An A-bomb test was scheduled in Nevada. The newspapers predicted some dazzling fireworks. Other bungalow dwellers were up on their roofs. There’s Bob Mitchum and a young quail smoking a reefer, there’s Marilyn Monroe and Lee Strasberg, there’s Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini. Everybody looks fuck-struck and happy. Everybody’s got a jug for the toast.
Everybody laffed and waved hello. Mitchum brought a portable radio for the countdown. He turned it on. I heard static and “... 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”
The world went WHOOSH. The ground shook. The sky lit up mauve and pink. We all raised our bottles and applauded. The colors receded into bright white light. I had my arm around Elizabeth Taylor. I looked Ingrid Bergman straight in the eyes.
5
L.A. ’53 was my ground zero. That A-bomb blast still shoots shock waves through me. My calendar pages are radioactively roasted. You can’t read the dates as they swirl.
There was smog in the air then. People coughed and gasped citywide. I never noticed it. The bomb-blast colors stayed with me. My L.A. was always mauve and pink.
I worked LAPD. I walked a downtown footbeat. I rousted Reds during the “Free the Rosenbergs!” fracas. I pinched pervs, purse snatchers, and pickpockets in Pershing Square. My smut-film biz laid in loot. Donkey Don Eversall plied his python all over Hancock Park. Joi was Donkey Don’s dispatcher. She coffee-klatched with horny housewives and set up the dates. Liberace gave me girl-talk gossip. Liz Taylor and Michael Wilding went to Splitsville. I got 10 percent of Liz’s alimony. Joi, Liz, and I threeskied on my Landing Strip. Liz knew a Pan Am stew named Barb Bonvillain. She flew the L.A. — to — Mexico City route and had half of Hollywood hooked on Dilaudid and morphine suppositories. Bad Barb was 6'3", 180, 40-24-36. She scored high in the women’s decathlon, Helsinki ’52. All four of us locked loins. The Landing Strip lurched. We murdered the mattress and banged the box springs down to the floor.
L.A. ’53 — ring-a-ding-ding!
Joi and I hit the Crescendo and the Largo most nights. Cocktail waitresses fed me slander slurs in exchange for my titanic tips. It was my kid-voyeur days, rabidly redux.
A fragmenting frustration set in. I had the dirt. It would take an armada of shakedown shills and photo fiends to deploy it. I racked my brain. I knocked my noggin against the bruising brick wall of unknowing. Extortion as existential dilemma. A confounding conundrum worthy of those French philosopher cats.
My cop life could not compete with the lush life. I was a double agent akin to that Commie cad Alger Hiss. Liz Taylor drove me to Central Station and signed autographs for the blues. I knew that word would leak to Chief William H. Parker. I was full of a finger-stabbing Fuck you.
Ralph Mitchell Horvath still haunted me. Nightmares nabbed me as I slid into sleep. Joi and Liz nursed me with yellow jackets and booze. My bedtime mantra was He Deserved to Die. It was beastly bullshit. I couldn’t convince myself that what I did was right.
The Rosenbergs fried at Sing Sing. That was justified. They sold A-bomb secrets to Russia. They got what they paid for.
I developed my personal credo: “I’ll work for anyone but Communists. I’ll do anything short of murder.”
Morally sound in L.A., circa ’53. Equally sound in purgatory today.
I spent nuke-bomb nights at the Hollywood Ranch Market. My office was two-way-mirrored and overlooked the aisles. I scanned for boosters and looked down at legions of the lost.
Their pathos pounded me. Bit actors buying stale bread and Tokay. Six-foot-two drag queens shopping for extra-long nylons. Cough-syrup hopheads reading labels for the codeine content. Teenage boys sneaking girlie mags to the can to jerk off.
I watched, I peeped, I lost myself in the losers. A goofy ghost came and went with them.
He was about 23. He slouched in windbreakers and wore cigarettes as props. He breezed through the aisles at 3 a.m. He always looked ecstatic. He talked to people. He cultivated people. He studied people the way I looked in windows as a kid. I saw him out on the sidewalk once. He played the bongos for a clique of fags and junkies. A girl called him “Jimmy.”
The fucker appeared intermittent. I made him for an actor living off chump change and aging fruits. I saw him kiss a girl by the bread bin. I saw him kiss a boy in the soup aisle. He moved with a weirdo grace. He wasn’t froufrou or masculine. He was in on some exalted joke.
I saw him boost a carton of Pall Malls. I cornered him, cuffed him, and hauled him upstairs. His name was James Dean. He was from Bumfuck, Indiana. He was an actor and a bohemian you-name-it. He explained that Pall Mall cigarettes were queer code. The In hoc signo vinces on the pack meant “In this sign you shall conquer.” Homos flashed Pall Malls and ID’d each other. It was all-new shit to me.
I let Jimmy off with a warning. We started hanging out in the office. We tipped Old Crow, looked down on the floor, and gassed on the humanoids. Jimmy habituated the leather bars in East Hollywood. He ratted off pushers and celebrity quiffs and filled a whole side of my dirt bin. I told him about my smut-film and male-prosty gigs. I promised him a date with Donkey Don Eversall in exchange for hot dirt.
We’d hit silent stretches. I’d scan the floor. Jimmy would read scandal rags.
They were just popping up. Peep, Transom, Whisper, Tattle, Lowdown. Titillation texts. Lurid language marred by mitigation. Insipid innuendo.
Politicos got slurred as Red — but never nailed past implication. Jimmy loved the rags but said they weren’t sufficiently sordid or precise in their prose. He called them “timid tipster texts.” He said, “You’ve got better skank than this, Freddy. I could give you three issues’ worth from one night at the Cockpit Lounge.”
A bell bonged — faint and far-off. Memory is revised retrospection. Oh, yeah — fate fungooed me that night.
A newsboy pulled a red wagon into the market. It was stacked with magazines. He began filling the racks.
A cover caught my eye. Primary colors and big headlines screamed.
The magazine was called Confidential.
6
Beverly Hills Hotel
8/14/53
Joi woke me up. I was nudging off a nightmare. Double dip: Ralph Mitchell Horvath shot in the mouth, Manolo Sanchez with skeleton claws.
I looked across the bed. Shit — Liz was gone.
Joi read my mind. “She had an early call. She said to remind you that Arthur Crowley wants that phone date.”
I lit a cigarette. I chased three bennies with Old Crow. Aaaaaaah, breakfast of champions!
“Remind me again. Who’s Arthur Crowley?”
“That divorce lawyer who needs your help.”
“I’ll call him when I go off-duty.”
Joi stepped into a skirt and pulled her shoes on. She dressed as fast as most men.
“No more girls for a while, okay, Freddy? Liz is great, but Barb is like Helga, She Wolf of the SS. Really, that stunt with the armband and the garters? That and she hogs the whole bed.”
I laffed loud and lewd. My wake-up whipped through me and canceled cobwebs. Summer in L.A. — ring-a-ding-ding!!
Joi kissed me and bopped out of the bungalow. I shit, shaved, showered, and put on my uniform.
The bedroom phone rang. I snagged it. A man said, “Mr. Otash, this is Arthur Crowley.”
I buffed my badge with my necktie. A mirror magnetized me. Man, oh Manischewitz, I looked good!