My Dark Places - James Ellroy [57]
I stayed calm until lights-out. Darkness jump-started my imagination. I put myself through a string of jail horrors and cried myself to sleep.
Rudy got me out the next day. He cooked up a deal to get me six months probation and “emancipated juvenile” status. I could live solo—with Rudy as my informal guardian.
It was one sweet deal. I needed a ticket out of jail and Rudy needed an audience for his tirades. Lloyd, Fritz and Daryl heard him out reluctantly. I soaked up his shit with abandon.
Rudy was tight with a bunch of crazy cop ideologues. They passed around mimeographed copies of “The Nigger’s 23rd Psalm” and “Martin Luther Coon’s Welfare Handbook.” Rudy and I yukked it up for a string of consecutive nights. The Watts riot interrupted us.
L.A. was burning. I wanted to kill all the rioters and turn L.A. into Cinder City myself. The riot thrilled me. This was crime writ large—crime on a big plot-extrapolatable scale.
Rudy was called to duty. Lloyd, Fritz and I skirted the periphery of the riot zone. We carried BB pistols. We mouthed racist jive and cruised south until some cops made us go home.
We did it again the next night. Live history was groovy. We watched the riot from the Griffith Park telescopes and saw strips of Los Angeles sizzling. We drove out to the valley and saw some rednecks burn a cross in a Christmas-tree lot.
The riot fizzled out. It reconflagrated in my head and ruled my thoughts for weeks.
I ran stories from diverse perspectives. I became both riot cop and riot provocateur. I lived lives fucked over by history.
I spread my empathy around. I distributed moral shading equitably. I didn’t analyze the cause of the riot or prophesy its ramifications. My public stance was “Fuck the niggers.” My concurrent narrative fantasies stressed culpable white cops.
I never questioned the contradiction. I didn’t know that storytelling was my only true voice.
Narrative was my moral language. I didn’t know it in the summer of 1965.
Rudy didn’t care what I did. My probation officer ignored me. I continued to steal and dodge work.
I craved free time. Free time meant time to dream and cultivate my sense of potent destiny. Free time meant time to fall prey to impulse.
It was a hot day in mid-September. I got an urge to get drunk.
I walked down to the Liquor & Food Mart and stole a bottle of champagne. I took it over to Robert Burns Park, popped the top and guzzled the whole thing.
I went ecstatic. I went hyper-effusive. I crashed a group of Hancock Park girls and told them crazy lies. I blacked out and woke up on my bed drenched in vomit.
I knew I’dfound something.
The discovery thrilled me. I started stealing booze and experimenting with it.
Heublein premixed cocktails were good. I dug sweet Manhattans and tart and tangy whisky sours. Beer quenched your thirst—but lacked the blastoff potential of hard liquor. Straight scotch was too strong—it burned going down and brought up bile in its wake. I avoided straight bourbon and bourbon highballs. Bourbon reminded me of the redhead.
Vodka and fruit juice was great. You got a fast push out of the gate with minimum gag action. Gin, brandy and liqueurs induced dry heaves.
I drank for stimulation. Booze sent me stratospheric.
It jacked up my narrative powers. It gave my thoughts a physical dimension.
Booze made me talk to myself. Booze made me spritz my fantasies aloud. Booze made me address scores of imaginary women.
Booze altered my fantasy world—but did not change the basic subject matter. Crime remained my dominant obsession.
I had a big crime backlog to embellish.
The Watts riot was recent and hot. The Ma Duncan case was a slick golden oldie. I walked Ma to the gas chamber a hundred fantasy times.
Doc Finch and Carole Tregoff were rotting in prison. I saved Carole from jailhouse dykes and made her my woman. I snuck into Chino and snuffed Spade Cooley. Ella Mae got her vengeance at last. I committed Stephen Nash’s murders and pulled