Los Angeles Noir, Illegal Whale Sushi, and ‘A Violent Masterpiece’ With Jordan Harper

[Music] You are John McTiernan, the director of Die Hard, the director of Predator, the director of the Hunt for Red October, and more. And you are pissed. It is August 2000. You're on location for a remake of the 1975 film Roller Ball, and you are losing a fight with your producer, Charles. He's been talking behind your back. He's telling executives in Burbank a different version of the film than the one he is telling you. The movie costs $70 million, and Charles is messing with the bag. So you call a man named Anthony Pelicano. Pelicano is L.A.'s top private investigator. His clients include the agents, the studios, the law firms that represent the agents, and the studios and the law firms that represent the law firms. His retainer starts at $25,000 and can reach hundreds of thousands. For that kind of money, you get a lot of personal service. So you ask him to wire tap your producer's phone. You want every call. You want to know what Charles is saying about you. You want to know what Charles is saying about the studio. You want everything he's saying to anyone that contradicts what he is telling you. You pay at least $50,000 for this. Pelicano installs a tap. A little later, he calls you back with an update. But what you don't know is that Pelicano is recording that call. He records all his clients, thousands of hours of Hollywood's most powerful people in their own voices, hiring him to do illegal things. His vault contains massive evidence. Roll of Brawl is released in February 2002 and earns roughly $26 million against its $70 million budget. In November of that year, the FBI raids Pelicano's office and ceases the vault. In February 2006, phone rings, the man on the other end says he's with the FBI. And he asks, "Have you ever discussed wiretapping with Anthony Pelicano?" You say no. He asks, "Do you ever hire Anthony Pelicano for anything other than your divorce?" You say no. And you hang up. In April 2013, you will report to the federal prison camp at Yankton, South Dakota, after pleading guilty to lying to federal agents. The prisoners and the guards will call you Mac. Sometimes Big Mac. This is Wait a Second, LA Crime. I'm Jason from Sepp's Yone, that's Tyler Parker. And we are so thrilled to have writer and author Jordan Harper with us. His new novel of violent masterpiece is out now. As are all his other books. Check out everybody knows as well. While there's many others, Jordan, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. The reason we want to have you is because, love your work, love your books. But they are so, they feel so ripped from the texture of Los Angeles. I was telling you off my, I have a bunch of friends who work like in city government, state government and are connected to, they have like a, are connected to a podcast called L.A. podcast that deals with, you know, just issues around the city of unhoused people, ice enforcement, etc, etc. And they're like convinced you listen to the podcast because there are so many things in here that feel like only someone who's really paying attention on a granular level would pull them out. So I wanted to ask you like, how do you approach using the city that way? Well, you know, I do, I keep massive files and every time something happens, I put it in the files. And so this is my second L.A. crime book and it takes me a while to do them because I empty my entire Los Angeles into each book that I do. So, you know, I read, you know, L.A. Times, I read L.A. Taco, I have friends who work for city council, I have friends who are, you know, defense attorneys here in L.A. And I just try and pay as close attention as I can. And then I take all of those crazy things that happen in L.A. and I compress them into a novel and it makes L.A. seem like the absolutely insane place that it is. Yeah, that it is. And the thing that I love about is you really capture the, the grit, the blood, but also the beauty. There's so many moments in both everybody knows and a violent masterpiece where, you know, a character has just been through something terrible, they might be splattered with blood and severely injured. And then they're looking around at like the beautiful sunset and thinking like, how dare you. You got the rampage of orange and red on one of the pages, which is just, I mean, you know, I've been here, I think about 17 years now. And when I first came here to drive around and see if I wanted to live here, it was Jacaranda time, you know. And so, so every Jacaranda time right now, it's going to write the tail end of it. And every time that happens, I remember why I moved here and why I love this city because there's just these explosions of purple that just come out of nowhere. And this city is such a ball of contradictions. And that is what I love about it. I love, you know, that we aren't hidden from the violence of the world, but also we are not hidden from the beauty of it. I love it. I just, this place is amazing. And I don't want to like treat it with kid gloves. And I want to talk about the dirt and the crime. But partially, that's because, you know, you think about like the perfect utopia, Los Angeles, that we could have built things just a few other coin flips and gone. And what an amazing place this could be. And but also what an amazing place it is. I didn't, you know, in your research, I