Chapter Fifty-Nine

Easy:

I took a bus to L.A. and got a hotel room. I had a typewriter sent up—one blank passport rendered valid.

My new name: Edmund L. Smith.

Picture valid: photo-booth snapshots, glue.

My ticket out: Pan Am, L.A. to Rio.

My wounds were healing up.

My new face was holding: no handsome Dave Klein showing through.

Morphine pops kept me calm and crazy exultant. This crazy notion: you walked.

Not yet.

Chapter Sixty

I bought a new clunker—two hundred dollars cash. I took a detour airport-bound: 1684 South Tremaine.

8:00 A.M.—quiet, peaceful.

Voices inside-bellicose male.

I walked back, tried the rear door—unlocked. Laundry room, kitchen door—yank it.

J.C. and Tommy at the table, guzzling beer.

Say what?

What the—

J.C. first—silencer THWAP—brains out his ears. Tommy, beer bottle raised—THWAP—glass in his eyes.

He screamed: “DADDY!”

EYEBALL MAN! EYEBALL MAN!—I shot them both faceless blind.

Chapter Sixty-One

Airport heat: Feds, Sheriff’s men, mob lookouts. Right through them—no blinks—up to the counter.

Friendly service, a glance at my passport. I checked my money bags through—”Have a pleasant flight, Mr. Smith.”

Gone—just like that.

The will to remember.

Fever dreams—that time burning

Old now-a grin go exile rich off real estate. My confession complete—but still not enough.

Postscripts:

Will Shipstad—private practice from ‘59 up.

Reuben Ruiz—Bantam champ, ‘61—’62.

Chick Vecchio—shot and killed robbing a liquor store.

Touch V.—managing drag-queen acts in Vegas.

Fred Turentine—dead—cirrhosis. Lester Lake-dead-cancer.

The place lost/the time burning/close to them somehow.

Madge Kafesjian—alone—that house, those ghosts.

Welles Noonan—convicted of jury tampering—1974. Sentenced to three to five Fed-a Seconal OD suicide en route to Leavenworth.

Meg—old, a widow—my conduit there to here. Wealthy-our slum pads traded up for condos.

Spinning, falling-afraid I’ll forget:

Mickey Cohen—perpetual scuffler—two prison jolts. Dead—heart attack, ‘76.

Jack Woods, Pete B—old, in failing health.

Dick Carlisle:

Retired from the LAPD—never charged as a Dudley Smith accomplice. “Dick the Fur Kin g”—the Hurwitz stash expanded legit. Dry-cleaning mogul—the E-Z Kleen chain purchased from Madge.

Dudley Smith—still half-lucid, still a charmer: Gaelic songs for the girls who wet-nurse him.

Edmund Exley:

Chief of Detectives, Chief of Police. Congressman, Lieutenant Governor, current gubernatorial candidate.

Acknowledged Dudley Smith admirer—politically expedient, smart

Dudley—rakish in his eye patch. Pundit when sane: snappy quotes on “containment,” always good for a news retrospective. A reminder: men were men then.

Glenda:

Movie star, TV star Sixtyish—the matriarch on a long-running series.

Glenda:

Thirty-odd years famous. Always with me—those pictures held close. Ageless—every movie, every printed photo shunned.

In my dreams—spinning, falling.

Like Exley and Dudley and Carlisle.

Exiled from me, things to tell me—prosaic horrors that define their long survival. Words to update this confession to free me.

Dreams: spinning, falling—

I’m going back. I’m going to make Exley confess every monstrous deal he ever cut with the same candor I have. I’m going to kill Carlisle, and make Dudley fill in every moment of his life—to eclipse my guilt with the sheer weight of his evil. I’m going to kill him in the name of our victims, find Glenda and say:

Tell me anything.

Tell me everything.

Revoke our time apart.

Love me fierce in danger.