“Okay okay okay”–sipping slow.
I propped the tape rig up by his chair and hit Record.
Side 215
Ellroy – White Jazz
“_Dudley_, Chick. The furs, Duhamel, the Kafesjians, the whole takeover story.”
“I guess I know most of it. Feature Dudley likes to talk, ’cause he figures everybody’s too scared of him to tattle.”
“_Get to it_.”
Booze-brave: “I say Domenico ‘Chick’ Vecchio knows when to talk and when to shut up. I say fuck ’em all except six, and save them for the pallbearers.”
Pete said, “Will you _please_ fucking give?”
“Okay okay, feature Dudley, he was the boss at Robbery Division. Exley, he had this hard-on for him, because he made Dud for lots of stuff over the years–”
“Like the Nite Owl job?”
“Yeah, like the Nite Owl. Anyway, Dudley always took the most interesting robbery cases for himself, ’cause that’s just the way he is. So Exley shot the Hurwitz Fur case to Robbery, and Dud grabbed it, and he got some leads that he later on figured out were planted by Exley, and those fucking leads led him to his very own so-called protÈgÈ, Johnny Duhamel.”
Freddy and Pete noshing spareribs–rapt.
“Keep going.”
“Okay, now Dudley, he’d recruited Schoolboy Johnny for the Mobster Squad. You know how he drools for tough boys, and when Johnny was in the LAPD Academy he showed some meanness that Dud really liked. So he stayed mean on the Mobster Squad, and now Dudley sees that he’s a fucking badass heist guy, which, being Dudley, pleases him no fucking end. So, Dud called Johnny on the heist, and Johnny admitted it, but he refused to snitch his partners, which also impressed Dud. So, feature, Dudley gave Johnny a skate on the fur job and confided some of his own crime gigs to him, which meant that so far Exley’s trap was working.”
Tape hiss. Chick, snitching nice and loose now: “So feature that Dudley bagged Johnny’s furs and stored them at a storage locker joint. A couple got out,
’cause Dudley told Johnny to get next to Lucille Kafesjian when Exley assigned you and that punk Stemmons to that burglary job. Johnny, he got a little lightweight boner for Lucille and gave her one.”
“Dudley told Johnny to become intimate with Lucille?”
“Yeah, sort of like a safeguard if you started leaning on the Kafesjians too hard.”
“Then what?”
“Then that goddamn Stemmons blundered in. He was Johnny’s teacher at the Academy, and Johnny made him for a closet fruit back then. So Junior, he saw this striptease that Lucille did with this mink Johnny gave her, I think he was working Bido Lito’s on the burglary job. Johnny was there, and him and Junior talked, which resparked this fucking faggot torch Stemmons had for Johnny.”
“So at first Junior came on like a pal.”
“Right, and feature that all that Mobster Squad strongarm stuff wasn’t really Johnny’s style, it was just this role Exley had him playing. Anyway, Johnny, he was stretched pretty thin and feeling pretty bad about it, and he told Stemmons about how brutal the work was, and Junior started figuring out that somebody was running him undercover. Johnny never flatout snitched Dudley to him, but he told him about these ‘auditions’ Dudley was doing without naming no names.”
“What ‘auditions’?”
“Dud was bringing these out-of-town guys in. He needed them to work the Side 216
Ellroy – White Jazz
Southside coin, and he _wanted_ the Feds to see them. Dud said later that Johnny figured out the guys were going to get clipped when Mickey went public with his Fed witness bit.”
Haverford Wash–four dead. “But Johnny didn’t confide _that_ to Junior.”
“Right.”
“And the coin men were just pigeons set up to get clipped later?”
“Right.”
“What about the ‘auditions’ themselves?”
“Dudley told the out-of-town guys they had to earn the right to work for him. He said that meant enduring pain. He paid them money to let Johnny hurt them while he watched and talked this philosophical shit to them. Dick Carlisle said Dud broke their spirits and made them goddamn slaves.”
Pete said, “Holy shit.”
Freddy said, “I don’t believe this.”
“Who clipped the slot guys?”