There were six cabinets full of them: musty folders stuffed with occurrence reports, mugshots clipped to the first inner page. The filing was not aiphabetical, and there was no logic to the penal code placements–homosexual occurrences were lumped with straight exhibitionism and child molestation; misdemeanants and felons brushed against each other. Danny scanned the first two files in the top cabinet and snapped why the system was so sloppy: the men on the squad wanted this wretched data out of sight and out of mind. Knowing he had to look, he dug in.
Most of the stuff was homo.
The Broadway Department Store on Hollywood and Vine had a fourth-floor men’s room known as “Cocksucker’s Paradise.” Enterprising deviants had bored holes through the walls of the toilet stalls, enabling the occupants of adjoining shitters to get together for oral copulation. If you parked on a Griffith Park roadway with a blue handkerchief tied to your radio aerial, you were a queer. The corner of Selma and Las Palmas was where ex-cons with a penchant for anal rape and young boys congregated. The Latin inscription on the Pall Mall cigarette pack–“In Hoc Signo Vinces”–translated as “With this sign we shall conquer”–was a tentative means of homo identification–a sure thing when coupled with wearing a green shirt on a Thursday. The muscular Mex transvestite who blew sailors behind Grauman’s Chinese was known as “Donkey Dan”
Side 91
Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The or “Donkey Danielle” because he/she possessed a thirteen-inch dick. The E-Z Cab Company was run by homos, and they would deliver you a boy, queer smut films, extra KY Jelly, bennies, or your favorite liquor twenty-four hours a day.
Danny kept reading, weak in the knees and stomach, learning. When he saw a 1900–1910 birthdate or 6′ and up on a male Caucasian’s yellow sheet, he checked the mugstrip; every man he locked eyes with looked too ugly and pathetic to be _his_ man–and prowling the ensuing arrest reports for blood types always proved him right. Thomas (NMI) Milnes, 6’2″, 11/4/07, exposed himself to little boys and begged the arresting officers to rubberhose him for it; Cletus Wardell Hanson, 6’1″, 4/29/04, carried a power drill with him to pave the way for new blow job territory, restaurant men’s rooms his speciality. In stir, he put his ass on the line: day room gang bangs, a pack of cigarettes per man. Willis (NMI) Burdette, 6’5″, 12/1/1900, was a syphilitic street whore, beaten brainless by a half dozen johns he’d passed the disease to. Darryl “Lavender Blue” Wishnick, 6′, 3/10/03, orchestrated orgies in the hills surrounding the Hollywood Sign and liked to pork pretty boys dressed in the attire of the United States armed forces.
Four hours in, four cabinets down. Danny felt his stomach settling around hunger pangs and the desire for a drink he usually got in the mid-afternoon. That was comforting; so was the new hairstyle he kept running his fingers through, and the new embellishments on his new identity that he’d mention to Considine tonight: nothing at his apartment should seem settled–he was just in from New York; he should leave his piece, cuffs and ID buzzer at home when he played Commie. Everything in the first four drawers was wrong for his man, not applicable to his bad moments outside Felix Gordean’s window. Then he hit cabinet five.
This set of files was in some kind of order–“No Arraignments,” “Charges Dropped” or “Check Agst. Future Arrests” stamped on the front of each folder.
Danny read through the first handful and got straight male-on-male sex that went to arrest but not to court: coitus interruptus in parked cars; male shack jobs snitched by shocked landladies; a toilet assignation where the theater proprietor blew the whistle, then punked out for fear of bad publicity. Straight sex recounted in straight copese: abbreviations, technical terms for the acts, a few humorous asides by waggish Vice officers.
Danny felt shakes coming on. The files carried twin yellow sheets–two mugshot strips, both sex participants in black and white. He eyed the pages for birthdates and physical stats, but kept returning to the mugs, superimposing them against each other, playing with the faces–making them prettier, less conwise. After a half dozen files, he fell into sync: a look at the photos, a scan of the arrest report, back to the mugs and the action visualized with prettified versions of the two plug-uglies clipped to the first page. Mouths on mouths; mouths to crotches; sodomy, fellatio, soixante-neuf, a Man Camera smut job, a little voice going, “It’s for the investigation” when some detail hit him so large that his stomach queased to the point where he thought his bowels would go. _No_ middle-aged tall guy’s stats to make him stop and think; just the pictures, rapid fire, like nickelodeon flickers.