White Jazz

James Ellroy

White Jazz

To Helen Knode

In the end I possess my birthplace and am possessed by its language.

All I have is the will to remember. Time revoked/fever dreams—I wake up reaching, afraid I’ll forget Pictures keep the woman young.

Newsprint: link the dots. Names, events—so brutal they beg to be co

I’m old, afraid I’ll forget:

I killed i

I betrayed sacred oaths.

I reaped profit from horror.

Fever—that time burning. I want to go with the music—spin, fall with it.

L.A. Herald-Express, 10/17/58:

Yesterday, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles a

U.S. Attorney Welles Noonan, former counsel to the McClellan Rackets Committee, said that Justice Department investigators, acting on information supplied by u

Some skepticism greeted news of the prize fight probe. “I’ll believe it when the grand jury hands down true bills,” said William F. Degnan, a former FBI agent now retired in Santa Monica. “Two witnesses do not make a successful investigation. And I’m wary of anything a

Mr. Degnan’s sentiments were echoed by a source within the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office. Queried on the probe, a prosecuting attorney who wishes to remain anonymous stated: “It’s politics pure and simple. Noonan’s friends with (Massachusetts Senator and presidential hopeful) John Ke

U.S. Attorney Noonan, 40, declined comment on the above speculation, but a surprise ally defended him with some vigor. Morton Diskant, civil liberties lawyer and Democratic candidate for Fifth District City Councilman, told this writer: “I distrust the Los Angeles Police Department’s ability to maintain order without infringing on the civil rights of Los Angeles citizens. I distrust the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office for the same reason. I especially distrust Robert Gallaudet, most specifically for his support of (Fifth District Republican Councilman) Thomas Bethune, my incumbent opponent. Gallaudet’s stand on the Chavez Ravine issue is unconscionable. He wants to evict impoverished Latin Americans from their homes to procure space for an L.A. Dodgers ballpark, a frivolity I deem criminal. Welles Noonan, on the other hand, has proven himself to be both a determined crimefighter and a friend of civil rights. Boxing is a dirty business that renders human beings walking vegetables. I applaud Mr. Noonan for taking the high ground in combatting it.”

U.S. Attorney Noonan responded to Mr. Diskant’s statement. “I appreciate his support, but I do not want partisan political comments to cloud the issue. That issue is boxing and the best way to sever its links to organized crime. The U.S. Attorney’s Office does not seek to supersede the authority of the LAPD or to in any way ridicule or undermine it.”

Meanwhile, the boxing probe continues. Witnesses Ruiz and Johnson are in protective custody at a downtown hotel, guarded by Federal agents and officers on loan from the Los Angeles Police Department: Lieutenant David Klein and Sergeant George Stemmons, Jr.

“Hollywood Cavalcade” Feature, Hush-Hush Magazine, 10/28/58:

Dig it, hepcats: Meyer Harris Cohen, the marvelous, benevolent, malevolent Mickster, has been out of Federal custody since September, ‘57. He did 3 to 5 for income tax evasion; his ragtag band dispersed, and the former mob kingpin’s life since then has been one long series of skidmarks across the City of the Fallen Angels, the town he used to rule with bullets, bribes and bullspit bonhomie. Dig, children, and smell the burning rubber of those skids: off the record, on the Q.T and very Hush-Hush.

April, ‘58: former Cohen henchman Joh

More sin-tillating scoop on the Mickster:

Under the watchful eye of his parole officer, Mickey has since made attempts to straighten up and skid right. He bought an ice cream parlor that soon became a criminal haven and went bust when parents kept their children away in droves; he financed his own niteclub act, somnambulistic shtick at the Club Largo. Snore City: bum bits on Ike’s golf game, gags about Lana T. and Joh

Item:

Federal agents are soon to scold Mickey for infringing on the contracts of local prizefight palookas.

Item:

Four of Mickey’s goons—Carmine Ramandelli, Nathan Palevsky, Morris Jahelka and Antoine “The Fish” Guerif—have mysteriously disappeared, presumably snuffed by person or persons unknown, and (very strangely, hepcats) Mickey is keeping his (usually on overdrive) yap shut about it.

Rumors are climbing the underworld grapevine: two surviving Cohen gunmen (Chick Vecchio and his brother Salvatore “Touch” Vecchio, a failed actor rumored to be très lavender) are pla

Get the picture, kats and kittens? Mickey Cohen is Skidsville, U.S.A., and he needs moolah, gelt, the old cashola. Which explains our most riotous rumor revelation, raffishly revealed for the frenetically foremost first time!

Digsville:

Meyer Harris Cohen is now in the movie biz!!

Move over C. B. DeMille: the fabulous, benevolent, malevolent Mickster is now sub-rosa financing a horror cheapie currently shooting in Griffith Park! He’s saved his negro exploited nickels and is now partners with Variety International Pictures in the making of Attack of the Atomic Vampire. It’s sensational, it’s non-union, it’s a turkey of epic proportions!

Further Digsville:

Ever anxious to parsimoniously pinch pe

Final Digsville:

Enter Howard Hughes: Mr. Airplane/Tool Magnate, lascivious luster after Hollywood lovelies. He used to own R.K.O. Studios; now he’s an independent producer known for keeping wildly wellendowed wenches welded to “personal service contracts”—read as bit roles in exchange for frequent nighttime visits. Dig: we’ve heard that Mickey’s leading lady left the mammary-mauling mogul spi

Are you smitten, Mickster?

Are you heartbroken, Howard?

Hollywood Cavalcade shifts gears with an open letter to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Dear LAPD:

Recently, three wino bums were found strangled and mutilated in abandoned houses in the Hollywood area. Very Hush-Hush: we’ve heard the still-at-large killer snapped their windpipes postmortem, utilizing great strength. The press has paid these heinously horrific killings scant attention; only the sin-sation slanted L.A. Mirror seems to care that three Los Angeles citizens have met such nauseatingly nasty nadirs. The LAPD’s Homicide Division has not been called in to investigate; so far only two Hollywood Division detectives are working the case. Hepcats, it’s the pedigree of the victims that determine the juice of investigation—and if three squarejohn citizens got choked by a neck-snapping psychopath, then LAPD Chief of Detectives Edmund J. Exley would waste no time mounting a full scale investigation. Often it takes a catchy tag name to bring dirty criminal business into the public’s consciousness and thus create a clamor for justice. Hush-Hush hereby names this anonymous killer fiend the “Wino Will-o-the-Wisp” and petitions the LAPD to find him and set him up with a hot date in San Quentin’s green room. They cook with gas there, and this killer deserves a four-burner cookout.

Watch for future updates on the Wino Will-o-the-Wisp, and remember you heard it first here: off the record, on the Q.T. and very Hush-Hush.