James Ellroy - The Big Nowhere

TO GLENDA REVELLE

It was written that i should

be loyal to the nightmare of my choice--

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

P ART O NE

R ed C rosscurrents

C HAPTER O NE

Thundershowers hit just before midnight, drowning out the horn honks and noisemaker blare that usually signalled New Years on the Strip, bringing 1950 to the West Hollywood Substation in a wave of hot squeals with meat wagon backup.

At 12:03, a four-vehicle fender bender at Sunset and La Cienega resulted in a half dozen injuries; the deputies who responded got eyewitness testimony: the crash was caused by the clown in the brown DeSoto and the army major in the Camp Cooke staff car racing no-hands with dogs wearing paper party hats on their laps. Two arrests; one call to the Verdugo Street Animal Shelter. At 12:14, an uninhabited vets shack on Sweetzer collapsed in a heap of drenched prefab, killing a teenaged boy and girl necking under the foundation; two County Morgue DOAs. At 12:29, a neon lawn display featuring Santa Claus and his helpers short-circuited, shooting flames along the electrical cord to its inside terminus--a plug attached to a maze of adapters fueling a large, brightly lit Christmas tree and nativity scene--severely burning three children heaping tissue-wrapped presents on a glow-in-the-dark baby Jesus. One fire truck, one ambulance and three Sheriffs prowl cars to the scene, a minor jurisdictional foul-up when the LAPD appeared in force, a rookie dispatcher mistaking the Sierra Bonita Drive address as City--not County--territory. Then five drunk drivings; then a slew of drunk and disorderlies as the clubs on the Strip let out; then a strongarm heist in front of Daves Blue Room, the victims two Iowa yokels in town for the Rose Bowl, the muscle two niggers who escaped in a 47 Merc with purple fender skirts. When the rain petered out shortly after 3:00, Detective Deputy Danny Upshaw, the stations acting watch commander, predicted that the 1950s were going to be a shit decade.

Except for the drunks and non-booze misdemeanants in the holding tank, he was alone. Every black-and-white and unmarked was out working graveyard; there was no chain of command, no switchboard/clerical girl, no plainclothes deputies in the squadroom. No khaki and olive drab patrolmen strutting around, smirking over their plum duty--the Strip, glossy women, Christmas baskets from Mickey Cohen, the real grief over the city line with the LAPD. No one to give him the fisheye when he picked up his criminology textbooks: Vollmer, Thorwald, Maslick--grid-searching crime scenes, blood spatter marks explained, how to toss an 18-foot-by-24-foot room for hard evidence in an hour flat.

Danny settled in to read, his feet up on the front desk, the station-to-prowler two-way turned down low. Hans Maslick was digressing on how to roll fingerprints off severely burned flesh, the best chemical compounds to remove scabbed tissue without singeing the skin below the surface of the print pattern. Maslick had perfected his technique during the aftermath of a prison fire in Dsseldorf in 1931. He had plenty of stiffs and fingerprint abstracts to work from; there was a chemical plant nearby, with an ambitious young lab assistant eager to help him. Together, they worked rapid fire: caustic solutions burning too deep, milder compounds not penetrating scarred flesh. Danny jotted chemical symbols on a notepad as he read; he pictured himself as Maslicks assistant, working side by side with the great criminologist, who would give him a fatherly embrace every time he made a brilliant logical jump. Soon he was transposing the scorched nativity scene kids against his reading, going solo, lifting prints off tiny fingers, double-checking them against birth records, the hospital precaution they took in case newborns got switched around-

Boss, we got a hot one.

Danny glanced up. Hosford, a uniformed deputy working the northeast border of the division, was in the doorway. What? Why didnt you call it in?

I did. You mustnt of-

Danny pushed his text and notepad out of sight. What is it?

Man down. I found him--Allegro, a half mile up from the Strip. Jesus dog, you aint ever seen noth-

You stay here, Im going.

o o o

Allegro Street was a narrow residential road, half Spanish bungalow courts, half building sites fronted by signs promising DELUXE LIVING in the Tudor, French Provincial and Streamline Moderne styles. Danny drove up it in his civilian car, slowing when he saw a barrier of sawhorses with red blinkers, three black-and-whites parked behind it, their headlights beaming out into a weed-strewn vacant lot.

He left his Chevy at the curb and walked over. A knot of deputies in rain slickers were pointing flashlights at the ground; cherry lamp glow fluttered over a sign for the ALLEGRO PLANTATION ARMS--FULL TENANCY BY SPRING 1951. The prowlers low beams crisscrossed the lot, picking out booze empties, sodden lumber and paper debris. Danny cleared his throat; one of the men wheeled and pulled his gun, spastic twitchy. Danny said, Easy, Gibbs. Its me, Upshaw.

Gibbs reholstered his piece; the other cops separated. Danny looked down at the corpse, felt his knees buckle and made like a criminologist so he wouldnt pass out or vomit:

Deffry, Henderson, keep your lights on the decedent. Gibbs, write down what I say verbatim.

Dead male Caucasian, nude. Approximate age thirty to thirty-five. The cadaver is lying supine, the arms and legs spread. There are ligature marks on the neck, the eyes have been removed and the empty sockets are extruding a gelatinous substance.

Danny squatted by the corpse; Deffry and Henderson moved their flashlights in to give him some close-ups. The genitals are bruised and swollen, there are bite marks on the glans of the penis. He reached under the dead mans back and felt wet dirt; he touched the chest near the heart, got dry skin and a residue of body heat. There is no precipitation on the cadaver, and since it rained heavily between midnight and three A.M., we can assume the victim was placed here within the past hour.

A siren wailed toward the scene. Danny grabbed Deffrys flashlight and went in extra close, examining the worst of it. There is a total of six oval, irregular, circumscribed wounds on the torso between the navel and rib cage. Shredded flesh outlines the perimeters, entrails coated with congealed blood extruding from them. The skin around each wound is inflamed, directly outlining the shred marks, and-

Henderson said, Hickeys sure as shit.

Danny felt his textbook spiel snap. What are you talking about?

Henderson sighed. You know, love bites. Like when a dame starts sucking on your neck. Gibbsey, show plainclothes here what that hat check girl at the Blue Room did to you Christmas.

Gibbs chuckled and kept writing; Danny stood up, pissed at being patronized by a flunky harness bull. Not talking made the stiff sucker-punch him; his legs were rubber and his stomach was flip-flops. He flashed the five-cell at the ground surrounding the dead man, saw that it had been thoroughly trampled by LASD-issue brogans and that the prowl cars had obliterated any possible tire tracks. Gibbs said, I aint sure I got all them words spelled right.

Danny found his textbook voice. It doesnt matter. Just hold on to it and give it to Captain Dietrich in the morning.

But Im off at eight. The skipper dont come in till ten, and I got Bowl tickets.

Sorry, but youre staying here until daywatch relieves you or the lab techs show up.

The County labs closed New Years, and Ive had them tickets-

A Coroners wagon pulled to a stop by the sawhorses, killing its siren; Danny turned to Henderson. Crime scene ropes, no reporters or rubberneckers. Gibbs stays posted here, you and Deffry start shaking down the locals. You know the drill: witnesses to the dumping, suspicious loiterers, vehicles.