California Noir by James Ellroy

Author:James Ellroy [Bunker and Ellroy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504047418
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2017-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

3

THE automobile that double-parked and honked aroused stares of disapproval from several pedestrians, but made me grin. Willy hadn’t changed. He bought wrecks for fifty dollars, tinkered until they moved, and when they gave out he abandoned them. This one had a dead headlight, an asthmatic motor, and a broken muffler.

Willy’s wife and two sons were in the car. I’d known Selma since she was eleven and I was fourteen. I’d met Willy at her house; her sister was my first girl friend. The boys had been babies when I last saw them. It was odd that Willy brought the family. It was as if they were a shield. He had no reason to fear me, but in the criminal world (Willy was more drug addict than criminal) there are many guilts and fears. Constant suspicion is good for survival. Willy had a reason—and all I could think of was that his brother had turned stool pigeon three years before. He might have fears that someone would use him as a surrogate for revenge.

“I didn’t believe it was you,” he said when I was beside Selma. She was carrying a baby in her arms. Considering that Willy had been imprisoned for two years, either the baby was not Selma’s or she’d been stupid.

“How’re Joe and Mary?” I asked.

“He’s back in Folsom on a parole violation.”

“When was that?”

“Two, three months ago.”

“He and Mary broke up anyway,” Selma said.

Joe had been out a year. Word should have come from Folsom but had obviously missed me. Willy explained that Joe had been doing “good”, which was a criminal euphemism for making “good” money illegally. “He beat a possession,” Willy continued, “and by rights it wasn’t his shit. He had a dude in his car and the heat gave them the red light. The other dude threw a bag out the window. He got on the stand and cut Joe loose, but the fuckin’ narks didn’t go for it. They made sure he was violated.”

“Joe had a new car and everything,” Selma said. “Mary could’ve had it, but she couldn’t make the payments.”

Joe’s fall was bad luck for me, too. I now remembered the word that he was making a bundle of money. He would have helped me get on my feet. We’d been teen-age crime partners, smoking marijuana, drinking wine, and riding in stolen cars with rhythm and blues honking from the dashboard radio. We’d burglarized together, committing strong armed robberies, and we’d snatched purses. Over the years he’d been incarcerated when I was out, and vice versa. Our styles had also gone separate ways. Where I’d become an active thief—burglar, bandit, forger—he’d become a drug peddler and sometimes pimp. Yet he would have helped me, as I would have helped him.

Willy turned onto the freeway but crawled along the slow lane. At fifty miles an hour the automobile shook violently.

In the quick, flicking shadows I looked at the couple beside me. Willy, as usual, radiated seediness; the best suit became wrinkled and sloppy the moment he put it on.

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