James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (83 page)

There's …

The …

CLICK
.

Chick's office. Rope-job strategy. The three-phallus statue. The open-legged Negress. Imports—all voodoo vile.

He needed a throwdown. The fallback was close.
Cold pieces
. Dwight might have left some.

It was dusk. He floored it northeast. He looped by Karen's place en route. Window view: Karen and Joan in the living room. The girls acting rambunctious.

The fallback lights were on. Crutch snagged the key under the mat and let himself in. A file was propped up on the desk. Joan had left him a note.

CRUTCHFIELD, DONALD LINSCOTT
.

Clyde Duber–culled reports. Knife-redacted paragraphs. Clyde's assessments: “Voyeurs make good wheelmen.” “Weird tendencies.” The kid was working the Farr case. He was too tweaked on it.

A CBI report: Phil Irwin, Fed snitch.

“My buddy Chick and I like to peep. We studied under the best, Crutch Crutchfield. There ain't a window in Hancock Park that that twisted cocksucker ain't put his snout up to. He never knew it, but Chick and I used to tail him and study his technique.”

PD reports below: Phil and Chick popped for loitering. KA Arnie Moffett questioned per “porno parties.” Arnie shares Chick's love of “bizarre Negro art.”

He saw
RED
. He couldn't breathe. He gulped sink water and coughed it out. He got some wind back.

Dwight had left a goody basket in the closet. He found a throwdown, handcuffs and a roll of duct tape.

Phil was a car-dweller. He crashed in his Tiger kab most nights. He usually parked in the wheelman lot, away from the street.

Crutch drove over. The station was closed. A Tiger stretch was parked by the toolshed. Phil was sleepytimed in the backseat. His arms dangled out the window.

Snores. Booze breath wafting. Phil's head propped on the window ledge.

Crutch parked and walked up. Phil dozed on. Crutch opened his cuffs and snapped Phil's left wrist. Phil dream-yipped. Crutch cranked the ratchets and spare-cuffed the doorpost. Phil grimaced and snored.

Crutch yanked the door wide. The cuff chain gouged Phil and pulled him up and out of the seat. He roused. He hit the world on his knees. He didn't get it. I can't move. My arm's above my head
and it hurts
.

He shrieked. He blinked and saw Crutch. He said, “Hey, Peep—”

Crutch kicked him in the balls. Phil hurled booze laced with peanuts.
He tried to stand and get some chain slack. Crutch re-kicked his balls. Phil re-hit his knees.

He screamed. The cuff gouged him tight. Blood leaked down his arm. Crutch said, “Summer '68. You got the Gretchen Farr gig first, I got it second. You went on a bender, I took over then.”

Phil tried to sit down. The cuff chain dug tighter. Phil tried to stand up. Crutch kicked him in the balls. Phil hit his knees, harder.

He screamed, he coughed, he dribbled puke. He lolled his head on his chest and panted.

Crutch said, “You and Weiss. The peeping, Arnie Moffett, that voodoo film.”

Phil lolled his head. Crutch slapped him. Phil ducked and tried to bite his hand. Crutch pulled the throwdown and held it out eye level.

“I'll run the radio. No one will hear the shot. You work Tiger Kab. You're all over darktown. You're fucking half the black chicks south of Washington Boulevard. How much time will LAPD give it?”

Phil took some breaths. Phil scooched around on his knees. His eyes got snitch-darty. Blood ran down his arm and soaked his shirt.

“So, we like to peep. You like it, I like it, Chick likes it. He knew this Arnie guy. Chick used to buy knickknacks and shit from him. Arnie owned party cribs and showed movies at them. Chick saw this weird-ass flick and got hipped on some babe in it. He heard she was living in some empty house around there, and my guess is he peeped her.”

Crutch said, “And that's it?”

“You want more?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, you've got it. We peeped you peeping, so we learned from the King. Whatever you're in a lather over came straight from you.”

Crutch pulled out his duct tape. Phil squirmed and thrashed his head. Crutch grabbed his hair and mummy-wrapped him. He left a nose hole open. He covered his mouth, his head, his ears. He pulled him off the ground and kicked him into the backseat. The cuff ratchets gouged him. His bones showed plain. The mock-tiger seat covers shed all over him.

Hash smoke. Follow the trail. The wife's car is gone. He's tripping back by the pool.

Crutch walked down the driveway. The backyard was dark. The pool supplied shimmer light.

Olympic-size. Artful nudes scrolled on the bottom. Picasso on LSD.

Chick sat by the deep end. He rocked his chair and toed the diving board. The fumes got stronger. He had a little mesh-spouted pipe.

Crutch pulled a chair up. Chick focused in on him.

“You're supposed to call first. Clyde knows that.”

“Does Phil have to call first?”

“Phil's a special case. Clyde knows that, too.”

Crutch flipped his chair and straddled it. The hash smoke burned his eyes. He smelled Hai Karate cologne.

The pool water rippled. Chick took a hit and offered the pipe. Crutch shook his head.

“I've put some things together. I'd appreciate your comments.”

Chick re-lit the pipe. The little mesh glowed.

“There's something portentous about this visit of yours. It's starting to bum me out.”

“You killed a woman named María Rodríguez Fontonette. I'd like you to tell me about it.”