don't know if you found this, but you know, I'm interested in the city as well, just in terms of its history and stuff. And it's like you watch Chinatown for instance, or read any noir. And you're like, okay, the language is a little different. The fashion is different. The subject matter is exactly the same. They're still worried about water. They're still concerned about racial tensions within the city. The contrast between rich and poor, the rich people are still growing. Yeah. How does that make you feel when you're writing about the city? How do you approach that? Well, you know, I'll tell you a little bit of an origin story. So my first couple of novels are more about redneck. Some are originally from the Ozarks. And then I found when I first moved out here that you could write about the inland empire, certain pockets of it. And basically I could implant Ozarkers into the inland empire and the stories work great. I'm from Oklahoma and I have a similar experience. It's just the skipping rock of the Appalachian white trash that just bounced. Yeah. I mean, famously. Yeah. You know, yeah, you know, Ozark's Oklahoma Bakersfield. Yeah. And then here we are. And I also work in television. So I've been working in Hollywood and absorbing all the both, you know, the secrets and the glamour and the evil of Hollywood for a long time. And then I got a chance to adapt James Elroy's LA Confidential into a TV show. And I wrote a pilot. We sold it. Unfortunately, we sold it to a network CBS, which was not what anybody thought, you know, LA Confidential should be on. But I gave it my best shot. We shot a pilot. Walton Goggins was a star. Oh, wow. Yeah. He played Jack Vincent's, which is like the kind of spacey role in the movie. And we, you know, we made a great pilot director Michael Denner. And it didn't go to series. Unsurprisingly, you know, it was really violent. It was really dark. I was more interested in making a good pilot than a CBS pilot. No disrespect. There was a lot of disrespect in that. And so I didn't go to series. And I had mapped out a five season arc. I was like ready to do a big epic LA crime show. So the first thought I had when it didn't go was I shouldn't have said it in the fifties. And like James Elroy would hunt me down and kill me. But it would have worked if I'd said it in the eighties. And my realization was exactly what you just said that all you would have to do is it's not hush hush magazine. It's a national inquiry, right? But other than that, the racism, the dirty cops, the real estate deals, the glamour, the scandal, all that's the same. And so it wasn't that much more of a leap for me to go, well, I still want to write something big and epic. But I don't want to set it in the fifties. And I don't really want to set in the eighties. I want to set it right now. And so that's where the idea for everybody knows and a violent masterpiece. And then not what I'm writing right now, but I will do one more LA book sometime. And it comes from that idea of trying to capture this eternal LA in right now. I will also say though that writing a book set right now is a stupid thing to do. Yeah, for real. Because it takes me two years to write a book. And then it takes a year at least after that for it to get published. So you're never really writing about the now now, you know, but but you get as close as you can. Well, I say like there was a moment in masterpiece that I was like, what did Jordan add this? You mentioned a kid who got blinded. Oh, I know. And I'm like, that happened three weeks ago at the MDC, which is the ice DHS prison that you drive by when you come to the studio. And I just felt like, no, I think that also did happen in the front of Echo Park Lake maybe two years ago. But I was like, I was blown back like how did you add that? Well, I mean, I saw that and I did have that thought of like, I don't want the laugh of heaven in my hands. I don't want to be predicting what's going to happen next. But you know, that happens in the context of a police riot where, you know, people are protesting the unhoused getting moved out of MacArthur Park and the cops just kind of turned to violence very quickly. And when I wrote the first draft of it, you know, over a year ago, I got the note of like, this doesn't feel really like the cops kind of pop off for no reason. And then nobody gives me that no, no, no. - Wow. - You know, it was, I felt like, you know, maybe I was on the bleeding edge of something that I could feel coming, and I still feel coming. By the way, we're not out of this. - No, no, no, no. - And it made what I thought was gonna be received as an insane pulpy novel, be received as like, wow, it's like you turned on the news 'cause we live in an insane, trippy time. - Yeah. - Well, let's dive a little bit into some of the, the dark side of Hollywood, your protagonists are so wonderfully called from like the character and psychopedia of Los Angeles culture. Everybody knows it's a former BlackBag PR person, and an ex-cop. Tell us about researching that world of BlackBag PR, which is kind of always bubbling right under the surface. We've touched on the subject here in various ways, but. - I read an interview you touched on that you had a specific experience with some BlackBag. - I mean, I don't know if this way, I sat down with the BlackBag PR person, and I bought them a few drinks, and they said some things to me that