Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction from the Underside of L.A. by James Ellroy

Author:James Ellroy
Language: eng
Format: epub

5

We went in well armed. We masqueraded as marines and made it a military maneuver.

The marines marked for molestation left some shit at the shrine. We draped ourselves in their dress blues and packed their PX-pilfered pistols. I hid my Hudson Hornet and hot-wired a Vauxhall van. Monster masks made us menacing and marked us as men not to mess with.

I went in as the Wolfman. Sammy crept in as the Creature from the Black Lagoon. We moved our minkmobile into the back lot and barged in the back door.

5:46 P.M.

Fourteen minutes to filch furs and fill up the van. Fourteen minutes to fuck the fur-filchers already assigned to the job.

We monster-minced down a mink-lined hallway. We froze by the freezer vault. Al Teitelbaum latched eyes on us and laughed long and loud.

He howled and heaved for breath. He broke a sweat and swatted his legs. He swayed and pointed to a pile of pelts on the freezer floor.

He hocked into a hanky. He said, “Go, you fershtunkener furmeisters. Go, before I die of a fucking coronary.”

Sammy popped the pelts into a large laundry bag. I shot my eyes into the showroom. I scanned scads of sensational sables and choice chinchillas and magnificent minks. Our paltry pile of pelts paled in considered contrast.

Teitelbaum said, “Hit me once, tie me up, and get out of here. Your theatrics are wearing me thin.”

I pulled my piece and pistol-whipped him to pulp. I decimated his dentures. Blood dripped on my dress blues.

Teitelbaum tipped into dreamland. I dropped him in the freezer and gagged him with a gorgeous gaggle of furs. Sammy gloated and glared at the ofay oppressor. He muttered mau-mau musings and metamorphosed into the Creature from the Coon Lagoon.

5:51 P.M.

Sammy lugged the laundry bag back to the Vauxhall van. I shifted into overdrive and shot through the shop.

I manhandled minks and moved them out fast. I stole stellar stacks of stoles. I glommed glorious globs of glistening fur and furnished the van tip to tailpipes. I made myself a millionaire in one machination and emancipated Sambofied Sammy.

5:57 P.M.

I lashed up a last stack of stoles. The real robbers ripped through the front door—_rápidamente_.

I froze. Sammy froze by the freezer. The real robbers shared a “Shit” look. They shook their eyes around the showroom—shabbily shorn and sacked.

They whipped out Walter PPK’s and popped me point-blank. My stack of stoles absorbed their ammo. The Creature from the Coon Lagoon crouched and pulled his piece. Six rounds ripped the real robbers and ratched them into a raccoon-coat rack.

We wrapped the bodies in raccoon and rolled them under a rug. Sammy dug the scene and dubbed it a “Massacre in Mink.”

We moved our minkmobile to Mexico—mucho fast. Sammy negrofied Sinatra songs and arced them out a cappella.

He verse-vilified Sinatra and lynched him with licentious lyrics. He sang scatological scat and scoffed at Frank the freewheeling freak. He excoriated and exorcised his ex-slavemaster extemporaneously.

“Fly me to the moon, with my guinea goons, I ejaculate a little

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