AMERICAN TABLOID by James Ellroy

She touched his hands. “A man. I had a professor at Tulane who said that things change with old friends and students and teachers, so what’s a quarter of a century here and there?”

“You’re saying he was twenty-five years older than you?”

Helen laughed. “Twenty-six. He was trying to minimize things to make them seem less embarrassing.”

“You’re saying you had an affair with him?”

“Yes. And I’m saying it wasn’t lurid and pathetic, but going out with undergrad boys who thought I’d be easy because I was scarred up was.”

Littell said, “Jesus Christ.”

Helen waved her fork at him. “Now I know you’re upset, because some part of you is still a Jesuit seminarian, and you only invoke our Savior’s name when you’re flustered.”

Littell sipped brandy. “I was going to say, ‘Jesus Christ, have Kemper and I ruined you for young men your own age?’ Are you going to spend your youth chasing middle-aged men?”

“You should hear Susan and Claire and I talk.”

“You mean my daughter and her best friends swear like longshoremen?”

“No, but we’ve been discussing men in general and you and Kemper in specific for years, in case you’ve felt your ears burning.

“I can understand Kemper. He’s handsome and dangerous.”

“Yes, and he’s heroic. But he’s a tomcat, and even Claire knows it.”

Helen squeezed his hands. He felt his pulse racing. He got this Jesus Fucking Christ crazy idea.

Littell took off his glasses. “I’m not so sure Kemper’s heroic. I think heroes are truly passionate and generous.”

“That sounds like an epigram.”

“It is. Senator John F. Kennedy said it.”

“Are you enamored of him? Isn’t he some terrible liberal?”

“I’m enamored of his brother Robert, who is truly heroic.”

Helen pinched herself. “This is the strangest conversation to be having with an old family friend who’s known me since before my father died.”

That Idea–Jesus Christ.

Littell said, “I’ll be heroic for you.”

Helen said, “We can’t let this be pathetic.”

o o o

He drove her to her hotel and carried her bags upstairs. Helen kissed him goodbye on the lips. His glasses snagged in her hair and fell to the floor.

Littell drove back to Midway and caught a 2:00 a.m. flight to Los Angeles. A stewardess gawked at his ticket: his return flight left an hour after they landed.

One last brandy let him sleep. He woke up woozy just as the plane touched down.

He made it with fourteen minutes to spare. Flight 55 from Miami was landing at gate 9, on time.

Littell badgered a guard and got permission to walk out on the tarmac. A wicked hangover headache started kicking in.

Baggage men cruised by and checked him out. He looked like a middle-aged bum who’d slept in his clothes.

The airplane landed. A ground crew pushed passenger steps out.

Bondurant exited up front. Jimmy Hoffa flew his killers firstclass.

Littell walked up to him. His chest hammered and his legs went numb. His voice fluttered and broke.

“Someday I’m going to punish you. For Kirpaski and everything else.”

10

(Los Angeles, 12/14/58)

Freddy left a note under the wiper blades:

“I’m getting some lunch. Wait for me.”

Pete climbed in the back of the van. Freddy had a cooling system rigged: a fan aimed at a big bowl of ice cubes.

Tape spun. Lights flashed. Graph needles twitched. The place was like the cockpit of a low-rent spaceship.

Pete cracked a side window for some air. A Fed type walked by–probably listening-post personnel.

Air blew in–Santa Ana hot.

Pete dropped an ice cube down his pants and laughed falsetto. He sounded just like SA Ward J. Littell.

Littell squeaked his warning. Littell smelled like stale booze and sweat. Littell had jackshit for evidence.

He could have told him:

I whacked Anton Gretzler, but Hoffa killed Kirpaski. I stuffed shotgun shells in his mouth and glued his lips shut. We torched Roland and his car at a refuse dump. Double-aught buckshot blew his head up–you’ll never get a dental-work ID.

Littell doesn’t know that Jack’s big mouth killed Roland Kirpaski. The listening-post Fed might be sending him tapes–but Littell hasn’t put the scenario together.

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