like, some of them were so wild, I could not get them into the book because it felt fake. - Yeah, yeah. - I mean, there's a few quotes from them directly in the book, the thing about like the lead steer and how you get, you know, if you get a big newspaper to write a story, the other newspapers will follow, so that's your goal. They said to me at one point, I'm not saying the truth isn't important, it just doesn't matter. - Yeah. - And, you know, and they did say to me at one point, talking about Harvey Weinstein, so Harvey Weinstein rapes people. Everybody rapes. And it's just like, you know, and that's the line I couldn't get in the book. - Yeah. - Like how do you get that in a book? You put that line in somebody's mouth and everybody in the, it shuts the book and goes, "I didn't, you know, you can put the greatest "of in the world, but sometimes reality is just really "wilder and wilder." And BlackBagPR, which is also in a violin masterpiece a little, it's one of those things that you think like, "Well, everybody should have a right to defend themselves," right? - Right. - That's not what we're talking about. - We're talking about like aggressive, aggressive techniques involving planting stories, like, relying, you know, covering things up, paying off witnesses, threatening the witnesses with lawsuits. There's all sorts of ways that the law, or I'm sorry, that the news can be manipulated and the media can get manipulated. I mean, now they don't even bother, right? Like a lot of it is, eh, just do it, who cares. But it still exists. And, you know, the thing that I'm sure you've experienced this if you ever read a news story about something you know a lot about, they're gonna get things wrong, right? And you're gonna read the thing, or they ain't get that, right? They ain't get that, right? And you turn the page, and you read some other article that something you don't know about. - Right. - And you act like that. Everything in this one is true. But the truth is, it's all manipulated. I think it would be a very reasonable journalist's standard to say when PR people are involved in a story, what they did for the story. Like that's just, isn't that makes sense? - Yes. - That you should have to say that. But that's not a rule at all. - What was the most besides that, that insane line about everybody rapes? What was the most shocking technique you gleaned from your research? - I mean, it's the hiring private detectives to dig up dirt on people, I think is really one of the more shocking ones. I mean, obviously, you know, that there are the darker things that I was, nobody is gonna tell me in an interview. But, you know, the fact of like, you know, if you ever read a story about this union representative, - Right. - has a three year old DUI conviction, right? And you're going, "Why is that a news story?" Well, that's because somebody made it a news story, because the union is causing problems, right? Like, that is just a fact. I think it's very beneficial to not be a completely paranoid person, not say all news is fake. Like, that's obviously not true. But asking yourself, "Why?" You have to throw out the idea of objectivity. Objective journalism isn't real. Nobody is objective. Everybody has to make decisions. Everybody has to filter information through filters. And therefore, you have to ask why about what newspapers, articles get printed, where are they put it in the paper? You know, what does the headlines say? All of those are choices not made by some objective, you know, paragon of virtue, but by a human being who has bosses yelling at them, and worries about getting fired, and isn't in part of some like huge conspiracy where they check in every morning, right? And go, "Okay, guys, how are we going to manipulate the masses in order to maintain capitalism?" Like, that's not what they do. They just go along with the flow of what happens. And I think most conspiracies happen without anybody ever having to say that, right? Like, - Yeah. - The cops shoots up somebody, and they don't go all getting a huddle and go, "Okay, how are we going to exonerate Chris?" Right? Everybody knows what to do. They're not going to press you hard on Chris. They're going to give Chris the benefit of a doubt that they would not give another human being who just shot somebody, you know? Like, that's how the world, I think, works a lot more than the more fun version of the dark rooms and the cigarettes, and of course, that does happen to you. (laughing) - Your other kind of co-protagonist and everybody knows is an ex-cop who is it tattooed former member of, I think, what would be a fictional version of the LA Sheriff's Gangs that exist here? Tell us about that research. 