The Sheila Variations

The Books: "L.A. Confidential" (James Ellroy)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

L.A. Confidential - by James Ellroy

God, I love James Ellroy. I love everything about him. I love his books, I love his persona - and he is a great great interview. He's honest to the degree that sometimes you get nervous for him. He's an open wound - which is funny because his writing is so rat-a-tat-tat. But the nuances he manages to suggest - the entire WORLD he gets into and creates ... He's consistently terrific, and I just love him.

Of course this book was made into a massively successful film - one of my favorite movies ever made, actually - and while the book is far more involved - way more going on - the movie is pretty faithful, not just to the plotline but to the FEEL of the book. Entire scenes of dialogue are lifted verbatim. Because why would you change it? It's perfect already. He doesn't do a lot of "he said" "she said" - Ellroy's narrative brain works faster than that. He doesn't sit back from the action - he's in it, ba da bing ba da boom - here's this, then this, and we move on, but now we're back in ... and we, as readers, are just lucky if we can keep up. (Speaking of the movie, here's a piece I wrote on Bud White, and that first close-up in the film)

The book he wrote about his mother's still-unsolved murder (excerpt here) is a must-read.

But so are all his others.

Here's an excerpt involving Jack Vincennes. I could never write like this. It's not my sensibility - my imagination does not express itself in this way ... but what a pleasure it is ... to read prose like this.

EXCERPT FROM L.A. Confidential - by James Ellroy

He found a juke joint, ordered a line of shots. Two drinks killed his shakes; two more made him a toastmaster.

To the men I just killed: sorry, I'm really better at shooting unarmed civilians. I'm being squeezed into retirement, so I thought I'd 86 a couple of real bad guys before I capped my twenty.

To my wife: you thought you married a hero, but you grew up and you learned you were wrong. Now you want to go to law school andbe a lawyer like Daddy and Ellis. No sweat on the money: Daddy bought the house, Daddy upgrades your marriage, Daddy will pay for tuition. When you read the paper and see that your husband drilled two evil robbers, you'll think they're the first notces on his gun. Wrong - in '47 dope crusader Jack blasted two innocent people, the big secret he almost wants to spill just to get some life kicking back into his marriage.

Jack downed three more shots. He went where he always went when with a certain amount of shit in his system - back to '53 and smut.

He felt safe on the blackmail: his depositions for insurance, the Hudguns snuff buried - Hush-Hush resurrected it, got nowhere. Patchett and Bracken never approached him - they had the carbon of Sid's Big V file, kept their end of the bargain. He heard Lynn and Bud White were still an item; call the brainy whore and Patchett memories - bad news from that bad bloody spring. What drove him was the smut.

He kept it in a safe-deposit box. He knew it was there, knew it excited him - knew that loving it would trash his marriage. He threw himself into the marriage, building walls to keep them safe from that spring. A string of sober days helped; the marriage helped. Nothing he did changed things - Karen just learned who he was.

She saw him muscle Deuce Perkins; he said "nigger" in front of her parents. She figured out his press exploits were lies. She saw him drunk, pissed off. He hated her friends; his one friend - Miller Stanton - dropped out of sight when he blew Badge of Honor. He got bored with Karen, ran to the smut, went crazy with it.

He tried to ID the posers again - still no go. He went to Tijuana, bought other fuck books - no go. He went looking for Christine Bergeron, couldn't find her, put out teletypes that got him bupkis. No way to have the real thing - he decided to fake it.

He bought hookers, shook down call girls. He fixed them up to look like the girls in his books. He had them three and four at a pop, chains of bodies on quilts. He costumed them, choreographed them. He aped the pictures, took his own pictures, recaptured; sometimes he thought of the blood pix and got scared: perfect matches to murder mutilations.

Real women enver thrilled him like the pictures did; fear kept him from going to Fleur-de-Lis - straight to the source. He couldn't figure out Karen's fear - why she didn't leave him.

A last drink - bad thoughts adieu.

Jack cleaned up, walked back to his car. No hubcaps, broken wiper blades. Crime scene tape around Hank's Ranch Market; two black-and-whites in the lot. No reprimand note on his windshield - the vandals probably stole it.

* * *

He hit the bash at full swing: Ellis Loew, a suite packed with Republican bigshots. Women in cocktail gowns; men in dark suits. The Big V chinos, a sport shirt sprayed with dog blood.

Jack flagged a waiter, grabbed a martini off his tray. Framed pictures on the wall caught his eye.

Political progress: Harvard Law Review, the '53 election, a howler shot: Loew telling the press the Nite Owl killers confessed before they escaped. Jack laughed, sprayed gin, almost choked on his olive. Behind him: "You used to dress a bit more nicely."

Jack turned around. "I used to be some kind of hotshot."

"Do you have an excuse for your appearance?"

"Yeah, I killed two men today."

"I see. Anything else?"

"Yeah, I shot them in the back, plugged a dog and took off before my superior officers showed up. And here's a news flash: I've been drinking. Ellis, this is getting stale, so let's get to it. Who do you want me to touch?"

"Jack, lower your voice."

"What is it, boss? The Senate or the statehouse?"

"Jack, it's not the time to discuss this."

"Sure it is. Tell true. You're gearing up for the '60 election."

Loew, on the QT. "All right, it's the Senate. I did have some favors to ask, but your current condition precludes my asking them. We'll talk when you're in better shape."

An audience now: the whole suite. "Come on, I'm dying to run bag for you. Who do I shake down first?"

"Sergeant, lower your voice."

Raise that voice. "Cocksucker, I shit where you breathe. I put Bill McPherson in the tank for you, I cold-coked him and put him in bed with that colored girl, I fucking deserve to know who you want me to put the screws to next."

Loew, a hoarse whisper. "Vincennes, you're through."

Jack tossed gin in his face. "God, I fucking hope so."

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