Frizell: “Five-minute break and no drinking!” Background noise: “Scab scum!
Police puppets!”
No Glenda Bledsoe.
Touch oozed by the camera slow. “Hi, Dave. Looking for Mickey?”
“People keep asking me that.”
“Well, it’s an inescapable conclusion of the cognoscenti.”
Chick winked. “He’ll show up. He goes by this bakery to get week-old bread to make sandwiches with. Feature the cuisine we get: stale bread, stale doughnuts and this lunch meat sold out the back door at this slaughterhouse out in Vernon.
I quit eating on the set when I caught fur on my baloney and cheese.”
I laughed. Script talk: Blondie and an old geek dressed like Dracula.
Touch sighed. “Rock Rockwell is going to be such a big star. Listen, he’s actually telling Elston Majeska how to interpret his lines. What does that imply Side 40
Ellroy – White Jazz
to the cognoscenti?”
“Who’s Elston Majeska?”
Chick: “He was some kind of silent-movie star over in Europe, and now Mickey gets him passes from this rest home. He’s a junkie, so Mickey pays him off in this diluted H he gets cheap. Old Elston says his lines, shoots up and goes on a sugar jag. You ought to see him snarf those stale doughnuts.”
Pops peeled a Mars Bar, weaving–Blondie grabbed his cape.
Touch, swooning: “One man sandwich with the works!”
Frizell: “Glenda to the set in five minutes!”
“When I met Mickey, he was clearing ten million a year. From that to this, Jesus Christ.”
Chick: “Things come and go.”
Touch: “The torch passes.”
“Bullshit. Mickey got out of McNeil Island a year ago-and nobody has grabbed his old action. Is he scared? Four of his guys have gotten clipped, all unsolveds–and I mean nobody knows who did it. You guys are all the muscle he’s got left, and I can’t feature why you stick around. What’s he got left, the Niggertown coin business? How much can he be turning on that?”
Chick shrugged. “So feature we been with Mickey a longtime. Feature we don’t like change. He’s a scrapper, and scrappers get results sooner or later.”
“Nice results. And Lester Lake told me some out-of-town guys are working the Southside coin.”
Chick shrugged. Wino cheers and wolf whistles–Glenda Bledsoe in a pom-pom-girl outfit.
Feature:
Tall, lanky, honey blond. All legs, all chest–a grin said she never bought in.
A little knock-kneed, big eyes, dark freckles. Pure something– maybe style, maybe juice.
Touch shot me details: “Glamorous Glenda. Rock and me are the only males on the set immune to her charms. Mickey discovered her working at Scrivner’s Drive-In.
He’s smitten, Chick’s smitten. Glenda and Rock play brother and sister. She’s been infected with the vampire virus, and she puts the make on her own brother.
She turns into a monster and sends Rock running off into the hills.”
Frizell: “Actors on their marks! Camera! Action!”
Rock: “Susie, I’m your big brother. The vampire virus has stunted your moral growth, and you’ve still got two years to go at Hollywood High.”
Glenda: “Todd, in times of historic struggle, the rules of the bourgeoisie don’t apply.”
A clinch, a kiss. Frizell: “Cut! It’s a take! Print it!”
Rock broke the clinch. Whistles, cheers. A wino booed; Glenda flipped him the finger. Mickey C. ducked in a trailer, lugging groceries.
I eased around the set and tapped the door.
“Wine money not disbursed until six o’clock! The tsuris you stumblebums inflict!
This is a motion picture location, not the Jesus Saves Rescue Mission!”
I opened the door, caught a flying bagel. Stale-I tossed it back.
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Ellroy – White Jazz
“David Douglas Klein, the ‘Douglas’ a dead giveaway you are not of my kindred blood, you farshtinkener Dutch fuck. Refuse my food, but I doubt you will refuse the money Sam Giancana has transmitted to me for you.”
Mickey tucked a wad under my holster. “Sammy says thank you. Sammy says damn good job on such short notice.”
“It was too close to home, Mick. It caused me lots of trouble.”
Mickey plopped into a chair. “Sammy doesn’t care from your troubles. You of all people should know the ethos of that farshtinkener crazy cocksucker.”
“He’s supposed to care about _your_ trouble.”