State HUAC guys, back when I was in the game.”

She gored my gonads. She had Liz Scott’s lisp and low purr down pat. She wore tennis whites to stay home and talk blow jobs to strange men. She defined noblesse oblige.

“Ten minutes, Miss Donnell. That’s all I need.”

“Who do you want me to fink on? I thought I was done there.”

“I’m investigating Joan Horvath’s murder. We’re looking at the CP cell she was in. I’ve talked to Samuel Ahlendorf and Bob Crawshaw already. Quite obviously, you were on my list.”

Party Girl went After you. I entered her demented demimonde. Glass walls winged wide on Wilshire. Dig the deep-pile rugs and lounge-lizard furnishings — all violet velour.

She walked me to a wet bar. She poured two Tom Collins, light on the lime. We sat on black leather stools and nudged knees.

“I didn’t know Joanie that well. I wouldn’t sleep with her, and I outgrew the Party before she did. I tried to recruit her for my stable, but she wouldn’t hear of it. We ratted each other out to you State HUAC guys, but I forget who finked first. The den mother knew her better than any of us, that’s for sure.”

The Liz Scott lisp and low growl. The lioness-level gaze. She’s leading you. KKKomrade X called and warned her. Freddy O.’s en route. He ain’t no HUAC cop. Milk him, baby. He’s money, once removed. He’s susceptible. Spin him into your spell.

She wants to slander-slam den mother Connie. That’s her intention. Field this changeup, bitch:

“Let me issue a warning about a woman that I consider to be quite dangerous — one that I’ve passed on to Mr. Ahlendorf and Mr. Crawshaw already. She has plainly stated that she intends to kill a man in your cell, or the general orbit of Party members you might have knowledge of. Her name is Claire Klein. She’s quite persistent, and she has a way of getting up in your face that I would describe as unforgettable.”

Party Girl lit a cigarette. “Well, there’s one woman and one instance that I can think of, but the name Claire Klein sounds no gongs for me. It was back during the war. ’43, I think.”

I said, “Please continue.”

“Well, it was some sort of Scottsboro Boys revival, and it was supposed to be all-Party — I thought one hundred percent. Then in walks a Wave officer, in her full-dress blues. She sizes me up as a girl who likes to gab, and then she applies the full press.”

The war/the Waves/Lieutenant j.g. Claire Klein. Perdition, catch my soul—

“The funny thing was, it all pertained to Commie arcana in Russia, during the show-trial era. She was hipped on Vsevolod Meyerhold, his importance in radical-theater circles, and how Stalin liquidated his theater, made him attend a self-criticism session, denounced him for abandoning socialist realism, and had him tortured and killed. This is in ’39 and ’40, I think. Here’s the worst part. The NKVD stabbed his wife’s eyes out and stabbed her to death a few months earlier.”

Meyerhold. Sambo Ahlendorf knew that cat.

“That’s the extent of it? This Wave woman pressed you and moved on?”

“Right with Eversharp.”

“Samuel Ahlendorf mentioned Meyerhold to me, earlier today.”

“Sammy’s old, and he’s Russian. He’s dined out on radical-socialist theater, all the time I’ve known him. I dare you to sit through one of Meyerhold’s plays. Crassly put, they ain’t Guys and Dolls.”

I gulped. “Let’s discuss the den mother. I assume you’re referring to Constance Woodard?”

Party Girl crushed her cigarette. “That’s right. Connie was our resident drag and expert on Joanie Hubbard. She was also Joanie’s lover for an indeterminate period of time, during the war and after it, which means that she was awarded the Jealous Lover of All-Time Award for who knows how many years running, because you have never seen jealousy like that, and you have never seen anyone chafe under the yoke of it like Joanie did.”

I said, “Keep going. There’s something you’ve been dying to tell me.”

Party Girl laffed. “I never liked Connie, but I grokked her existential anguish. Because Joanie was a Venus fly trap, and she had men, women, and who knows what else standing in line to get in her bed. Connie pulled a gun on two of Joanie’s would-be suitors, and one man — a lefty lawyer in Marin County — vanished from sight altogether.”

Now, I’m Commified, reconstructivized, social-dialecticized—

“Get it — Mr. State Cop who’s not a state cop? The den mother killed that man, and that’s what tore our dumb Communist cell asunder.”

That man.” Claire’s Meyerhold fix. Dead men and dead Joanie. I was dungeon-deep with dead men and castrated by Communist women. Here I am in the den mother’s bedroom. I’m crapped out on the bed. The red walls clooooose in on me.

I thumbed a library book. I’d bipped by the West L.A. Library, post — Party Girl. I did microfilm research. The San Francisco Chronicle, ’48–’49. An emphasis on local murders.