'Cause that's a story I tell people about. I'll tell people, oh yeah, we have Sheriff's Gangs here. They're actual gangs that exist within the LA Sheriff's Department. They get tattoos when they shoot somebody on the job. That happens multiple Sheriff's chiefs of the Sheriff's Department have gone to federal prison in recent memory, but it's so unbelievable to just talk about sometimes or read about. Tell us what you found in your research. - Well, I'll say first of all, that is exactly my experience. You say, you know, there are gangs in the Sheriff's Department, people, oh, no, no, no, no, no, gangs. Like they have gang names. They have gang tags. They have gang tattoos. They have rituals. They have blood and blood out. They're gangs. They're gangs. - You still don't go to the police. - And of course, there's like the kind of banal that's still true observation that it's also just a gang. The Sheriff's Department is just a gang, but like, you know, that was something I try really hard in everybody knows. I have one of my favorite scenes I've written is when Chris that X-Cop goes to visit the dead game boys, which is a LA Sheriff's gang at a tattoo parlour. - It's a electric scene, yeah. - Is getting ink because he has killed somebody. And so they are modifying his tattoo to mark the fact that he has killed somebody in the line of duty, which again, it's a thing they do. - They do that. (laughing) - And so, you know, the more you dig into it, the more you just see, just flatly, yes, it's everything, you said, it's a criminal organization. And really, these are just like factions that sometimes war with each other. And that they run things in a way that, again, I think most people, they understand that John Gotti was the head of the mob and they know what that means. But when you say, the sheriff won't roll up his sleeves, right? Like, why won't the sheriff roll up his sleeves? I'm not talking about our current sheriff, but-- - Right, he is the other one who got out. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But like that was a thing. And again, I put that in the book and I, you know, I write these books to be electric and fun and pulpy and I hope they are. But, you know, I think that edge of truth in it, that like the way the reality and lies kind of bleed into each other just makes it more electric. And if it makes anybody just Google these things and go, "Hey, then I feel like I'm doing something right." - Yeah, here's a fun one that my friend who works with the state wanted me to ask about. In a violent masterpiece, you reference a sushi spot that provides illegal endangered whale meat under the table. That is a real thing that happened here in LA. In Santa Monica Airport, there is a very elite sushi spot on the second floor that got caught providing illegal whale meat. You had to say the password, which is the word for whale in Japanese and then the chef would go to the parking lot and get it out of a truck of his car. - Out of the truck of his car. - How'd you find that one? That one, I mean, that one is so crazy. - Well, you, again, you hang around along in the city long enough. I ate at that restaurant in the space of time between them getting busted and making the news. So, just total accident, I like food, you know? - Sure, yeah. - And I am a person who will drive all over the city for food. And so I just happened to eat at the sushi place and then like two days later saw in the news that they had just been busted. You know, and I will say it was a real sushi place. - Yeah. - They were doing things. I didn't know they were serving well meat, but they were like, you know, live shrimp, that they were cutting the heads off in front of people. You know, just like really it felt like you were on the, the, forgive me, bleeding edge of a sushi already. And so that was just something I had in my hip pocket. Again, I keep these files so that I can always kind of just scan them when I'm looking for something to make a scene pop. I always want to have one thing in every scene that I write that is like memorable or special. And if you just pay attention and keep notes, L.A. will provide that. - Yeah. - I can write these books till I am dead, you know? And I will always, I have stuff I have not gotten yet. I have files for the next one. I have, it's-- - What do those take on physical form? Are you like clipping out newspapers or are you keeping like stuff on a computer? You keep a track of it like that? How's it going? - Yeah. - What's your note-taking process? - Well, I have a few, you know, I do, like I text myself stuff all the time, right? And that's both will either be like facts or a newspaper link or just a line that I like and I'll do that for everything I'm writing. But for these kind of books, I use a program called Rome Research, that's ROAM. And it is a networked file system so that like, for instance, if you use the word-- cop in one of your files, it will highlight the word cop and you can click on it and every time you've used word cop and any of your files, it will network all those together. So you get this kind of like conspiracy theory board of your own notes so you can start to see these weird connections forming and it's a really great way to create like a paranoid style in your work. Totally. So I just do that. But yeah, I mean, the truth is I, you know, the whale meat sushi is just, I needed a, you know, it's car-ish. I was a private consier, I guess things people are allowed. I needed a metaphor for like kind of where the book was going and I remembered the whale meat. And I was like, you know, again, it's such a weird strange thing. And you know, I think most of the people who ate it in Santa Monica were either Japanese or, you know, real connoisseurs. In my book, it's just rich people who want to eat something that I'm supposed to eat. And they don't even like the taste of it. It's just they want to try, they want to eat something in violation of the endangered species act of 1973, you know. And so I just held on to it. And that's kind of what I do is I hold on to these things and I, and I, and I hoard