L. A. Confidential

The old man was nowhere.

He'd jumped parole; prowling his L.A. haunts turned up nothing. Bud kept looking, kept waking to the sound of women screaming. He always investigated; it was always just wisps of noise. Once he kicked in a door and found a woman who'd burned her hand. Once he crashed in on a husband and wife making love.

The old man was nowhere.

He made the Bureau, partnered up with Dick Stens. Dick showed him the ropes, heard out his story, told him to pick his shots to get even. Pops would stay nowhere, but thumping wife beaters might drive the nightmares out of his system. Bud picked a great first shot: a domestic squawk, the complainant a longtime punching bag, the arrestee a three-time loser. He detoured on the way to the station, asked the guy if he'd like to tango with a man for a change: no cuffs, a walk on the charge if he won. The guy agreed; Bud broke his nose, his jaw, ruptured his spleen with a dropkick. Dick was right: his bad dreams stopped.

His rep as «the» toughest man in the LAPD grew.

He kept it up; he followed up: intimidation calls if the fuckers got acquitted, welcome home strongarms if they did time and got parole. He forced himself not to take gratitude lays and found women elsewhere. He kept a list of court and parole dates and sent the fuckers postcards at the honor farm; he got hit with excessive-force complaints and toughed them out. Dick Stens made him a decent detective; now he played nursemaid to his teacher: keeping him half sober on duty, holding him back when he got a hard-on to shoot for kicks. He'd learned to keep himself in check; Stens was now all bad habits: scrounging at bars, letting stick-up men slide for snitch dope.

The music inside went off key-wrong, not really music. Bud caught screeches-screams from the jail.

The noise doubled, tripled. Bud saw a stampede: muster room to cellblock. A flash: Stens going crazy, booze, a jamboree-bash the cop bashers. He ran over, hit the door at a sprint.

The catwalk packed tight, cell doors open, lines forming. Exley shouting for order, pressing into the swarm, getting nowhere. Bud found the prisoner list; checkmarks after "Sanchez, Dinardo," "Carbijal, Juan," "Garcia, Ezekiel," "Chasco, Reyes," "Rice, De

The bums in the drunk cage egged the men on.

Stens hit the #4 cell-waving brass knucks.

Willie Tristano pi

Cops shoved cell to cell. Elmer Lentz, blood splattered, gri

Bud stormed into it.

He caught elbows going in; the men saw who it was and cleared a path. Stens slid into 3; Bud pushed in. Dick was working a ski

Bud let Stens go; the Mex gave him the finger. Bud kicked him prone, picked him up by the neck. Cheers, attaboys, holy fucks. Bud banged the punk's head on the ceiling; a bluesuit moved in hard. Ed Exley's rich-kid voice: "Stop it, Officer-that's an order!"

The Mex kicked him in the balls-a dangling shot. Bud keeled into the bars; the kid stumbled out of the cell, smack into Vince

Yells, shouts, shrieks: louder than a thousand Code 3 sirens.

Stens whipped out a pint of gin. Bud saw every man there skunked to niggertown forever. Up on his tiptoes, a prime view-Exley dumping booze in the storeroom.

Voices: attaboy, Big Bud. Faces to the voices-skewed, wrong. Exley still dumping, Mr. Teetotaler Witness. Bud ran down the catwalk, locked him in tight.

CHAPTER FIVE

Shut into a room eight feet square. No windows, no telephone, no intercom. Shelves spilling forms, mops, brooms, a clogged-up sink filled with vodka and rum. The door was steel-reinforced; the liquor stew smelled like vomit. Shouts and thudding sounds- boomed through a heat vent.

Ed banged on the door-no response. He yelled into the vent-hot air hit his face. He saw himself pinioned and pickpocketed, Bureau guys who figured he'd never squeal. He wondered what his father would do.

Time dragged; the jail noise stopped, fired up, stopped, started. Ed banged on the door-no luck. The room went hot; booze stench smothered the air. Ed felt Guadalcanal: hiding from the Japs, bodies piled over him. His uniform was sopping wet; if he shot the lock the bullets could ricochet off the plating and kill him. The beatings had to go wide: an I.A. investigation, civil suits, the grand jury. Police brutality charges; careers flushed down the toilet. Sergeant Edmund J. Exley crucified because he could not maintain order. Ed made a decision: fight back with his brains.

He wrote on the back of official departmental forms-version one, the truth:

A rumor started it: John Helenowski lost an eye. Sergeant Richard Stensland logged in Rice, De

Sergeant Exley did not use force to get the spare keys back.

More details:

Stensland going crazy, policemen beating helpless prisoners. Bud White: lifting a squirming man, one hand on his neck.

Sergeant Exley ordering Officer White to stop; Officer White ignoring the order; Sergeant Exley relieved when the prisoner freed himself and eliminated the need for a further confrontation.

Ed winced, kept writing-12/25/51, the Central Jail assaults in detail. Probable grand jury indictments, interdepartmental trial boards-Chief Parker's prestige ruined. Fresh paper, thoughts of inmate witnesses-mostly drunks-and the fact that virtually every officer had been drinking heavily. «They» were compromised witnesses; «he» was sober, uncompromised, and had made attempts to control the situation. «He» needed a graceful out; the Department needed to save face; the high brass would be grateful to a man who tried to circumvent bad press-who had the foresight to see it coming and plan ahead. He wrote down version two.

A digression on number one, the action shifted to limit the blame to fewer officers: Stensland, Joh

It came slowly. Voices urged "Stens" to "wake up for a piece"; White left the cellblock, muttering what a waste it all was. Krugman and Tucker yelled insults; whimpers answered them. No further sound of White or Joh