The book. It’s a big and boring Baedeker on Russian radical theater. There’s big ink on Vsevolod Meyerhold and his actress wife, Zinaida Raikh. Party Girl told it true. Stalin’s goons tortured and shot Meyerhold dead. They stabbed Zinaida’s eyes out and stabbed her dead. They were one comely couple. The pix told it true. He’s hero handsome as he waves a Red flag. She’s beautiful in her babushka. The Red Wheel crushes them flat.

Meyerhold was a Stalin-era stud and swinging swordsman. He brought the brisket to women in Russia and abroad and left bawling babies behind. Those facts fanned me. Ditto this fact. Somebody ratted Meyerhold to the NKVD.

Murder in Moscow. Murder in Marin County. It’s September ’49. “Lefty lawyer” Will Hartshorn vanishes. Will’s a wicked womanizer. Scads of scurrilous Commo women are questioned, to no avail. Wicked Will dips off and disappears. There’s no corpus delecti — case closed.

The den mother’s downstairs. She’s cooking our dinner. She’ll call up to me.

I left the library and sidled up to Silver Lake. There’s the rogue-Fed listening post. It’s a shit shack on Ewing off of Duane Street. Harry told me they run three monitor shifts and lock up at midnite. I drove to Higgins’ Hardware and bought what I’d need. Charles Fullerton lived in the Miracle Mile. The mid-Wilshire fone book said so.

The den mother dipped upstairs. I heard her heels hit. She stood in the doorway. She smiled at me and read me. She went What’s wrong, love?

I said, “I talked to some people who knew you pretty well. You know who I mean, because you gave me their names.”

She said, “Yes?”

I said, “They hold you in the highest contempt, because you stayed the course after they walked, and that made you a dupe and marked you as naïve. You wrote hundreds of pages of cell minutes and spun fantasies. You loved them. They didn’t love you. You carried the torch. You created a pretend world in this very room. That fact alone has convinced me to protect you.”

Connie said, “I ‘stayed the course.’ It’s quite the male concept, but it’s not something I can accept in you, if it means that you consider me pathetic.”

I laffed. “How could I? You killed a man with no compunction, in the Freddy Otash mode. ‘Pathetic’ hardly describes it.”

“He brutalized Joan. He hit her and demeaned her, and I couldn’t stand it. I shot him and dumped his body in a lime pit in Point Reyes. The police questioned me once and believed my denials. They never troubled me again, and my ex-comrades never informed on me.”

“How did you feel, after you killed him?”

“I felt aghast and relieved.”

Perdition, catch my soul — for I do KNOW her.

Charlie Fullerton, FBI. Harry Fremont tagged him a booze-hound bachelor and a cloistered closet queen. He juiced at the Raincheck Room, Rick’s Riptide, and Roscoe’s Reef. He had an above-garage crib off 6th and Dunsmuir. Harry advised a midnite snatch-and-grab. Dump him in his doorway and go in strong.

Sound advice. The lock snapped easy. The crib was cloistered-closet claustrophobic. Small kitchen/small bathroom/small front room. Whew — it’s Suffocation City. It’s suffused with stale cigarette smoke and spilled booze.

I kept the lights off. I lurked and listened, doorway-close. 12:19 a.m. Fumbling footsteps. Charlie’s key in the lock.

The door opened. I sandbagged Charlie, coming in. I kicked his legs out from under him. He moaned and mewed. I banged his head on the floor and hankie-gagged him. I dragged him into the kitchen and hit the lights. Heh, heh — there’s this hot plate.

I handcuffed Charlie. I plugged the plate in. The coils glowed hot, hot. I hauled Charlie to his feet and shoved him up to the counter. Charlie bug-eye beseeched me — don’t scorch me, boss.

I curled his right-hand fingers into the coils. I scorched and scalded him. My hankie-gag muffled his screams. I caught the french-fried fragrance of burned skin.

Charlie bawled and buckled and tore free of me. I kicked him in the balls and jackknifed him. A frigid Frigidaire was right there. I opened the door. I pulled Charlie upright and jammed his scorched hand in the freezer compartment. Yeah!!! — it’s a skin-fry frappé!!!

Charlie tried to scream. The gag mumble-muted him. The cold ice cauterized his scalded skin and made streams of steam rise. I pulled his hand free and shoved him into a chair. I stood over him and laid out my Bill of No Redress.

“Joan Hubbard and Ralphie Horvath. Connie Woodard and her CP cell. This latest jive crusade of Joe McCarthy’s, and how Connie fits in. Who you’ve got wired out of that long-range post in Silver Lake. Nod once if you want to live, and twice if you want to die.”