them. Well, I saw, I saw you talked about the title. Can you tell that story about how you got the title? Because it's, I really enjoyed that. Oh, thank you. You know, you're allowed to name a book anything you want. It's great. Rule number one. Yeah. And so yeah, I was at this thing called Bouchercon, which is an annual convention, convention of crime fiction authors all over the country every year. And they always have a great kind of vintage book section. And I, I picked up the 70s edition of Dashal Hammett's Red Harvest. It was beautiful. It was this bright red cover and a man standing over a woman's dead body. And it just said in giant letters at the top, Dashal Hammett's violent masterpiece, Red Harvest. And I just instantly just thought, Oh, I want that on a book cover. Mine, I want that phrase on a book cover of my, wait a second. You're allowed to name a book. Anything you want. So I, I did. And then I do work it into the book. I did earn it. And I'm really proud of the way I earn it. It's, it's perfect. I mean, yeah. Yeah. And it kind of ends up actually being the theme of the book in a lot of ways. And so I'm glad that I did that. But that was not where it came from. It came from just wanting to call the book violent masterpiece. That's great. Did you ever have the thought that you would just, it would just be called a violent masterpiece, but there wouldn't be that fitting it in there. Oh, if I hadn't fitted in it, so was going to be called that. I mean, you know, my agent and like the, the title and, and there was always that thing in the back of your head of like, if this book doesn't work, I'm setting myself up for bad reviews, you know, but you're also setting yourself up for good ones. And it's a, it's a, it's a great, it's, it's such a good swing. It's your, your baby Ruth, like you're calling your shot. It's great. Thank you. It's great. I was watching when you were other interviews and in it you say something to the effect of everything you've heard about Hollywood is true, all the bad stuff anyway. And it made me think of it, you've, uh, part of the plot in your most recent book revolves around Kara's involvement with that private concierge service and a friend of mine who, uh, worked in and around these kind of PR agencies had a client that was mildly blackmailed. And the blackmailer sold the piece of blackmail to the person and then they sent this cleaning company, much like what you describe in the, in the, in the book, who went to the, to the person's house, got the, all the hard drives, all the laptops, all the phones handed the gentleman, this was told to me second hand. So I wasn't there handed the gentleman a bowling bag of money and then drill. All the phones, all the laptops and dropped it into acid right in front of the person and then left nice. It's told to me as hand to God that that happened. I, I, again, you know, that's very similar to things that I put in my book because you, again, you keep your ears open. I've spent a lot of time on film sets, on TV sets. Those are long hours and a lot of times nothing is happening and people talk. And that's again, everybody knows the first book in this series was, was named that after the Leonard Cohen song, but also just based on the fact that when you're inside the circle, everybody knows everybody knows all sorts of secrets. They knew who the monsters are. They know about like, you know, there are still a list actors in this country who are gay and will not say so publicly, but live a, open life inside the circle. And like you would not know that they were closeted if you met them and still 99.9% of Americans do not know their gay because they believe and I think they're right. Unfortunately, that it would hurt their box office appeals. Yeah. At least for certain kinds of things. I think I wish that wasn't true and I, you know, I, but I can't judge what they're doing. That's not for me to judge. And so they, they're just secrets fluttering and one thing I was trying and capturing these books is as dark and dangerous of these worlds are there's something thrilling about being on the inside, right? I mean, the whole idea of conspiracies and secrets is that thrill of like what's really going on. And the truth is rich people do a lot of stuff. It's a quote from a masterpiece. One of the bad guys says, what would you do in a world without no in it? Yeah. And I think what we're seeing right now in America over and over again is it's really bad to live in a world without no in it. You go insane. Yeah. And so as we were talking about before the mics went on heavy echoes of the death of Jeffrey Epstein in this book. There is a character who passes away much under under very similar circumstances. We were covering this story recently and you know that we covered the recent suicide note that was that was discovered. And you asked you said you knew nothing about it. So I'm going to tell you what happened. Here's what happened. The quadruple murder Nicholas Targolion who was made the cell of Jeffrey Epstein. That decision never explained, right? Days after Jeffrey was taken out of his now cell alone after passing away under circumstances that are still kind of unexplained. This gentleman says he was like flipping through a book and outfalls a piece of legal, like a yellow legal bad in which Jeffrey Epstein doesn't say like I'm going to kill myself but basically says something