American Tabloid - James Ellroy [5]
She touched Walt’s arm. Her guilty heart showed plain—except for the money, she hates it.
Pete walked over to the Ambassador and went up to his room. The setup was perfect: his room, Gail’s room, one connecting door for a slick covert entrance.
He loaded his camera and attached a flashbulb strip. He greased the connecting doorjamb. He framed angles for some face shots.
Ten minutes crawled by. Pete listened for next-door sounds. There, Gail’s signal—“Damn, where’s my key?” a beat too loud.
Pete pressed up to the wall. He heard Lonely Walt pitch some boo-hoo: my wife and kids don’t know a man has certain needs. Gail said, Why’d you have seven kids then? Walt said, It keeps my wife at home, where a woman belongs.
Their voices faded out bed-bound. Shoes went thunk. Gail kicked a high-heeled pump at the wall—her three-minutes-to-blastoff signal.
Pete laughed—thirty-dollar-a-night rooms with goddamn wafer-thin walls.
Zippers snagged. Bedsprings creaked. Seconds tick-tick-ticked. Walter P. Kinnard started groaning—Pete clocked him saddled in at 2:44.
He waited for 3:00 even. He eeeeased the door open—that doorjamb grease lubed out every little scriiich.
There: Gail and Walter P. Kinnard fucking.
In the missionary style, with their heads close together—courtroom adultery evidence. Walt was loving it. Gail was feigning ecstasy and picking at a hangnail.
Pete got closeup close and let fly.
One, two, three—flashbulb blips Tommy-gun fast. The whole god-damn room went glare bright.
Kinnard shrieked and pulled out dishrag limp. Gail tumbled off the bed and ran for the bathroom.
Sexy buck-naked Walt: 5′9″, 210, pudgy.
Pete dropped his camera and picked him up by the neck. Pete laid his pitch out nice and slow.
“Your wife wants a divorce. She wants eight hundred a month, the house, the ’56 Buick and orthodontic treatments for your son Timmy. You give her everything she wants, or I’ll find you and kill you.”
Kinnard popped spit bubbles. Pete admired his color: half shock-blue, half cardiac-red.
Steam whooshed out the bathroom door—Gail’s standard postfuck shower always went down quick.
Pete dropped Walt on the floor. His arm fluttered from the lift: two hundred pounds plus, not bad.
Kinnard grabbed his clothes and stumbled out the door. Pete saw him tripping down the hallway, trying to get his trousers on right.
Gail walked out of a steam cloud. Her “I can’t take much more of this” was no big surprise.
Walter P. Kinnard settled non-litigiously. Pete’s shutout string jumped to Wives 23, Husbands 0. Mrs. Kinnard paid off: five grand up front, with 25% of her alimony promised in perpetuity.
Next: three days on Howard Hughes’ time clock.
The TWA suit was spooking Big Howard. Pete stepped up his diversions.
He paid hookers to spiel to the papers: Hughes was holed up in numerous fuck pads. He bombarded process servers with phone tips: Hughes was in Bangkok, Maracaibo, Seoul. He set up a second Hughes double at the Biltmore: an old stag-movie vet, beaucoup hung. Pops was priapic for real—he sent Barbara Payton over to service him. Booze-addled Babs thought the old geek really was Hughes. She dished far and wide: Little Howard grew six inches.
J. Edgar Hoover could stall the suit easy. Hughes refused to ask him for help.
“Not yet, Pete. I need to cement my friendship with Mr. Hoover first. I see my ownership of Hush-Hush as the key, but I need you to find me a new scandal man first. You know how much Mr. Hoover loves to accrue titillating information.…”
Pete put the word out on the grapevine:
New Hush-Hush dirt digger needed. Interested bottom-feeders—call Pete B.
Pete stuck by the watchdog house phone. Geeks called. Pete said, Give me a hot dirt tidbit to prove your credibility.
The geeks complied. Dig the sampling:
Pat Nixon just hatched Nat “King” Cole’s baby. Lawrence Welk ran male prosties. A hot duo: Patti Page and Francis the Talking Mule.
Eisenhower had certified spook blood. Rin Tin Tin got Lassie pregnant. Jesus Christ ran a coon whorehouse in Watts.
It