Charlie nodded once. I yanked his gag. His muffled scream screeched out, sissy soprano. I pulled my pocket flask and fed him bonded bourbon. He gargle-gurgled it down and glowed booze-hound red.

I waited. Charlie went Gimme. I ran a refill down his throat. I tapped my wristwatch. Charlie went More. I ran Refill #2 down his gullet. That got him. His booze glow glissandoed into plain old pink-red.

I said, “Give.”

Charlie coughed and cleared his throat. Phlegm flew into his hankie. He went from refusenik to running dog in one second flat.

“Joanie was never a Commie or a Comsymp. She was an FBI plant at the gate. We financed her radio show and gave her a stipend she could live on. She was always ours, and we planted her in Connie Woodard’s UCLA class, because Connie was lez and loved young-idealist cooze, and because Connie was the den mother of the L.A. Left. Joanie was bait from 1939 on. She was nothing but a promiscuous gang girl with hotshot college degrees, and she was on the Federal payroll up to the time of her death. I set Joanie up with Ralphie Horvath, and they got a 459 thing going. So fucking what? Burglary isn’t treason, the last time I checked.”

I sucked bonded bourbon. I passed the flask. Charlie sucked bonded bourbon. He was booze-bombed and hurtin’ for certain. He took on this weird white witch doctor look.

“So, the cell. There’s a joke for you. Sammy A., that hump Crawshaw, and Ellie Donnell. They were smart, though. They recanted before they got named, which left the den mother all by her lonesome. And she was a joke, but she knew everybody, and everybody confided in her. She’s the linchpin of this new thing Joe M.’s running, and we wired her place, but the bugs and taps went on the fritz. Joanie was set to testify, as a friendly witness. She was going to lay out the criminal misdeeds of Ahlendorf, Crawshaw, and Donnell, as sidebars to their recantings, to tell the whole world that onetime Commies never change. But, Joanie gets snuffed. So, there’s a hot-prowl hump on the loose. So, the LAPD keys on him as a suspect, and blows him up. You were there, you should know.”

I ran through the rat-out. One riff rang false.

“I can see Crawshaw and Donnell as criminals — sure. But Ahlendorf didn’t hit me as the criminal type.”

“Yeah, but Sammy’s bent. We knew that, at the start. He emigrated in ’36, but he kept going back to Russia, under false passports that the Party fixed him up with. He was embroiled in some shifty stuff over there, but we never figured out what.”

I said, “That long-range post you’re running. You didn’t set that whole deal up just to nail the den mother.”

Charlie said, “That’s correct. We’ve got nine other cells wired up, lockstep. The members are all Hollywood types, including some very large names, and most of them are linked to the den mother. Joe M. wants to squeeze her and get her to roll on them. She’s never rolled before, but we’ve got her for Murder One, up in Marin County. A lawyer went missing, and we know why. You know how we know? Because Joanie told us. This guy was putting the boots to her, and the den mother got jealous and snuffed him. We can get her full immunity, if she rolls. If she doesn’t roll, she’s got a hot date with the green room.”

I sighed. “Constance Linscott Woodard will never roll.”

Charlie said, “Freddy, you’re blushing.”

The post was spiffed, spangled, and space age. Joe McCarthy scrounged the latest and greatest new stuff.

Long-range broadband transceivers. All-weather bug mounts, suited for outdoor use. Camouflaged microphones. Long-play tape recorders. Automatic voice activators. Static-eliminating headsets.

Plus work desks. Plus twelve file cabinets. All of them unlocked. All stuffed with bug-and-tap transcripts. Nine Commie cells headed for Hell.

I stuffed 12-gauge shotgun shells in the file drawers and spread gunpowder on top. I placed paper bags full of fertilizer and ammonium nitrate under the desks. I splashed two-gallon gas cans full of Mobile Supreme on the floor. I left the front door open and blasted seven ACP rounds inside.

The post blew up mauve and pink. It harked me back to Hiroshima and that blistering blast at Jack K.’s bomb bash. There’s this magnificent mushroom cloud, all aglow.

The Googie’s Parking Lot

4/7/54

Googie’s. Early-bird peeps from my Packard pimpmobile. A peremptory peep for Claire Klein, specific.

I popped dexies and chain-smoked. The a.m. Herald was due. Fullerton wouldn’t rat me. He was in deep with a putrid pol soon to implode. I had him for all his Joanie-Ralphie 459 shit. The listening-post blast would blare headlines. The Feds would stagnantly stonewall it. The words McCarthy/black-bag job/rogue action would not pry their way into print.

