I yelled, “He’s gone?”
Joi nodded. “We underestimated a genius.”
Oscar said, “And we overestimated you.”
I kicked a rubble pile. My tennis shoe ignited. I hopped on one foot and swatted out the flames.
“What about the files? I’ve got plans. Those files can make me!”
Joi said, “They burned up. Tough luck, Dick. I was hoping they could help you mount a comeback.”
I threw a tantrum. I stamped my feet and kicked at hot rubble. My shoes caught fire. I let them burn.
Oscar said, “Dick, you’re fucked.”
* * *
43 years, 6 months, 26 days. A twisting twirl of time to now.
Covert connections. Contaminations cataloged in conflagrated carbon paper. Secrets lost in smoke.
The contamination that I witnessed. The collusion that I tried to contain. The rampaging ramifications that still ram L.A.
History hidden and soooooooo hush-hushed.
The Sheriff sheltered me for three years. I lived in exile on the Sunset Strip. Joi dumped me. I married an actress named Leigh Snowden.
Parker kept his promise. He did not visit violence upon me or mine. He did not sell slaves to Bad-Boy Batista. He did not imprison the impecunious. He did not juke Jack Webb in any public manner and did not drag Dragnet into the dirt. He dramatically drove Fred Otash out of the LAPD. Dragnet dragged onforfive more seasons.
Fred O became a private eye. He shagged shit and skimmed skinny from a thousand insider informants. He brokered abortions. He set up dry outs and dope cures. He sold pictures of Rock Hudson with a dick in his mouth. He doped a racehorse in ’59 and almost did time. He died old and rich in 1992.
Heart attack.
Johnny Stompanato ran sex shakedowns and took up with Lana Turner. Lana’s daughter shanked him in April ’58. Fred 0 made a mint on morgue memorabilia. Slab shots sold for a C-note. Marilyn Monroe bought Johnny’s hair. A pederast purchased his penis.
The Schvantz died in ‘6g.
On his yacht. Alone with five women.
Heart attack.
He lived fast, loved hard, died hung.
Ida Lupino died in ’95.
Cigarettes and booze and attrition.
Sheriff Biscailuz died in ’69.
Old age.
I went to his wake. I got drunk with some robbery cops and joined them on a liquor-store stakeout. I told them the REAL Harvey Glatman story. They didn’t believe me.
Harvey disappeared for three years. He resurfaced in L.A. in ’57. He snuffed three women and dumped them in the desert. A pinup model dumped Harvey. She disarmed him and dropped him with a flesh wound. The cops grabbed him. He copped out to his three recent killings and no more. He was tried and convicted. He sucked cyanide in September ’59.
The three women weigh on me. The unidentified dead undermine my sleep and own me at odd moments. Harvey escaped on my watch. He killed his last three victims and other women under my imprimatur I exploited his genius. It saved my life. I sold him a death-house reprieve. He exploited the time and bought himseiffive years and untold victims.
Time.
Oscar and Joi died in ’72. They put in a million showbiz miles and burned out every part of their bodies.
I miss them.
Viv Woodard died in ’61.
Suicide.
She never hatched her half-guinea love child.
Jack Webb died in ’82. Heart attack. He promulgated police propaganda with other tuna TVshows and tapped out to the tune of authority. His malevolent mentor William H. Parker died in ’66.
A heart attack hastened by his bri ef blast of me.
He passed on as one pissed-off patriarch. I derailed his most demonic designs and forced him to settle for second-class methods of suppression. He stepped up his stern measures in indirect defiance of me. I destroyed his dystopia and devastated his most darkly held dreams. Ifragged his frazzled and fragile ego. He suppressed the suppressible underclass and dicked the disenfranchised as dickable Dick Contino surrogates.
His boys kicked black ass and brown ass and poor-white ass. Parker paternalistically popped his rocks along with them. He left a lethal legacy. He left his suppression-minded successors the unlearned lesson that suppression has a price.