Chick grinned and winked. It was practiced. Chick had studied the late Scotty B.

“There's not much to tell, although I have to credit you with an assist on that one.”

“Have there been others?”

“A few, here and there.”

“You peep, you see something you like, and you kill them?”

“More or less.”

“Tell me about María.”

Chick took a hit. His eyes were red, his pupils were dots.

“I peeped her. She dug voodoo, I dug voodoo, we both dug voodoo art. We ate some herbs and rapped about Haiti. Everything's cool, until she lays out this guilt trip about some Commie invasion she betrayed. It was a bummer. It brought me down, until I started thinking, you know, you're here in this abandoned house, you've always wanted to do it, she's a nigger fly-by-night that nobody will miss.”

Crutch pulled his chair up. “So you did it.”

“Yeah. I bisected the body and cut off her hands. She told me all these emerald stories, so I ground up some green glass and stuffed it in with her wounds. I started having these fantasies about five years earlier. I bought a set of surgical tools and kept them in the trunk of my car, but I never thought I'd have the nerve. Well, the moon was in Scorpio that night, and I guess I just did.”

Crutch looked at the moon. It was slivered and half-eclipsed.

“You're vibing judgmental, Peeper. That cracks me up.”

“Oh?”

“I always thought you had a surfeit of balls and a shortage of brains. Now, I have to add ‘hypocritical mind-set' to that.”

Crutch reached in his pockets. Chick took a hit and blew smoke in his face.

“You can't put your nose to windows and come away blood-free. Inspiration's inspiration. It's like that guy King said. ‘I have a dream.' You just never know who's been watching you or who's kicking around in your head.”

Crutch pulled out the capsules and displayed them. Chick said, “What have you got?”

“They're Haitian. It's an up trip. You'll fly for a day and a half.”

Chick went
May I
? Crutch went
Sure
. Chick dry-swallowed the capsules and re-lit his pipe.

Crutch leaned closer. “Tell me about the other ones.”

“What's to tell? They looked good, and I was bored.”

“Just like that?”

Chick took a hit. “Yeah, ‘Just like that.' It's the '70s, baby. ‘Do your own thing.' ”

Crutch looked around. The pool, the moonlight, the moment. A bird flutter overhead.

Chick looked at him. A few seconds passed. His gaze glazed. Green foam poured out his eyes, nose and mouth. His arms spasmed and constricted. Bones shattered. Crutch heard the breaks. Chick stood up and staggered. Foam bubbled out of his ears.

Crutch stuck a leg out and tripped him. Chick fell into the pool. Crutch watched him thrash and float facedown.

(Los Angeles, 4/17/72)

“D
on't give me a surname. There's one I'm considering.”

“Dare I guess?”

“Let's just say it honors the past several years, as well as runs from them.”

The backyard was Ella's gator farm. Clouds brewed and promised rain. Joan rounded the stuffed creatures up.

Karen said, “Literary executor. What do you think? All our files, diaries, memoranda. Everything we've put together.”

Joan looked up at the fallback. “He'd be good. He's quite the hoarder.”

“What would he do with it?”

“He'd read through it and look for answers. He'd see things that no one else has seen and impose his own logic on it. If he grows up, he'll understand what it all means.”

The girls bombed around the house. Joan peered through windows. Dina watched TV cartoons. Ella snuck up, pulled the plug and laughed.

Karen said, “I miss Dwight.”

Joan said, “Something's changing with my body.”

The rain kept up. A strong wind came with it. Joan anchored her paper stacks with throwdown guns and Dwight's knickknacks. She wanted the wind. The boy loved her hair aswirl.

Mixed blessing. The wind gave them the backdrop. Gusts snuffed the candle flames.

He was there with her and off somewhere. He kept his eyes open. She kissed them shut and held them shut and caressed a neck vein pulsing. He
made sounds she'd never heard before. He had a kid-sound repertoire. The sounds pushed his tears back. He burrowed into her hair, so she wouldn't see.

It took a while. He'd drift someplace and touch her from a distance. He'd spend time away from her and roll back. He saw what he saw or thought what he thought and come back to her. He put a knee between her legs and kissed her underarms. He forced the fit. She rolled and kneeled over him. His eyes looked crazy. She covered them. He kissed her palms and held her fingers in his mouth.

(Los Angeles, 4/18/72–4/30/72)

H
e worked at pad #3. He closed the curtains, shut the drapes and ran the air conditioning. He shut off all the clocks. He unplugged the phone. He turned day to night and night to day.

It was a controlled burning. He emptied out his file trove at the Vivian. He boxed up all his file shit downtown. He had the liquid-herb formula and the syringe. He had written formulas from his herb guys. Burn your mother's file, burn Wayne's file, burn your case file. Build your paper bombs and gauge the results.

He stole Dwight Holly's bolt-tappers. Pre-oiled tungsten cut through anything. He had his plane tix, his fake facial hair, his bogus ID. He had everything. He had to act, because no one else would.

He emptied out the boxes. The paper piles ran ten feet high. He dumped out his case file last. The murder occurred a heartbeat away. He should have known then. He figured it out late. He acted, because no one else would.

He saved Joan's mug shots. He nailed them to the back basement wall. He clamped his Saint Christopher medal to the nailhead.