I peeped the back window. Four shadows whipped by my windshield. Sergeant Max Herman. Sergeant Red Stromwall. Sergeant Harry Crowder. Officer Eddie Benson.

The Hats. Pearl gray suits and white Panamas. Trouble treads my way.

I waved faux wolfsbane. They deadpanned it. Max and Red yanked me out of the car. Harry and Eddie cuffed me. They tossed me in the backseat of their K-car and sandwiched me in tight.

Max drove. Red whistled “Funeral March of a Marionette.” We ran Code 3 downtown. We hit City Hall and took the freight lift up to the DB. They dumped me in sweatbox #3 and cuffed me to a chair. Note the fat fone book on the table.

Max said, “You’re fucked, Freddy. Metro’s been spot-tailing you since February.”

Red said, “We know everyone that you’ve seen and everything that you’ve done.”

Harry said, “The moment of truth approaches, Freddy.”

Eddie said, “Your camel-fucking ass is grass.”

I said, “Maybe we can pin my grief on some random lowlifes. The Herald’s always willing to go that route for you guys.”

Max phone-booked me. He threw a top-of-the-head/leave-no-marks shot. He cracked my cranium gooood.

“We know every sleazy thing that you and your goons have pulled for Confidential. We saw you and Bernie Spindel hot-wire Steve Cochran’s place, and we saw you pull that red devil stunt with him the night of the film shoot. We know all about your wingding with the den mother, who seems a little long in the tooth for a young stud like you. We tailed you to your interviews with Samuel Ahlendorf, that geek Crawshaw, and Ellie Donnell. We boom-miked your assault on Agent Fullerton, and we saw you blow up the Fed post.”

Red phone-booked me. He threw a cause-great-pain/leave-no-marks shot.

“You’re fucked, Freddy. We know all of your shit, inside out.”

Harry phone-booked me. “You’re not our pal anymore, Freddy. You’re just some jamoke that’s outlived his usefulness.”

Eddie phone-booked me. “We’ve got you for Treason, Sedition, and boocoo Smith Act violations. You’ll burn, just like the Rosenbergs.”

Max phone-booked me. He employed his love-tap/this-ain’t-so-bad swing. “We’d appreciate it if you’d recount your interviews with Ahlendorf, Crawshaw, and Donnell. That would go a long way toward earning our favor.”

Red phone-booked me. He tossed a love-tap uppercut.

“We’ll let you think about it. We’ll put you up in a tidy cell, away from the riffraff. I know the Chief is looking forward to speaking with you.”

Harry phone-booked me. “Freddy O.’s wild ride has just ended.”

Eddie phone-booked me. “R.I.P., Freddy.”

They tossed me in a holding cell. My bunk was bare-bones. My hurt head hit a hard pillow. It caromed me into a coma.

I wasted Ralph Mitchell Horvath. Joi gobbled Steve the Stud’s schvantz. I beat up Johnnie Ray. I peeped ten thousand houses. I popped penance payments in Joanie Horvath’s mailbox.

I must have cried. I soaked my pillow down to the mattress. My head felt homogenized. My cerebellum sang sad songs. My cranium creaked.

William H. Parker racked the door and sat on my bunk. He wore his full four-star blues.

“The Los Angeles Police Department now owns you. As of this moment, Confidential has ceded its claim. We will let you skate for everything that you have done. You will skate for your assault on Agent Fullerton, and for blowing up the listening post. You will skate for your rogue actions on the Joan Horvath snuff. You will skate for any and all of your illegal actions while in the employ of Confidential. We will allow you to avenge Joan Horvath, however you deem fit. In recompense for the above stated mercies, you will enter my direct employ.”

Parker paused. His Bible gaze burned my soul. The Book of Revelation 3:17–18: And you don’t realize that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. So, I advise you to buy gold from me — gold that has been purified by fire.

I said, “Yes.”

Parker said, “You will sign a detailed confession regarding your work for Confidential. You will serve as my personal informant and agent provocateur, and assist me in my efforts to destroy the magazine. We are going to bankrupt it, expose the breadth of its evil, and slay it dead in Federal court. As of now, you are my personal snitch, rat, stool pigeon, and squealer. Say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ immediately. Your answer will dictate the course of the rest of your life.”

I said, “Yes.”

Tough tasks. Deep duties. My vows to first fulfill. WOMEN said it all.

Joan, Claire, Connie. Linked in cause and effect. Calamitous causation. Let’s extract the truth thereof.

I bopped to Beverly Hills and beat feet to my bungalow. I stood by my wall graph and linked lines in black ink. I linked Joan to Connie, straight up.

