I crept in. Pitch dark, twisty, damp–I hugged the cave wall. Motor hum, then light–Whipcord had an arclamp set up.
Shadows, shapes half-visible. Shadow bounces, full light on pale skin: Chrissy’s back, marked with a red swastika.
Trickling blood–not a gouge–still TIME.
I tiptoed outside to the Ford. Adrenaline: one good yank ripped the back seat out clean. I found a siphon tube in the trunk, popped the gas cap and sucked.
Lip traction caught–I soaked the seat cushion with ethyl. Springs and a baseboard to grip–I hoisted the hundred pounds of vinyl and foam up easy.
Unwieldy–but I got a match lit. WH000000000SH–the Fire God stormed the cave.
Smoke, screams up ahead. Flames snaking sideways–my arm hair sizzled. Godawful heat, shots–I felt foam rip close to my heart.
Chris screamed.
Whipcord screamed gobbledygook. Bullets smashed my shield of fire and exploded.
Heat, smoke, wind sucking flames _away_ from me.
Whipcord kept firing–two guns–very close range. The top of the seat cushion blew off–I held on to red-hot springs and kept coming.
A blue halo behind Whipcord: clear sky.
I piled into him.
His hair caught fire.
I kept pushing toward the blue.
Whipcord ran backwards, screaming.
I chased him.
He hit thin air–I hurled the cushion at him.
Flaming pinwheels off a hundred foot cliff.
I grabbed Chris, ran her out to the Ford, tucked her low in the passenger seat. Fire God fast: down dirt roads, through the lot, Vermont south. Roadblocks by the Greek Theatre; Danny Getchell, camera ready. Cops yelled, “Stop!”–I got the notion this Fire God Buggy could fly. I worked the clutch/gas/shifter just right–the fucker went airborne. Shots behind me, residual shouts–magically audible. I heard “CONTINO,” but no one yelled, “COWARD.”
* * *
That was thirty-five years ago.
History in ellipses: the cops covered all of it up.
I skated on kidnap plot charges–a police bullet meant for the Ford killed an old lady. Shoftel, Marichal and the Whipcord– stonewalled.
Chris Staples healed up nicely–and avoids low-cut gowns that expose her faint scarring. She married a right-wing nut who digs swastikas–they’re big in born-again Christian TV fraud.
Sol Slotnick has survived nineteen heart attacks on an all-junk food diet.
Spade Cooley beat Ella Mae to death in 1961.
Jane DePugh had an affair with President John F. Kennedy.
Dave DePugh is a major JFK snuff suspect.
Leigh died of cancer in ’82. Our three kids are grown up now.
_Daddy-O_ bombed critically and nosedived at the box-office. My career never regained its early momentum. Lounge gigs, Dago banquets–I earn a decent living playing music I love.
“Draft Dodger,” “Coward”–every once in a while I still hear it.
It’s only mildly annoying.
LAPD goons muscled Danny Getchell for his flying car footage.
He dumped it on the _Daddy-O_ cinematographer. It was spliced into the movie–not too convincingly.
People who’ve seen the raw film stock deem my driving feat miraculous. The word has spread in a limited fashion: one day in 1958 I touched God or something equally powerful. I believe it– but only to an ambiguous point. The truth is that at any given moment anything is possible.
Every word of this memoir is true.
HIGH DARKTOWN
From my office windows I watched L.A. celebrate the end of World War II. Central Division Warrants took up the entire north side of City Hall’s eleventh floor, so my vantage point was high and wide. I saw clerks drinking straight from the bottle in the Hall of Records parking lot across the street and harness bulls forming a riot squad and heading for Little Tokyo a few blocks away, bent on holding back a conga line of youths with 2 by 4s who looked bent on going the atom bomb one better. Craning my neck, I glimpsed tall black plumes of smoke on Bunker Hill– a sure sign that patriotic Belmont High students were stripping cars and setting the tires on fire. Over on Sunset and Figueroa, knots of zooters were assembling in violation of the Zoot Suit Ordinance, no doubt figuring that today it was anything goes.
The tiny window above my desk had an eastern exposure, and it offered up nothing but smog and a giant traffic jam inching toward Boyle Heights. I stared into the brown haze, imagining shitloads of code 2s and 3s thwarted by noxious fumes and bumper-to-bumper revelry. My daydreams got more and more vivid, and when I had a whole skyful of A-bombs descending on the offices of the L.A.P.D. Detective Bureau, I slammed my desk and picked up the two pieces of paper I had been avoiding all morning.