James Ellroy
Shakedown: Freddy Otash Confesses
Prologue
Cell 2607
Penance Penitentiary
Reckless-Wrecker-of-Lives Block
Pervert Purgatory
6/16/2012
I’ve spent twenty years in this fucking hellhole. Now they tell me I can memoir-map my misadventures and write my way out.
All that religious shit I disdained as a kid is true. There’s heaven for the good folks, hell for the beastfully baaaaaad. There’s purgatory for guys like me — caustic cads that capitalized on a sick system and caused catastrophe. I’ve pondered my sins for two decades. I’ve relived my earthly transit in dystopian detail. My cunning keepers are currently dangling a deaclass="underline"
Record your jaundiced journey, and you may hit heaven on a high note. Baby, it’s time to CONFESS.
Purgatory is Shitsville. You’re stuck with the body you had on earth when you died. You eat nothing but coach-class airplane food. There’s no booze, no jazzy intrigue, no women. My earthly victims visit my cell unpredictably. They remind me of my misdeeds and jab me in the ass with red-hot pokers. Fags flit down from heaven and scold me for outing them back in the fag-fragging ’50s. Fuck — there’s that limp-wristed lisper Johnnie Ray. The prongs of his pitchfork are white-hot. Johnnie had a righteous run from ’53 to ’56. His record “Cry” sold mega-millions. Confidential cornholed him. The piece was titled “Men’s Room Mishegas: Jittery Johnnie Strikes Again!” Johnnie threatened to sue the magazine. I kicked his ass as a deterrent.
Fuck, Johnnie — those prongs are hot!!!!! How many times do I have to tell you I’m sorry?
Dig this, earthlings: You pay for your sins in the afterlife. I am telling it like it is.
My ass is always sore. Ava Gardner jabbed me last week. Ava was a noxious nympho with a delirious devotion to dark meat. I set her up with a Jungle Johnny packing studly steel. My boys kicked the door in and snapped photos. Confidential ran insidious ink.
April ’54: “Ava Gardner: Mud Shark Mama!”
It was wrong. I’m ashamed. I’ve stewed in my evil shit for twenty years. Earthlings, I’m sorry.
My keepers have supplied me with pen and paper and a complete run of Confidential. My synapses are sizzling with a million malignant memories. Fred Otash, 1922–1992: rogue cop, private eye, shakedown artist. Soldier of fortune and demonic deus ex machina. The hellhound who held Hollywood captive. The man with all the sicko secrets you irksome earthlings want to hear.
Confidential presaged the infantile Internet. Our gobs of gossip were repugnantly real. Today’s blowhard bloggers and their tattle texts? Pussyfooting punks all. We stung the studios and popped the politicians. We voyeur-vamped America and got her hooked on the devilish dish. We created today’s tell-all media culture.
Yeah, I’m sorry. Yeah, I want to get paroled to that cloud bank upstairs. But — I more urgently want to groove my wild ride once again.
My keepers have given me back my 1950s-vintage body. It’s a Machiavellian move to make me recall. They want to prime my prose and mold my moral vision. They’ve put me in telepathic touch with an earthling writer named James Ellroy.
Ellroy’s a dipshit. I knew him in my waning months alive. I’ve been granted tell-all telepathy. I will know that cocksucker cold.
He ripped off my persona for a character in his overhyped novel L.A. Confidential. The book and major movie chewed Chihuahua dicks. I met Ellroy in the summer of ’92. He wanted to turn my life story into a boffo TV series. He paid me some gelt for my FBI file — but I kicked off before he could glom it from me. I don’t trust the motherfucker. He’s a right-wing religious nut and a backer of Mitt Romney’s current White House bid. I’m an Obama man — I dig the notion of a coon president. My keepers are setting up a purgatory-to-L.A. telepathy call. My most fitful fear so far? That Ellroy located my secret diaries. Man, did I dish the dirt on myself! I’m afraid that Ellroy is still beating the dead horse of an Otash TV show.
Fuck — I need to get upstairs. Montgomery Clift pitchforked me yesterday. Confidential lampooned the lavender Lilliputian as “Princess Tiny Meat.” JFK followed Monty. He had Jackie in tow. It was a 1953 stink. I circulated a tape of Jack bringing the brisket to Ingrid Bergman. Frank Sinatra played the tape to Jackie and created some surging tsuris. Aaaaaaaargh — those pitchfork pokes hurt!!! Marilyn Monroe was the next penance poker. Baby, you did blow half the pharmacists in Beverly Hills in trade for Nembutal and Dilaudid! Maybe I shouldn’t have spilled the beans, but I was within my First Amendment rights!
Brain blip — dipshit Ellroy’s in my head. Reciprocal re-blip — now I’m in his.
It’s my story, not his. He’s only here to negate my nihilism and noodle my narrative.
Let this mind-bending march down memory lane begin...
1
Nate & Al’s Deli
Beverly Hills
8/12/92
“I was working Central Vice in ’51. We got word on a nigger whorehouse operating out of a pad at the Villa Elaine. I hotfooted it over there.”
My booth at the deli. My audience: four showbiz hebes in worse shape than me. Walkers, canes, and oxygen tanks clogging the aisles to the kitchen. Fractious Freddy O., holding court.
It’s summer ’92. I’m 70 and in bad fucking shape. I’ve consumed a fifth of Scotch and three packs a day since kindergarten. I’ve got emphysema and a bum pump. I’m counting on my native panache to get me to 80. I know it’s a lunar-looped long shot.
Sol Sidell said, “Get to it, Freddy. You roll to the pad and then what?”
Sinful Soclass="underline" a jailbaiter from jump street. He produced beach-blanket flicks in the ’60s. I pulled him out of the shit in ’57. He was smoking Mary Jane and poking two underage twists.
I said, “Okay, I roll to the crib and peep a side window. Shit — there’s Sam Spiegel, the cat that produced Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai. He’s muff-diving a black chick on the rag. That was a boss beef, back in ’51. I told Sambo that it’s dues time. A morals bust or a monthly donation to the Fred Otash Retirement Fund.”
My pals yuk-yukked. I took a big bite of my Rueben sandwich and felt a twinge in my chest. I chased a Digitalis tablet with coffee and watched Jules Slotnick suck on his oxygen mask. Julie produced socially conscious turkeys about wetback farmworkers and oppressed schvartzes. It was pure atonement. He made all his live-in maids blow him. He held their green cards as a hedge against their refusal to bestow daily head.
Sid Resnick said, “Give us another one, Freddy.”
The Sidster was Mr. Holocaust Heartache. He produced schlock-umentaries for the B’nai B’rith. Soulman Sid: A chubby chaser/shine shtupper combo. Currently captivated by a Congo cutie weighing 285.
I plumbed my brain stash for a tale my pals hadn’t heard. Two elderly fruits sashayed by the booth and evil-eyed me. That gave me my cue.