Connie knew every Commie in captivity. Joan’s killer lurked there. The ’30s and ’40s CP in L.A. Comintern cads coursing through. Fractious front groups established and unions usurped. How many dark-haired/heavy-bristled white men lurked and looted within?

On to Claire. Let’s craft a chronology. Let’s link lines. Let’s answer this quivering question: who’s the man that Claire wants to kill?

A nihilist notion nudged me. It was all circumstantial and based on thirdhand dish. Claire’s out to get Sammy Ahlendorf. Here’s my line links:

Lez Line #2. Stretch monitors it. Babs Payton dishes per her three-ways with Claire. Claire tricks with Russian consulate humps. She speaks Russian. Ahlendorf is Russian — but emigrated here in ’36. Claire pumps out the code name “Robin Redbreast.” V. J. Jerome says it’s a former Red named “Sammy.” Samuel Ahlendorf belonged to Connie Woodard’s cell. Claire carries a Makarov pistol. Claire hates Reds and has finked them to HUAC. Babs dishes this: Robin Redbreast was a crazy Commo in the ’30s and ’40s. He’s stale stuff in the ’50s. His expulsion from the Manhattan Project underlines this.

Then, there’s this:

Sammy digs Russian revolutionary art. He rankly revealed it to me. Ellie Donnell told me the tale of Meyerhold’s maiming and murder. Meyerhold was a fitful formalist. He renounced socialist realism and pissed off the punk Politburo. Meyerhold is snuffed, circa ’39–’40. His wife Zinaida Raikh is torture-stabbed and slain. A Wave officer braces Party Girl at an all-Party bash in L.A. It has to be Claire. She presses Party Girl per the whole Meyerhold deal. Claire’s armed with supple suppositions now. She’s got Sammy gun-sighted. That’s a probable certainty.

Harry Fremont was tight with a U.S. Customs cop. I called and asked him to run passport checks on Claire and Sammy A. Check for Russian excursions. Post-’36 for Sammy. He might be using forged Party passports. Look for variants on the Robin Redbreast code name. Do this per Claire: check birth certificates per her surname and DOB. Check her parents’ surnames. Check Claire’s passport travel: ’39 and ’40. She was of legal age then. Did she connect to Robin Redbreast in Russia? Meyerhold was a sweltering swordsman. Did he siphon his seed in ’20 and ’21 in New York? Did he somehow spawn spectacular Claire? I pledged Harry a grand and told him to get back to me faaaaast. He told me it was all far-fetched. Yeah, but you never know.

I ink-linked lives. Claire, Joan, Connie — shakedown shills, rabid Reds, knock-kneed succubi. I ran them all through the Book of Revelation and found that they fit right there.

The fone rang. I picked up. Harry said, “I’ll never doubt you again.”

“Tell me why.”

“Claire and Robin Redfield — that’s the name on Ahlendorf’s passport — crossed paths in Moscow in late ’39 and ’40, but they traveled separately.”

I said, “Don’t stop now.”

Harry said, “Who’s stopping? Customs ran the Klein skirt’s DOB in New York. The guy was smart, because he cross-checked ‘Claire Klein’ with birth-parent names, and got Meyerhold and Zinaida Raikh. The Meyerholds granted custody to Mendel Klein and his wife, Clara, who were both big Party and radical-theater people. They gave the baby their name, and it all fits, just like you said it would.”

The Book of Revelation 2:9–10: I know about your suffering and your poverty... I know the blasphemy of those opposing you.

I owed Sambo a warning. I sensed his malevolent move, back in Russia. He finked Meyerhold and his missus to the Politburo and the NKVD. He cited reconstructionism, recidivism, formalism. He kissed Commie ass as only Commies can. His motive was most likely envy. He didn’t want to be a bomb big shot. He wanted to be a radical-theater rajah. He wanted to mesmerize the masses, à la Meyerhold in his hoodwinked heyday.

Dusk hit. I looped Coldwater Canyon northbound and hit the Valley. The Valley Vista Villas loomed. I surveillance-circled the block and came back behind the buildings. I noticed a series of second-floor terraces with connecting walkways.

Let’s surprise Comrade Sambo. Pick the sliding-glass-door lock and enter his crib. Hey, Sambo — it’s dues time. Run while you can. Claire Klein is radical theater beyond your corrupt ken.

I parked and schlepped it up to the terrace walkway. Sambo’s pad was three glass doors down. I heard shuddering Shostakovich bursting from within. The muted message was Fuck the Soviet Beast. The doors were heavy glass and locked from inside. I thought I heard one single screech.

