It came on then, big and ugly: bye-bye Bleichert at the bus stop, adios shitbird, has-been, never-was, stool pigeon niggertown harness bull. You traded a good woman for skunk pussy, you’ve turned everything that’s been handed you to pure undiluted shit, your “I will’s” amount to the eighth round at the Academy gym when you stepped into a Blanchard right hand–pratfalling into another pile of shit, clover that you turned to horse dung. Bye-bye Betty, Beth, Betsy, Liz, we were a couple of tramps, too bad we didn’t meet before 39th and Norton, it just might have worked, maybe _us_ would’ve been the one thing we wouldn’t have fucked up past redemption–
I bolted downstairs, grabbed the car and rolled code three civilian, peeling rubber and grinding gears, wishing I had red lights and siren to sanction me faster. Passing Sunset and Vine, traffic got bottlenecked: shitloads of cars turning north on Gower and Beachwood. Even from miles away I could see the Hollywoodland sign dripping with scaffolding, scores of antlike people climbing up the face of Mount Lee. The lull in movement calmed me down, gave me a destination.
I told myself it wasn’t over, that I’d drive to the Bureau and wait for Russ, that with two of us we’d put the rest of it together, that all _I_ had to do was get downtown.
The traffic jam got worse–film trucks were shooting straight north while motorcycle bulls held back east- and westbound vehicles. Kids walked the lanes hawking plastic Hollywoodland sign souvenirs and passing out handbills. I heard, “Keystone Kops at the Admiral! Air-cooled! See the great new revival!” A piece of paper was shoved in my face, the printed “Keystone Kops,” “Mack Sennett” and “Deluxe Air-Cooled Admiral Theatre” barely registering, the photo on the bottom registering hugely loud and wrong, like your own scream.
Three Keystone Kops were standing between pillars shaped like snakes swallowing each other’s tails; a wall inset with Egyptian hieroglyphics was behind them. A flapper girl was lying on a tufted divan in the right-hand corner of the picture. It was unmistakably the background that appeared in the Linda Martin/Betty Short stag film.
I made myself sit still; I told myself that just because Emmett Sprague knew Mack Sennett in the ’20s and had helped him build sets in Edendale, _this_ didn’t mean that he had anything to do with a 1946 smut film. Linda Martin had said the movie was shot in Tijuana; the still unfound Duke Wellington admitted making it. When traffic started moving, I hung a quick left up to the Boulevard and ditched the car; when I bought my ticket at the Admiral box office the girl recoiled from me–and I saw that I was hyperventilating and rank with sweat.
Inside, the air-conditioning froze that sweat, so that my clothes felt like an ice dressing. Final credits were rolling on the screen, replaced immediately by new opening ones, superimposed on papier mâché pyramids. I balled my fists when “Emmett Sprague, Assistant Director,” flashed; I held my breath for a title that said where the thing was shot. Then a printed prologue came on, and I settled into an aisle seat to watch.
The story was something about the Keystone Kops transplanted to biblical days; the action was chases and pie throwing and kicks in the ass. The stag film set recurred several times, confirmed by more details each showing. The exterior shots looked like the Hollywood Hills, but there were no outside-inside scenes to pin down whether the set was in a studio or a private dwelling. I knew what I was going to do, but I wanted another hard fact to buttress all the logical “What if’s” that were stacking up inside me.
The movie dragged on interminably; I shivered from icy sweats. Then the end titles rolled, “Filmed in Hollywood, U.S.A.,” and the “What if’s” fell like tenpins.
I left the theater, shaking from the blast-oven heat outside. I saw that I’d left the El Nido without either my service revolver or off-duty .45, took side streets back and grabbed the handcannon. Then I heard, “Hey, fella. Are you Officer Bleichert?”
It was the next-door tenant, standing in the hallway holding the phone at the end of its cord. I made a running grab for it, blurting, “Russ?”