Lynette laughed; High Yellow howled. The whole room laughed—at me.
Bido Lito’s, 68th and Central—closed. Mark it: a lead on crazy man Junior.
I staked the parking lot—no suspicious shit—music out a door down the block. Squint, catch the marquee: “Club Alabam—Art Pepper Quartet Nitely.” Art Pepper—Straight Life—a Tommy K. smashed record.
Strange music: pulsing, discordant. Distance distorted sounds—I synced a beat to people talking on the sidewalk. Hard to see faces, easy to imagine them: I made all the women Glenda. A crescendo, applause—I hit my brights to get a real look. Too bright—jigs passing a reefer—gone before I could blink.
I pulled up and walked in. Dark—no doorman/cover charge—four white guys on stage, backlit. Sax, bass, piano, drums—four beats—not music, not noise. I bumped a table, bumped a left-behind jug.
My eyes adjusted—bourbon and a shot glass right there. I grabbed a chair, watched, listened.
Sax solo—honks/blats/wails—I poured a shot, downed it.
Hot—I thought of Meg—juicehead parents scared us both away from liquor. Match flare: Tommy Kafesjian at ringside. Three shots quick—my breath timed itself to the music. Crescendos, no break, a ballad.
Pure beautiful: sax, piano, bass. Whispers: “Champ Dineen,” “The Champ, that’s his.” Tommy’s broken record: Sooo Slow Moods.
One more shot—bass notes—skipped heartbeats. Glenda, Meg, Lucille—some booze reflex warmed their faces.
Exit-door light—Tommy K. walking out. Validate this slumming, pure cop instincts:
Peeper/prowler/B&E man—all one man. Jazz fiend/voyeur—the noise fed the watching.
Noise/music—go, follow it—
Hot-sheet row—motels pressed tight—one long block. Stucco dives—bright colors—an alley behind them.
Ladder roof access: I parked, climbed, looked.
Vertigo—noise/music and liquor still had me. Slippery, careful, a perch—pure balls made me choose a high signpost. A breeze, a view: windows.
A few showing light: fuck flop rooms—bare walls—nothing else. I shivered out the booze-the music hit harder.
Lights on and off. Bare walls—no way to see faces, easy to imagine:
Glenda killing that pimp.
Glenda naked—Meg’s body.
Chills—I got the car, cranked the heater, drove—
Meg’s—dawn—no lights on. Hollywood—Glenda’s place dark. Back to my place—a letter from Sam G. in the mailbox.
USC season tickets. A P.S.: “Thanks for proving jungle bunnies can fly.”
Noise/music—I smashed the mailbox two-handed.
L.A. Times, 11/4/58:
A down to the wire run was expected in the race for Fifth District City Councilman; today’s election vote should have been nip and tuck. But while state, municipal, and judicial candidates nervously awaited poll news, incumbent Republican Councilman Thomas Bethune relaxed with his family at his Hancock Park home.
Up until last week, Bethune was hotly challenged by Morton Diskant, his liberal Democratic opponent. Diskant, stressing his credentials as a civil liberties lawyer, sought to portray Bethune as a pawn of the Los Angeles political establishment, his chief focus the Chavez Ravine issue. The Fifth Councilmanic District, which has a 25% Negro population, became a litmus test: how would voters respond when an entire campaign revolved around whether or not to relocate impoverished Latin Americans in an attempt to create space for a Los Angeles Dodgers ballpark?
Diskant pressed that issue, along with what he called “collateral matters”: the allegedly overzealous enforcement measures of the Los Angeles Police Department and the “Gas Chamber Happy” Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office. More than a litmus test, the Fifth District race was crucial to the passage of the Chavez Ravine bond issue: a Council straw vote showed that body currently standing 5 to 4 in favor, with all other Republican and Democratic candidates vying for Council seats also voicing their approval of the measure. Thus, only Diskant’s election could force a City Council deadlock and legally postpone the wedding of Chavez Ravine and the Dodgers for some time.
But it was not to be. Last week, Diskant dropped out of the race, just as straw polls began to show him pulling ahead of his incumbent opponent. The Chavez Ravine Council vote will remain 5 to 4 in favor, and the bond issue is expected to be voted into law in midNovember. Diskant cited “personal reasons” as his motive for withdrawing; he did not elaborate further. Speculation in political circles has raged, and U.S. Attorney Welles Noonan, Chief Federal Prosecutor for the greater Southern California District, voiced this opinion to Times reporter Jerry Abrams: “I won’t name names, and frankly I can’t name names. But Diskant’s withdrawal smacks of some sort of coercion. And I’ll go on the record as a Democrat and a determined crimefighter with credentials including work for the McClellan Senate Rackets Committee: you can be both a moderate liberal and a foe of crime, as my good friend Senator John Kennedy proved by his work for the Committee.”
Noonan declined to answer questions on his own political ambitions, and Morton Diskant could not be reached to voice his response. Councilman Bethune told the Times: “I hated to win this way, because I relish a good fight. Get those hot dogs and peanuts ready, (Dodger organization president) Walter O’Malley, because I’m putting in for season tickets. Play ball!”
L.A. Mirror, 11/5/58:
It was no surprise: Robert “Call Me Bob” Gallaudet, 38, a former LAPD and DA’s Bureau officer who went to USC Law School nights, was elected Los Angeles District Attorney yesterday, topping a six man field with 59% of the total votes cast.
His election marks a fast rising career streaked with good luck, chiefly the resignation of former DA Ellis Loew last April. Gallaudet, then Loew’s favored prosecutor, was appointed interim DA by the City Council, largely, it was believed, because of his friendship with LAPD Chief of Detectives Edmund Exley. A Republican, Gallaudet is expected to run for State Attorney General in 1960. He is a staunch law and order advocate, and a frequent target of death penalty repeal groups, who consider him overzealous in his recommendations of capital punishment.
A recent barb was thrown at the new District Attorney from another angle. Welles Noonan, U.S. Attorney for the Southern California Federal District and often spoken of as Gallaudet’s likely opponent in the Attorney General’s race, told the Mirror: “DA Gallaudet’s support of the District Gambling Bill currently stalled in the California State Legislature stands out as a startling contradiction to this man’s supposedly bedrock anti-crime philosophy. That bill (i.e.—proposed legitimate gambling zones confined to certain areas surveilled by local police agencies, where cards, slot machines, off track betting and other games of chance will be legal, but heavily surtaxed for State revenue purposes) is a moral outrage that condones compulsive gambling under the guise of political good. It will become a magnet for organized crime, and I exhort DA Gallaudet to retract his support of the measure.”
At a press conference to announce his upcoming victory gala at the Ambassador Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove two nights from now, Gallaudet pooh-poohed his critics, chiefly U.S. Attorney Noonan. “Look, he’s running against me for A.G. already, and I just got elected to this job. On my political future: no comment. My comment on my election as Los Angeles District Attorney: watch out, criminals. And take heart, Angelenos: I’m here to make this city a peaceful, safe haven for all its law-abiding citizens.”