I was too late. Sambo ran toward the terrace — and me. He was naked. His pubic hair had been shaved. His eyes had been stabbed out. His chest and legs had been stabbed. Claire chased after him. She wore a wooden Kabuki mask. Kabuki masks were a Meyerhold trademark. Claire’s mask bore the face of Zinaida Raikh.

Comrade Sam couldn’t see me. Zinaida-Claire didn’t see me. Comrade Sam tripped and fell. Claire ran her shiv between his legs and eviscerated him.

Rush-hour traffic. It slowed my trek back. I stopped at a pay phone to kill time. I called Bill Parker and gave him a loose lowdown. He said, “Thanks, Freddy.” He said, “Better dead than Red,” and hung up.

I hung up and snail-trailed back to 6th and Dunsmuir. Charlie Fullerton lived above his garage. His garage enticed me.

Old police detectives and Feds. They saved their most fecund files and stored them in marked boxes. They piled said boxes in their garages — more often than not.

Charlie would be off at the Raincheck Room or Rick’s Riptide. It was 7:45. I had lock picks and a penlight. I had Whiskey Bill Parker’s home number if I fell in the shit.

It went as predicted. I picked the lock and picked through stuffed boxes. They were code-named and listed code-numbered rat-outs. I found the “Redbird” boxes and counted numbered snitches. Who killed you, baby? There’s just numbers — no names.

Fullerton inked occasional comments. Rat-out #114 stood out. This guy was Hard Red and Deep Red. Sammy Ahlendorf mentored him. He talked up the need to snuff Federal snitches. He did this incessantly. Joan ratted him in May ’49. He never joined the cell. Fullerton called him a fellow traveler. He was a closeted Party member. He drifted off for parts unknown, fall ’49.

I wrote “114” and Fullerton’s comments on my scratch pad. I wrote down numbers and comments for a dozen other snitches. I planned to pop the den mother with Pentothal. I believe in coerced confessions. How could I not? Bill Parker just made me his snitch.

I beat retreat feet to Googie’s. The Tattle Tyrant turns tail. He slinks in defeat.

Rock Hudson sat in my booth. He was anchored in anguish and locked in loss. He’s all worrisome and woe is me.

I sat down. Rock said, “Ask me why I look like warmed-over shit. I’m a movie star. I can’t afford days like this.”

“Tell me — but it’s not like I can’t guess.”

Rock said, “Claire robbed me. She cracked the safe in my den, and stole twelve grand in cash and forty grand in gold Krugerrands. She’ll be long gone by now, and I know I’ll never see her again. I called Lew Wasserman, and, man, is he pissed.”

“You got off easy, brother. Some day I’ll tell you why.”

Rock slid me a slip of paper. “She left this in the safe. It’s for you. You get a good-bye, but I don’t.”

I read the note. It was bravura brief:

The Den Mother’s Red Bedroom

4/8/54

I said, “It’s for Joan.”

She said, “You know exactly what to say to get exactly what you want from me. Truth serum, really.”

Connie sat in the red chair. I sat on the red footstool. She held out her left arm. I swipe-swabbed it with alcohol and measured a mainline. I spike-speared her and jammed her the juice.

She sighed and went loosey-goosey. I said, “Count backward from one hundred and feel free to shut your eyes.”

She moved her lips. I barely heard it: 100, 99, 98, gonesville. I took a brief breather and consulted my control notes.

Joan rat-out #84. Code name: Lazy Maizie. She’s a San Marino socialite. She makes big donations to the Strikebusters’ International. It’s a known Commo front. Joan rat-out #204. Code name: John Henry. He’s a male Negro. He’s right tackle for the Detroit Lions. Charlie Fullerton’s comment: “All the mud-shark girls go nuts for him.”

I said, “How do you feel, Connie?”

Connie said, “Loose. But what if I don’t feel inclined to...”

“Name names? That’s okay. I’d be satisfied with simple, candid responses.”

Connie, très loose: “Love, I’m sure that’s all you’ll ever get from...”

I said, “Lazy Maizie.”

Connie, très, très loose. “She smoked hashish. She... put... her... hand on Joan’s leg... and Joan slapped her.”

That was gooooood. It was Joan-centric and Joan-phobic. I laid John Henry on her.

Connie, yet more loose: “He was... a steel-driving man in a Negro spiritual. We... sang that song at all the Scottsboro Boys rallies... we knew that something like half of them were guilty, though.”

It was half good. Connie voiced un-Commie-esque candor. I gave her a brief breather.

Rat-out #114 was un-code-named. I’d have to mention Sammy Ahlendorf to rouse recollection. The papers toed Bill Parker’s line, per dead Sammy. It’s suicide, case closed. Connie believed that horseshit.

