Writers, cops and red meat

James Ellroy’s untied bow tie lay lifeless around his neck. As he approached film-critic-turned-novelist Helen Knode, the firmly set features of Los Angeles’ most morbid son dissolved into the solicitous look of a husband. “It’s past my bedtime,” he told his wife, running a hand over his bald pate.

It was 11 o’clock on a Thursday night and new people were still wading into the Pacific Dining Car, a decades-old joint crouched on 6th Street in the shadow of the L.A. skyline. It was here, in this temple of red meat and martinis, that Knode and Ellroy first met in 1990. “We met in this booth,” Ellroy said, pointing to the red leatherette seats, dimly lighted by a tiny lamp. At the time, Ellroy was being interviewed by Rolling Stone, and Knode came along with the reporter. “We got married in the other room,” he said.

On this night, the place was elbow-to-elbow with the characters who inform the couple’s novels: homicide detectives (Rick Jackson and Bill Stoner) and private eyes (Don Crutchfield and his wife, Theral), a district attorney (Steve Cooley), novelists (Bruce Wagner), film critics and actors who play cops (Bruce Willis, who recently bought the rights to Ellroy’s 1995 novel “American Tabloid” and its 2001 sequel “The Cold Six Thousand” and plans to create an HBO miniseries from them).

Everyone had gathered to celebrate the debut of Knode’s first novel, “The Ticket Out,” which she described as “a riotous homicide investigation starring a disenchanted film critic like myself.” To Curtis Hanson, who directed the film adaptation of Ellroy’s 1990 novel “L.A. Confidential,” she quipped: “Anyone who asks how much James contributed can.... “ Judging from her choice of words, Knode has a swagger to match her husband’s.

As she spoke, a waiter pushed by carrying an enormous platter of bite-size pieces of New York strip.

The law-enforcement types arrived early, presumably off duty, flush with banter about the arrest of Gerald F. Mason, taken into custody at his South Carolina home in connection with the 1957 killing of two El Segundo police officers after allegedly raping and robbing couples at a lovers lane. “If I was his attorney, I’d say try to get bail and fight it all the way,” said a lawyer. “I like the knock of fate on the door,” Ellroy said later of the arrest. Across the small room, party planner Bryan Rabin put an arm around an old friend, Pat Loud, matriarch of PBS’ “American Family.” (Rabin is the guest-list guru responsible for the evening’s more incongruous appearances, such as sisters Moon and Diva Zappa and Razor magazine sex columnist Anka Radakovich).

As the two reminisced about Rabin’s mentor and Loud’s late son, Lance Loud, Steve Horovitz explained his connection to the scene. He and Ellroy attended John Burroughs Junior High School. “We were in our seventh-grade English class,” he said, referencing the murder of Ellroy’s mother made famous in his 1996 memoir, “My Dark Places.” “One of the other classmates’ mothers was the woman who called it in.”

In a booth in the other room, Wagner grabbed a reporter’s notebook and jotted down his own description of the scene: “A funky, chic mix of hard-core cops and soft-core scenesters, i.e. a typical, late evening @ the legendary P.D.C.”

“So this is where you write,” said David Duchovny (who has a master’s in English literature from Yale) as he squeezed into the booth beside Wagner. Buck Henry, sporty in a cardigan and ball cap, scooted in beside him, saying of Ellroy: “I give him most of his ideas.”