Read Online Suicide Hill by James Ellroy - Free Book Online Page A

‘outcall,’ just ‘Silver Foxes.’”
    â€œWhat’s the address?”
    â€œGardner, just off the Strip. Lavender building, you can’t miss it. But they only send chicks out on referrals, you know, it’s real exclusive.”
    â€œPhone number?”
    The girl hesitated. Rice dug in his pocket for more money, then handed it to her. “Tell me, goddammit.”
    She grabbed the door handle. “You won’t tell where you got it?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œ658-4371.” The girl darted out of the car. Rice watched her counting her money as she walked back to the Strip.
    It took him less than ten minutes to find the lavender apartment building. It stood just south of Sunset in the glow of a streetlamp, a plain Spanish-style four-flat with no lights burning.
    Rice parked and walked across the lawn to the cement porch. Four doors were recessed in the entranceway, illuminated only by mailbox lights. He squinted and saw that three of the apartments belonged to individuals, while the last box was embossed with a raised metal insignia of a fox in a mink coat winking seductively. There was a buzzer beneath the words “Silver Foxes.” Rice pressed it three times and heard its echo. No lights went on and no sounds of movement answered the buzzing. He reached into the mailbox and found it empty, then stood back on the lawn so he could eyeball the whole building. Still nothing but darkness and silence.
    Rice drove to a pay phone and dialed 658-4371. A recorded woman’s voice answered: “Hi, this is Silver Foxes, foxes of every persuasion for every occasion. If you’re already registered with us, leave your code number and let us know what you want; we’ll get back to you soon. If you’re a new friend, let us know who you know, and give us their code numbers and your phone number. We’ll get in touch soon.”
    There was an interval of soft disco music, then a beep. Rice slammed down the receiver and drove back to outcall row.
    Only the dregs of the hookers were still out, garishly made-up junkies who stepped into the street and lifted their skirts as cars passed by. Rice sat at a table inside the All-American Burger and drank coffee while he scanned women on both sides of Sunset. Every face he glimpsed looked ravaged; every body bloated or emaciated. Toward dawn, the neon lights on the outcall offices and massage parlors started going off. When street-sweeping machines pushed the few remaining hookers back onto the sidewalk, he took it as his cue to leave and check out business.
    Rice drove across Laurel Canyon, coming down into the Valley just as full daylight hit. When he reached Ventura Boulevard, he recalled verbatim the facts he’d heard through the ventilator shaft: “Kling and Valley View, pink apartment house”; “Christine something, Studio City, house on the corner of Hildebrand and Gage.” Truth, half-truth or bullshit?
    At Hildebrand and Gage he got his first validation. The mailbox of the northeast corner house was tagged with the name “Christine Confrey.” That fact gave him a feeling of destiny that built up harder and harder as he drove west to Encino. When he got to Kling and Valley View and saw a faded pink apartment house on the corner, with an out-of-place Cadillac parked in front, the feeling exploded. Rice kept it at a low roar by calculating odds: five to one that the info was correct, making the heists possible.
    Checking the mailboxes of the six-unit building, he saw that only one single woman lived there—Sally Issler in #2. He found a door designated 2 on the ground-floor street side, with a high hedge fronting the apartment’s large picture window. Rice squatted behind the hedge, waiting for the owner of the Caddy to cut the odds down to zero.
    He waited an hour and a half before a door opened and two voices, one male, one female, gave him pay dirt:
    â€œMy wife gets back tomorrow. No