I said, “Joan informed on this man. She must have felt very strongly about him. He said he wanted to murder all FBI snitches, but I don’t know his name. He never joined your cell, although he was very much in the thrall of Sammy Ahlendorf, and I think it’s safe to say that he shared Sammy’s anti-A-bomb mentality, which is to say he was pissed off when we A-bombed the Japs, even though they were fascists, and even though they dropped those eggs on Pearl Harbor.”

Connie sighed. Her hands twitched. Her eyelids fluttered. She’s digging deep here.

“I... remember him... He said, ‘We’ve got to expose the bomb before it wipes out the human race, and I’m going to build my career on it.’ ”

She snapped awake then. She didn’t name names or say his name. She didn’t need to. She’d already said this to me:

“He was my last tortured and torturing male lover — before you.”

Fullerton’s file facts fit. They surged circumstantial. Joan’s rat-out rang true. It did not mean that Steve Cochran killed her.

Connie snapped très awake. She blinked, blank-faced. She didn’t recall what she’d said.

“Did you learn anything provocative? I’d hate to think that I let Joan down.”

I said, “You did swell.”

A-Bomb party. The U.S. Army’s set to launch at 9:00 p.m. It’s a tête-à-tête this time. It’s my bungalow roof. Stretch, me, frozen daiquiris and corn chips. My transistor radio for the countdown. Two cozy deck chairs.

We held hands. Stretch lounged low and leveled out our height disparity. The radio murmured musings on mach 10 and beyond. Supersonic rockets are now passé.

I said, “You’re not a Communist or a psycho killer, are you? My friendship’s not sending you over the bend?”

Stretch said, “Uncle Freddy’s having conscience pangs. He’s sleeping with this nutty old lady in Hancock Park, when he could be here with me.”

I laffed and lapped my daiquiri. The nite was cool. Stretch wore her USC letter coat. I wore a Beethoven sweatshirt that Claire left at Googie’s for me.

“She’ll break it off soon. It was a situational sort of deal. You and I are eternal.”

Stretch laffed. “Older man, younger woman. That’s a news flash. It’s on a par with ‘dog bites man.’ ”

I laffed. We swung our hands. The radio reporter cut to a commercial. Bucky Beaver hawked Ipana toothpaste.

“I saw that note you tacked to the board. Really, how blithe. ‘Rain check, okay?’ And don’t tell me C.K. isn’t the dread Claire Klein.”

I said, “She’s ephemeral. Forget all the bad things I told you about her. Don’t listen for her on the tap lines. She got out, right on cue.”

Stretch squeezed my hand. “You’re being disingenuous, but I’ll let it slide, because we’re about to witness history.”

The radioman rang out the countdown. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one — blastoff.”

I missed the mushroom cloud and the mauve-and-pink sky. Stretch strong-armed me into a kiss.

The Malinow-Silverman Cemetery

4/9/54

Ashes to ashes, baby. Ask the rental rabbi. Sammy Ahlendorf eats the dust.

LAPD quick-processed the stiff and released it. The graveside service was bilingo and brief. The rabbi ululated in Hebrew and extolled Sambo in English. He was a bomb builder, a macher, a mensch.

I stood graveside. The den mother stood with me. Grave diggers grappled the casket into the ground. The rabbi lit a cigarette and split the gig. It was a rush job. Who’s this Ahlendorf schmendrick?

Connie and I came in two cars. She insisted on it. We walked toward the street and the Big Splitsville. Connie lifted her veil and dropped my hand.

“You brought a whirlwind into my life. We were united in common cause for a moment — and one that I’ll never forget. But the walls between us stand too high to breach, darling. It’s best that we end this thing now.”

I said, “Stay strong, Red. It was a gas knowing you. You’re History’s child. Someone has to carry the torch, and I’m glad that it’s you.”

Connie touched my cheek. “Oh, Freddy — I knew you’d understand.”

I winked. “Rain check, okay?”

Connie winked back. Her eyelash stuck. She pulled out a hankie and wiped it free.

“Always, love. For you, the world.”

I walked away. She walked away. I felt ghastly and relieved.

The Ranch Market. My eye in the sky. It felt feckless and familiar and gooooood.

It’s where I plot and plan and scrounge and scheme. It’s a shakedown shack. It’s a divorce-work dive. It’s a scandal screen that sifts gold. The hard heart and sick soul of Confidential thrive here. I’m a police informant now. It’s where I’ll plot and plan and scrounge and scheme to take Confidential down.

It’s ghastly. I’m relieved. It’s an opportunity.