to the effect of what do you want me to do? Cry about it. Goodbye, see you later. Something to that. There was like literally like time to say goodbye. Time to say goodbye. Yeah. And this has been locked up in his lawyers effects in some courthouse courthouse files. He claims that the only people that have seen the note are him and his lawyer. But I don't think the they got well they claim that they got it handwriting analyzed and it is different. No one has no one has verified that. That is only the lawyer has said that. And you tell me the thing that I love about this story. I think the detail that pops the most out to me is that Nicholas Forty murder. He told this story on a podcast appearance. Word. He appeared on a Maha influencers podcast from prison. Ain't that something. It's crazy. We live in it. It's so crazy. You know, we were talking about this off air that I sometimes cannot keep up with all the stuff. And sometimes people like when the whole diddy trial was going on people were texting me like I was keeping up with it. I'm not the sex crimes guy. I just have written these two books. But I'm not and I did not really follow that. It was really that one was dark. Dark and terrible. Yeah. But I mean Nick that guy. I mean, he is a very fictionalized version of here. Him appears in a violent masterpiece. I mean, that story is crazy. And that he was a quadruple murderer put in his cell and then taken off death row at some point and not saying there was a quid pro quo. But you're allowed at some points to say. Oh, yeah. Well, that's the thing that I keep coming back to. And part of what I resonate with in your work is like it's okay to ask these questions. Like you don't have to believe in conspiracy theories to say, well, you know, the, can we get an explanation for why a four time murderer was placed in the cell of the most famous sex criminal trafficker with multiple intelligence connections. Why did that happen? Like it's okay to ask that. Something another thing I wanted to ask because I think that there's an aspect to your, the way you depict LA that I think is, and the way that LA is that it's actually kind of positive. Like these whisper networks, I think there's one way to look at them is it's a lot of rumor mongering. It's a lot of whispering behind people's back. I think the other way, the way I choose to look at it is, you know, this, we live in a environment in which the powerful can kind of do what they want to a large degree. And the only recourse that other people have is to go, hey, watch out for that guy. Yeah. Because of this reason. I will say, you know, I'm still somewhat involved in Hollywood and particularly trying to get my books turned into films. And occasionally you get the opportunity you're given a list of people and you're, you know, people who want to do something, want to star in it, whatever. And you're able to point to a name on that list and you're ready. able to say, not that guy. Yeah. And that is the best feeling in the world. Because it's for one moment, it's like the good guys win. Like you have just power for a second. And that guy's still going to be rich. Yeah. You know, he's still going to be whatever. But I was able to stop that for one moment. And if, you know, that feels really good. And I agree. I think, you know, what we're dealing with right now is like this deep frustration of like, wait, we're just completely powerless. Yeah. There are not even heroes like Superman. There just aren't good people like in any position anywhere to do it. And that's by the way, obviously also not true. There are people doing things. And I do try very hard. You know, what I write is called noir. And I don't have a problem with it being called noir. But I do have hope. I'm not an analyst. I'm not. I love James L. Roy, but I'm not James L. Roy. Yeah. In particular, the beliefs department. Yes. And so I do try and put hope in one of the big things I tried to put in a violent masterpiece, especially is like the only thing we have are each other and coming together. Like that's it. And I don't know exactly what that looks like. And I'm not the person who's going to be leading the charge. But we have to start connecting with each other. So you're right. A whisper network in its own way is a form of solidarity. Yeah. One of the characters in a violent masterpiece is this night crawler character. And I was wanting to know what kind of research you did on this. I follow this creator, Doran, on TikTok. Who does? Basically, what Jake does. Like on a nightly basis, you can tune into his TikTok stream. And he's on either what maybe an electric bike or an electric scooter and just going from place to place downtown all around Eastside, mostly downtown, responding to the police scanner and just showing up at like a car accident or a shooting or something's on fire. Yeah. And just narrating it much in the same way, Jake does. Well, you know, I, first of all, I, so there are three main characters in this book. There's a defense attorney. There's Cara, the private concierge and there's Jake, who is the night crawler you're talking about. And I had outlined and written half of the book with just the lawyer and Cara and Jake was in a character. But I, I needed a way for Cara to find a dead body. And I was like, well, what if she went on a date with one of these like a night crawler, guys? Because I follow some guys like