Blood on the Moon (32 page)

Both men fired at the same instant. Teddy clutched his chest and pitched backward just as Lloyd felt the bullet tear into his groin. His finger jerked the trigger and recoil sent the gun flying from his hand. He fell to the pavement and watched Teddy crawl toward him, the spikes on the baseball bat gleaming in the white-hot light.

Lloyd pulled out his .38 snub nose and held it upright, waiting for the moment when he could see Teddy's eyes. When Teddy was on top of him and the bat was descending and he could see that his blood brother's eyes were blue he pulled the trigger six times. There was nothing but the soft click of metal on metal as Lloyd screamed and blood burst from Teddy's mouth. Lloyd wondered how that could be and if he was dead, and then just before losing consciousness he saw Dutch Peltz wipe the blade that stuck out of his steel-toed paratrooper's boot.

20

The long transit of horror ended, and the three survivors began the longer process of healing.

Dutch had carried Lloyd and Teddy to his car, and with Kathleen weeping beside him had driven to the home of a doctor under indictment for dealing morphine. With Dutch's gun at his head the doctor had examined Lloyd, pronouncing him in need of an immediate transfusion of three pints of blood. Dutch checked Lloyd's driver's license and the I.D. cards he had taken from the body of Teddy Verplanck. Both men were type O+. The doctor performed the transfusion with a makeshift centrifuge to stimulate Teddy's heartbeat while Dutch whispered over and over that he would kill all the charges against him, regardless of the cost. Lloyd responded favorably to the transfer of blood, regaining consciousness as the doctor sedated Kathleen and removed the catgut stitches that anchored her eyelids to her brows. Dutch didn't tell Lloyd where the blood had come from. He didn't want him to know.

Leaving Lloyd and Kathleen at the doctor's house, Dutch drove the remains of Teddy Verplanck to their final resting place, a stretch of condemned beach known to be rife with industrial toxins. Hauling the body over a series of barbed wire fences, he had watched as the poisonous tide swept it away on the wings of a nightmare.

Dutch spent the next week with Kathleen and Lloyd, convincing the doctor to oversee their medical recovery. The house became a hospital with two patients, and when Kathleen came out of her sedation she told Dutch of how Teddy Verplanck had gagged her and slung her over his back, carrying her through the Silverlake hills on his way to ambush Lloyd.

He told her of how verse notations on Teddy Verplanck's calendar had led him to the reservoir and how if Lloyd was to survive as a policeman and a human being she would have to be very gentle and never talk to him about Teddy. Weeping, Kathleen agreed.

Dutch went on to say that he would destroy every official trace of Teddy Verplanck, but it would be her job to blunt Lloyd's terror-driven memory with love. “With all my heart,” was her answer.

Lloyd was delirious for over a week. As his physical wounds healed, his nightmares took over, and gradually, between the gentlest of caresses, Kathleen succeeded in convincing him that the monster was dead and that mercy had somehow prevailed. Holding a mirror to his eyes, she told him tender stories and made him believe that Teddy Verplanck was not his brother but a separate entity who was sent to close out the books on all the anguish in his first forty years. Kathleen was a good storyteller, and tenuously, Lloyd started to believe her.

But as Kathleen pieced together the story of Teddy and Lloyd her own terror began. Her phone call to Silverlake Camera had caused the death of Joanie Pratt. Her reluctance to believe Lloyd and smash her own pitiful illusions had resulted in the destruction of a living, breathing woman. She felt it with
her
every breath, and when she touched Lloyd's devastated body it felt like a death sentence. Writing about it compounded the grief. It was a life sentence with no parole and no means of atonement.

A month to the day after the Silverlake
walpurgisnacht,
Lloyd discovered that he could walk. Dutch and Kathleen had discontinued their daily visits and the indictment-free doctor had taken him off his pain medication. He would have to retrieve his family and face his I.A.D. inquisitors soon, and before he did that there was a place that he had to visit

The cab dropped him in front of a red brick building on North Alvarado. Lloyd picked the lock on the door and walked upstairs, not knowing if he wanted the worst of his nightmares confirmed or denied. Whatever he saw would determine the course of the rest of his life, but he still didn't know.

The nightmare room was empty. Lloyd felt his hopes soar and shatter. No blood, no photographs, no body waste, no rose branches. The walls had been painted a guileless light blue. The bay windows were boarded shut. He would never know.

“I knew you'd come.”

Lloyd turned around at the voice. It was Dutch. “I've been staking the place out for days,” he said. “I knew you'd come here before you got in touch with your family or reported back to duty.”

Running light fingertips over the wall, Lloyd said, “What did you find here, Dutch? I have to know.”

Dutch shook his head. “No. Not ever. Don't ever ask again. I doubted you and I almost betrayed you, but I've made my amends and I won't tell you that. Everything that I could find pertaining to Teddy Verplanck is destroyed. He never existed. If you and Kathleen and I believe that then maybe we can live like normal people.”

Lloyd slammed the wall with his fist. “But I have to know! I've got to pay for Joanie Pratt, and I'm not a cop anymore, so I've got to figure out what it means so I can know what to do! I had this dream that Jesus God I just can't ex—”

Dutch walked over and put his hands on Lloyd's shoulders. “You're still a cop. I went to the Chief myself. I lied and I threatened and I groveled and it cost me my promotion and my I.A.D. command. Your trouble with I.A.D. never happened, just like Teddy never happened. But you owe me, and you're going to pay.”