I popped three dexies and gargled Old Crow. I put my feet up on my desk and scratched my balls. Bernie Spindel walked in. He carried earmuffs and a tape spool.

I said, “Qué pasa, baby? It’s a good day to be alive, n’est-ce pas?”

Bernie went Oy. He spooled the tape through my desk rig and earmuffed my head. He said, “It’s our standing mount at the Miramar Hotel. I’ll destroy the tape after you hear it.”

I molded the muffs down and got comfy. Bernie flipped switches. I heard mattress moans and fucky-fucky exertions. I matched moans to my megamillions of women. Oh yeah — it’s Joi Lansing in the sack. Oh shit — that’s Steve Cochran with her.

Steve Cochran. Joan Hubbard rats his ass. He’s Commie #114.

Steve and Joi light cigarettes. I hear match flare and exhale. There’s fucky-fucky/goo-goo sounds. Oh shit — there’s two full minutes’ worth.

Joi says, “Your scars are healing, baby. That plastics guy knows his stuff.”

Steve says, “I hate to say it, but so does your ex. I never bought that bill of goods the Sheriff’s fed me. Some World War Two buff in a red devil mask? That dog don’t hunt. It had to be Freddy.”

Joi said, “Let it go, baby. He’s just a stooge and a gofer. What’s that you always call him? The ‘running dog of capitalism.’ ”

Steve dog-bayed. Steve said, “Guys like Freddy are the fuckboys of the American Oligarchy. They’ve spawned this whole atomic nightmare we’re enduring. Freddy’s the ne plus ultra of the fascist gestalt. He’s Camus’ l’étranger. He’s the guy who goes to his death knowing exactly jack shit.”

Joi laffed. Joi giggled. Steve tickled her — I knew those squeals.

Steve said, “Credit where credit is due. It’s Freddy who got me started on this big roll of mine. He blew up Joanie Horvath’s husband, and got me thinking that maybe Joanie herself should go. For one, she was an FBI snitch, which mandates death in my book. That’s why I bugged her pad. Two, she’d snitched me once already, and with Joe McCarthy in town, I figured she’d mount the revival.”

Joi said, “You ‘revivaled’ her, baby.”

Steve said, “You mean I derivaled her.”

They laffed. Steve was swarthy and dark-haired. I recalled that bandage he wore two months back. Joan scratched him. In that exact spot. I read the autopsy protocol.

Joi: “Don’t tell me too much, baby.”

Steve: “You’re right. Mum’s the word.”

Joi: “And you be careful. Freddy’s pussy-whipped, and he’s got this thing for dead chicks. He might come after you.”

Steve hooted. He coursed contempt. He pilloried my pathos. He decreed my damned destiny.

“I’ve got Freddy fail-safed. Charlie Fullerton told me that he torched that Fed post. I lifted some of his prints off his office at the Ranch Market, and placed them on a booze-bottle accelerant at the crime scene. If Freddy acts up, I can hang Treason on him. And that bottle is now in a Fed evidence vault.”

Joi laffed. Steve said, “Ralphie to Joanie to now. The big karmic circle. When the revolution comes, your ex will be the first one to go.”

I hit the off-switch. Bernie went Oy and walked out.

I felt reckless and feckless. I felt striated and stretched bare. Phantasmagoric ’54 had me morally massacred and fearfully fucked-up.

Rain check, okay?

I made the rounds that night. Rock Hudson was having people over. Jimmy and Liz were there. Johnnie Ray saw me — and scrammed out the back door. Claire left some undies behind. Jimmy told me and showed me. I took a few farewell sniffs.

Jimmy dished Rock’s new wife candidate. She was one Phyllis Gates. She worked for Rock’s agent and came recommended. Jimmy said Phyllis was squaresville. She wanted to wait for her wedding nite. Phyllis was clueless. She swooned for Rock and did not know that Rock swooned for boys.

I got half gassed and bopped back to Beverly Hills and my bungalow. I went inside and watched Stretch sleep. I tucked her too-long legs back under the sheets.

Rain check, okay?

Pervdogs are scent dogs. We often loop by locations that recently roused us to lust. I drove east to Hancock Park and pulled up to the den mother’s digs. I cut my lights and peeped her windows in the dark.

I whistled “Willow Weep for Me” and “My Funny Valentine.” I saw Connie walk across the red bedroom and turn off the lights. I drove by Camerford and Vine then. A family had moved into the Horvath house. Their kids romped out on the porch.

I drove southeast for no good reason. I stopped at Ollie Hammond’s Steakhouse and juiced in the bar. I peeped a tall redhead and watched her walk out of my life.

Opportunity is love. Hey, there — you with the stars in your eyes.