Ticket 2 Ride

After Red Sheet, I moved on to The Enchanters (2023, Alfred A. Knopf) which immediately preceded Red Sheet. I’m working backwards in the book order, which is not unusual for me.

Who are the enchanters? I guess the title refers to the powerful and influential people who we look up to and believe in. In Ellroy’s crime mystery of 1962 Los Angeles, it would be movie people, leaders of Los Angeles, and the Kennedys. These were the days of Camelot, a hip and new America, and whatever fantasies Hollywood feeds us. But all is not well in the City of the Angels.

The book focuses on Marilyn Monroe’s death, a kidnapping of a B actress, and a kinky series of harassing threats against a group of divorcees. Unrelated? Maybe not.

Historical fiction is James Ellroy’s modus operandi. Los Angeles is his home territory and he knows its seamy side, because he lived there and escaped from it. Ellroy tells his stories usually through the voice of someone like Freddy Otash, a real person, whose colorful life is perfect for Ellroy’s storytelling. Otash was the voice of Red Sheet, so I’m familiar with his world.

The cast of characters here also includes Monroe, Daryl Zanuck, mayor Sam Yorty, police chief Bill Parker, Lt. Daryl Gates, actress Lois Nettleton, actors Peter Lawford, Roddy McDowell, Elizabeth Taylor, Lawford’s wife Pat Kennedy, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy, Dodgers pitcher Bo Bilinski, singer Eddie Fisher, labor boss Jimmy Hoffa among others.

Gwen Perloff is a B actress, a mistress of studio boss Zanuck, and gal pal of Monroe, who claims she was kidnapped and held for ransom. Otash is hired by Hoffa to find dirt on the Kennedy boys, and that means illegal wiretaps and surveillance in the Monroe and Peter Lawford residences. Then Otask is hired by the Kennedys to destroy any dirt that Otash can find on them. RFK appears often in this book, flaunting his power behind the scene, making Otash question whether he is friend or foe.

Our deal with Bob Kennedy entails the demonizing of Marilyn Monroe, to discredit her if talk of her alleged romantic attachment to the Kennedys surfaces to the world at large. Our side deal entails that you develop a concurrent derogatory profile on John and Robert Kennedy, to utilize if Bob renegs on his pledge to shoot the Chief the FBI job. And, of course, facilitate my ascent to Chief. – Daryl Gates to Fred Otash

Otash is working as a private dick, but gets an offer that he can’t refuse, becoming a lieutenant for the D.A. bureau where he can operate on the inside, and he might just help to crack a case of threats against a number of targeted women.

Otask appears in several Ellroy books, usually working in tandem with Lt. Gates and on a long leash from Chief Parker. Otash starts off the book trying to get a suspect to come clean on where kidnapped Perloff is being kept. The suspect is being dangled over a cliff with a busy highway below. I shoved Danforth off the cliff. He treaded air for one split second. “It’s a put-up job” came out garbled. I heard him hit a car roof. I heard brakes squeal. I heard wheels thump over him. Crisscrossed headlights lit him up. A pimpmobile Caddy dragged him against a guardrail and sheared off his feet.

Justice, L.A. style. A favorite tactic of the Hat Squad, the famed LAPD special unit who encouraged gangsters from other cities to return there.

Later on: His face went red-red. He jumped up, fast on his feet. He pulled something from his coat pocket and jammed it in his mouth. He growl-roared low in his throat. Tiger teeth. His spare set. Big fangs and flat lowers to gnaw meat. He growl-roared and lunged at me. I fired point-blank. I blew his mouth and his neck cords out. A severed ear flew. His tiger teeth exploded. I powder-scorched his eyes down to the sockets. Muzzle flash set his hair aflame.

It’s a violent world, especially when the cops are unleashed. The world of The Enchanters is Ellroy’s literary ground, if you have read any one of his books, you should feel right at home.

How does this book rank with Elloy’s other L.A. based novels? Good question. I’ve only read a couple of his books so far, but I found The Enchanters to be a bit harder to understand and slower than other books. If you enjoy his hard-nose cops who step light on the line between obeying the law and obliterating it, Freddie Otash is in fine form. As usual, you will have to suspend belief for the Monroe-Kennedys-Lawfords interconnecting plot threads.