Destination: Morgue!: L.A. Tales by Ellroy James

Author:Ellroy, James [Ellroy, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, thriller, Fiction, Crime
ISBN: 9780307425546
Amazon: 0307425541
Goodreads: 7019094
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2003-11-06T08:00:00+00:00

Knife murderer Stephen Nash stabbed a boy twenty-eight times and bragged, “I’d never killed a kid before. I wanted to see how it felt.” (Los Angeles Times Collection, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA)

Big, burly, curly-haired, gap-toothed. Monstrous shit-eating grin.

Dave soliloquized. “For sheer viciousness and braggadocio, Nash stands alone. He was a proudly affirmed homosexual in the mid-1950s. He killed out of both a psychopathic resentment and for the sheer fact that killing sexually aroused him. His exact death toll remains unknown. There’s the three in the Bay Area, the gay hairdresser in Long Beach, and the 10-year-old boy under the Santa Monica pier. Nash’s killing spree ended in November ’56. He hinted at more killings, but never named names, and five victims since his summer ’54 parole from San Quentin seems like a low number.”

I bit a bagel. A tooth cracked. I tossed it away.

Dave said, “There’s a rumor that’s floated around for years, that during a portion of his free time in ’54 and ’55, he was befriended by an actor who took amateur movies of ‘colorful’ L.A. characters, along with tape recordings of some of their ramblings. Don’t laugh—I know some of you scoff at my psychic shit—but I’ve seen a big, white Spanish house in conjunction with all this.”

A cop yelled, “It’s Reggie the Ridgeback’s house.”

A cop yelled, “No, it’s that Airedale’s pad.”

Dave grinned. Dave said, “Reggie’s your collective daddy.” Dave flipped the whole room off.

I walked up to the stage. A woman cop yelled, “Stephen Nash is my type! I could turn him straight!”

Dave said, “Gas chamber. August 19th, ’59.”

I flipped the mike off. Dave and I huddled.

I said, “Russ wants the clean-up today. If you really want to score some points with him, scrounge some water beds and a sound system.”

Dave snapped his fingers. “Roger that. That clown at Appliance King’s dealing Quaaludes. I’ll talk to the D.A.”

I yawned—fucking Reggie slept on me. A sleep deficit loomed.

Dave said, “That cologne stinks. Russ is trying to fuck you up with Donna.”

“Does the whole world know?”

“Yeah. It’ll probably be in Variety tomorrow.”

DONNA SAID, “It’s a shuck.”

I said, “Nix. You’re a material witness. The killer saw you. You need round-the-clock protection.”

We stood outside the Academy. The crew set up shots. Donna wore faded jeans and a beige turtleneck. She looked like Exeter or Andover or some swank school with no jigs.

I said, “Miss Donahue, this is no shit. These fruit-snuff geeks get off on icing women, too. I read it in Ms. magazine. And, I have it on good authority that before I dropped Huey Muhammad, he was on his way to kill a woman.”

Donna smiled. “I’d prefer the Beverly Wilshire, but I’ll settle for the Biltmore or New Otani downtown.”

I rhino-revamped my pitch. “Miss Donahue, the LAPD is undergoing severe budget cuts, but we do have at our disposal a five-bedroom house in Hollywood, inhabited by hardened detectives 24 hours a day, and you are graciously invited to stay there under our protection.

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