We ran into a little green room. It looked like the gas chamber up at San Quentin. Joi held Harvey hostage. He sat in a gaschamber chair. Joi held her toy gun on him.
I smelled stale gas. I pried open a floor vent. I smelled it stronger there. I saw cardboard boxes stacked in a hidey-hole. I saw a crawl space behind them.
Oscar grabbed a box. Joi pistol-slapped Harvey. Her toy gun decomposed in her hand.
Harvey yelped. Joi said, “He tried to tie me up, the sick shit.”
I eyeballed the room. It had a feral feel and an abattoir air. Oscar opened a box and skimmed some carbon paper. He said, “It’s the big Hush-Hush file.”
Harvey yipped and yelped. Joi jammed a high heel down on his foot. Oscar spieled scandal-rag skank:
“Otto Preminger sniffs coke and H speedballs. Mayor Bowron’s got a Filipino love child. Randy Randolph Scott wrangles with a Mexican middleweight. Dean Martin moves Mob money direct to Pope Pius at the Vatican. Dick Powell delivers dope to–,,
I cut him off. “Talk, Harvey.”
Harvey squirmed. I sniffed more stale gas. I caught a bitteralmond subscent and felt my hackles hop.
Harvey said, “What do you want to know?”
I said, “All of it. Off-the-record, on the q.t., and very hushhush.”
Harvey talked. Harvey laid out the whole ball of wax. I sniffed bitter almond and shivered as he spritzed it.
He was Freddy 0 and Johnny Stomp’s Einstein. He ran their “Subscription TV” scam. They sold smut-film subscriptions to pervs and the Great White Priapic all over L.A. Harvey could beam film from his shop to any Joe Blow’s TV set. The pervs paid prime prices for home pornography.
Cal Dinkins and Playboy Wells provided inmate actors. LAPD goons transported them to the flick-film set in Duarte. Freddy 0 coerced Ida Lupino into director duty. Freddy fixed her manslaughter beef. Ida plowed a car full of wetbacks dead drunk and killed all four passengers. Freddy forced the Schvantz to star in her films. The Schvantz had three reefer-roust priors and a current case pending. The Schvantz skin-popped White Horse and loved jungle-bred jailbait hot off a slave boat from Zanzibar. The Schvantz was viably pliable.
Freddy O was Chief Parker’s pet pit dog. Parker wanted to shaft the Sheriff’s Department and take a fat share of its budget. Freddy concocted a covert operation. He coopted Johnny Stomp’s stagnight racket and put six ranking Sheriff’s men in bed with six inmate hookers. The men shot their mouths off. They shamelessly shared Sheriff’s Department secrets. Ida Lupino filmed their philandering.
Parker needed money. He wanted to build debtors’ prisons and work farms. He wanted to wipe the winos and strong-arm the stumblebums off the streets of L.A. and sell them to spic dictators.
It was all working well-oiled and wonderful. Until Playboy pulled an unpermitted heist with Cal Dinkins right there. Until Oscar Levant and Dick Contino bumbled down to Darktown.
Harvey stopped talking. Joi blew cigarette smoke in his face and said, “Creep.” Oscar tossed a dozen film cans out of the hideyhole.
I looked in the hole. I saw pipes pointing up to the hot seat. I caught a biting blast of bitter almond.
Oscar said, “I’ve been through six boxes. There’s enough dirt in them to outextort the gross national product. Bing Crosby bangs underage tail in an archdiocesan ark moored in San Pedro! Dave Garroway checks out the chicken in—”
I jumped into the hole. I bent down and followed a shaft of light. The cyanide scent went south. I smelled something worse.
The hole expanded into a tunnel. Wood walls shut out dirt and foundation debris. I saw a pile of bones and smelled mothballs mixed with decomposed flesh.
Skulls. Arm bones. Leg bones. Wide female pelvic bones flecked with red gristle.
I ran out of the hole. I ran up to Harvey Glatman.
Harvey smiled. Harvey said, “Seventeen. But then, who’s counting?”
The terror trove went telepathic. Time stood still.
Joi dropped her cigarette. Oscar dropped a scandal skank sheet.
Nobody said a word. We all let IT sink in.
Nobody talked. Nobody breathed. We all looked at the hole.