Lloyd wiped tears from his eyes. “What's the price?”

Dutch said, “Bury the past and get on with your life.”

Lloyd got Janice's new address and flew up to San Francisco the following night. Janice was gone for the weekend, but the girls were there with her friend George, and when he walked through the door they pounced on him until he was certain that they would bruise every inch of his battered body. He had a brief moment of panic when they demanded a story, but the tale of the gentle lady poet and the cop satisfied them until it burst apart in a torrent of tears. Penny was the one to supply the conclusion. Holding Lloyd tightly, she said: “Happy stories are a new mode for you, Daddy. You'll get the hang of it. Picasso switched his style late in life, so can you.”

Lloyd got a hotel room near Janice's apartment and spent the weekend with his daughters, taking them to Fisherman's Wharf and the Zoo and the Museum of Natural History. When he dropped them off Sunday night George told him that Janice had a lover, an attorney specializing in tax shelters. He was the one Janice was spending the weekend with. Brief thoughts of wreaking havoc on the affair crossed his mind and he reflexively balled his hands into fists. Then images of Joanie Pratt rendered his blood thoughts stillborn. Lloyd kissed and hugged the girls goodbye and walked back to his hotel. Janice had a lover and he had Kathleen and he didn't know what he felt, let alone what it all meant.

On Monday morning Lloyd flew back to Los Angeles and took a cab to Parker Center. He walked up to the sixth floor, feeling the sore muscles around his groin wound stretch and tighten. It would still be weeks before he could make love, but when old doc dope pusher gave him the word he would sweep Kathleen off for a whole shitload of weekends.

The sixth floor corridors were empty. Lloyd checked his watch. 10:35. Morning coffee break. The junior officers' lounge was probably packed. Dutch had undoubtedly covered his prolonged absence with some sort of story, so why not get the reunion amenities out of the way in one fell swoop?

Lloyd pushed the lounge door open. His face lit up at the sight of a huge roomful of shirt-sleeved men hunched over coffee and donuts, laughing and joking and making good-natured obscene gestures. He stood in the doorway savoring the picture until he felt the noise recede to a hush. Every man in the room was looking at him, and when they all rose to their feet and began to applaud he looked back into their faces and saw nothing but awe and love. The room swayed behind his tears, and shouted “bravos” coupled with the applause to drive him back out into the corridor, dashing more tears from his eyes, wondering what on earth it all
meant.

Lloyd ran toward his office. He was fumbling in his pocket for his keys when Officer Artie Cranfield came up beside him and said, “Welcome back, Lloyd.”

Lloyd pointed down the hallway and wiped his face. “What the fuck was that all about, Artie? What the fuck did all that
mean?
”

Artie looked puzzled, then wary. “Don't shit a shitter, Lloyd. There's a rumor all over the department that you cleared the Hollywood Slaughterer case. I don't know where it started, but everyone in Robbery-Homicide believes it, and so does half the L.A.P.D. The word is that Dutch Peltz told the Chief himself and that the Chief pulled the Internal Affairs bulls off your ass because keeping you
on
the Department was the best way to keep your mouth
shut.
You want to tell me about it?”

Lloyd's tears of bewilderment became tears of laughter. He opened his door and wiped his face with his sleeve. “The case was cleared by a woman, Artie. A left-wing cop-hater poet. Dig the irony and enjoy your tape recorder.”

Lloyd closed the door on Artie Cranfield's baffled face. When he heard him walk away muttering to himself he switched on the light and looked at his cubicle. Everything was the same as when he had last seen it, except for a single red rose sticking out of a coffee cup on his desk. There was a piece of paper next to the cup. Lloyd picked it up and read:

Dearest L.—Protracted goodbyes are terrible, so I'll be brief. I have to go away. I have to go away because you have given me back my life, and now I have to see what I can do with it. I love you and I need your shelter and you need mine, but the mortar that binds us is blood, and if we stay together it will own us and we will never have the chance to be sane. I have given up the bookstore and my apartment. (It belongs to my creditors and the bank, anyway.) I have my car and a few hundred dollars in cash, and am taking off sans excess baggage for parts unknown. (Men have been doing it for years.) I have much on my mind, much writing to do. Does “Penance for Joanie Pratt” sound like a good title? She owns me, and if I give her my best then maybe I'll be forgiven. I hurt for our past, L.–But I hurt for your future most of all. You have chosen to stalk ugliness and try to replace it with your numbing kind of love, and that is a painful road to follow. Goodbye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

K.

P.S. The rose is for Teddy. If we remember him, then he'll never be able to hurt us.

Lloyd put the paper down and picked up the flower. He held it to his cheek and juxtaposed the image with the spartan accoutrements of his trade. Floral-scented terror merged with metal filing cabinets, wanted posters, and a map of the city, producing pure white light. When Kathleen's words turned the light into music he drew the moment into the strongest fiber of his heart and carried it away.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1984 by James Ellroy

cover design by Thomas Ng

This edition published in 2011 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media

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