You heard it first here!
Final Digsville:
Enter Howard Hughes: Mr. Airplane/Tool Magnate, lascivious luster after Hollywood lovelies. He used to own R.K.O. Studios; now he’s an independent producer known for keeping wildly wellendowed wenches welded to “personal service contracts”–read as bit roles in exchange for frequent nighttime visits.
Dig: we’ve heard that Mickey’s leading lady left the mammary-mauling mogul spinning his own propeller–she actually amscrayed on a Hughes contract and car hopped until Mickey materialized at Scrivner’s Drive-In dying for a chocolate malt.
Are you smitten, Mickster?
Are you heartbroken, Howard?
Hollywood Cavalcade shifts gears with an open letter to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Dear LAPD:
Side 3
Ellroy – White Jazz
Recently, three wino bums were found strangled and mutilated in abandoned houses in the Hollywood area. Very Hush-Hush: we’ve heard the still-at-large killer snapped their windpipes postmortem, utilizing great strength. The press has paid these heinously horrific killings scant attention; only the sin-sation slanted L.A. Mirror seems to care that three Los Angeles citizens have met such nauseatingly nasty nadirs. The LAPD’s Homicide Division has not been called in to investigate; so far only two Hollywood Division detectives are working the case. Hepcats, it’s the pedigree of the victims that determine the juice of investigation–and if three squarejohn citizens got choked by a neck-snapping psychopath, then LAPD Chief of Detectives Edmund J. Exley would waste no time mounting a full scale investigation. Often it takes a catchy tag name to bring dirty criminal business into the public’s consciousness and thus create a clamor for justice. Hush-Hush hereby names this anonymous killer fiend the “Wino Will-o-the-Wisp” and petitions the LAPD to find him and set him up with a hot date in San Quentin’s green room. They cook with gas there, and this killer deserves a four-burner cookout.
Watch for future updates on the Wino Will-o-the-Wisp, and remember you heard it first here: off the record, on the Q.T. and _very_ Hush-Hush.
PART ONE. STRAIGHT LIFE
CHAPTER ONE
The job: take down a bookie mill, let the press in–get some ink to compete with the fight probe.
Some fruit sweating a sodomy beef snitched: fourteen phones, a race wire.
Exley’s memo said show some force, squeeze the witnesses at the hotel later–find out what the Feds had planned.
In person: “If things get untoward, don’t let the reporters take pictures.
You’re an attorney, Lieutenant. Remember how clean Bob Gallaudet likes his cases.”
I hate Exley.
Exley thinks I bought law school with bribe money.
I said four men, shotguns, Junior Stemmons as co-boss. Exley: “Jackets and ties; this will end up on TV And no stray bullets–you’re working for me, not Mickey Cohen.”
Someday I’ll shove a bribe list down his throat.
* * *
Junior set it up. Perfect: a Niggertown street cordoned off; bluesuits guarding the alley. Reporters, prowl cars, four jackets and ties packing twelve-gauge pumps.
Sergeant George Stemmons, Jr., snapping quick draws.
Hubbub: porch-loafing jigs, voodoo eyes. My eyes on the target– closed curtains, a packed driveway–make a full shift inside working bets. A cinderblock shack–figure a steel plate door.
I whistled; Junior walked over twirling his piece.
“Keep it out, you might need it.”
“No, I’ve got a riot gun in the car. We go in the door, we-”
“We _don’t_ go in the door, it’s plated. We start banging on the door, they burn Side 4
Ellroy – White Jazz
their paper. You still hunt birds?”
“Sure. Dave, what–”
“You got ammo in your car? Single-aught birdshot?”
Junior smiled. “That big window. I shoot it out, the curtain takes the pellets, we go in.”
“Right, so you tell the others. And tell those clowns with the cameras to roll it, Chief Exley’s compliments.”
Junior ran back, dumped shells, reloaded. Cameras ready; whistles, applause: wine-guzzling loafers.
Hands up, count it down–
Eight: Junior spreads the word.
Six: the men flanked.
Three: Junior window-aiming.
One: “Now!”
Glass exploded _ka_-BOOM, loud loud loud; recoil knocked Junior flat. Cops too shocked to yell “TRIPLE AUGHT!”
Window curtains in rags.
Screams.
Run up, jump the sill. Chaos: blood spray, bet slip/cash confetti. Phone tables dumped, a stampede: out the back door bookie fistfights.
A nigger coughing glass.