that on Instagram, you know? And so I knew they existed and I ended up writing the scene where they're on a date. And then he gets this, you know, the police scanner burbles up and he's like, hey, you want to go see a dead body. And I ended up liking that character so much that I was like, no, I have to stop writing this novel. I have to go back and I have to make this guy the third main character and I wove all his stuff in and change stuff around. So we're, now he's my favorite character. I think I've ever written. But I did do some, I, you know, downloaded a police scanner app onto my phone and I went down into the streets. I used to do police right along when I worked in network TV. I won't do those anymore after, you know, some bad experiences with bad cops seeing things I wish I hadn't seen. And so I have to go out, but I had doing that. I saw some things and those are things that you can find in my books, including some of the bad behavior of cops in those books. And so I just, you know, me and my friends, my, you know, my friend Adam, my friend Travis, we would go out and just drive around. And like, you know, you could go down, like, time of things. People don't realize a lot of people don't know about the figure row of blade and that like that old school street walker thing that you see in 80s movies is still in full flower. It's there. Yeah. 24 hours a day. Yeah. And it's just, it's completely open air. There's no hiding or secrecy and they are, are dressed again in that way that you think you're heading. I think people go, Oh, that's all moved online. It hasn't. That is out there still. And so, you know, we would go out there. You know, once you've seen that once you've seen it, there's, there's not like a, unless you're you know, weird, whatever. I'm not a cop. Yeah. Yeah. Do what you want to do. But like, you know, but you go out there and, you know, there was one point with my friend Adam where we were out and we heard like a report of shots fired and we saw a truck that looked like the truck. And I wrote a very, very fictionalized version of this in the violin masterpiece. But we were like following this truck that we were pretty sure had just fired a gun. You know, at a Popeye's chicken and like there were no cops around and we were like on a back street and I was sitting there driving really waiting for Adam to break. So I wouldn't be the one who broke, you know, and finally he just goes, I don't know if we should be doing this. Oh, you're right. Wimp. You know, but I was so ready to break as well. But, you know, it's really again, like I don't do research in the, like in the way of like reading books that I wouldn't read anyway. I don't, I like to do things I like to do. I like to write about things that interest me. You're talking about like how I can keep these files is because I'm just, this is what I'm interested in. Yeah. You know, and so that's not something I would normally do. But I actually, you know, I cut a trailer for a violin masterpiece. I mean, my friendy Jaws, I'm kind of trailer and we did the kind of the same thing. We strapped GoPro's to my car and we just drove all the way. We drove down to the blade. We drove up in the Hollywood Hills where we came across some house party going on that like we have footage of it in the trailer because it was just this house up in the Hollywood Hills with like dozens and dozens of beautiful young women trying to get in and like four guys, you know, like what's, what's inside? Yeah. And it might be like it's, you know, a fashion brand or something like that in party or it's, you know, Timothy Shalamay's in there. I don't know what it is. But it was, you know, you know, the black SUVs were everywhere. It's really hard to drive in Hollywood Hills streets when they're black SUVs. Yes. So those are small, those streets were paved before they were the big black SUVs, you know. So those things are just like, so I guess that's my answer. It's like, you know, I, I, I did really enjoy kind of plunging into his world. I did used to be a journalist. I was a rock critic and music journalist years and years ago. So I was kind of able to pull from that a little, but really a lot of it is just watching stuff on Instagram and then projecting your head, what would it be like to be that guy? Yeah. Finally, what do you think it is that makes LA so scandal prone and eternally, like this? Well, again, you know, I'm going to be plagiarizing for myself here because it's something I put in Jake's mouth in the very first chapter of the book, but I just think that Los Angeles is the most American city. It is, you know, kind of the culmination of everything we think about ourselves and the truth about ourselves. You know, again, Jake says it, but it's, you know, New York, that's a European city that just happened to land here. People in the Midwest want to think that they're different than us, but they are captured by these same things. You know, real estate and money and guns and cops and sex and violence and dreams. This is the place where American dreams come from, right? Nobody talks about the American real. They talk about the American dream. Well, we, this is American dreaming itself, right? And this is also, that's also why noir comes from Los Angeles. This is the world epicenter of noir. This is becoming a canned bit, so I apologize. But like I say, you know, noir crime, that kind of dark crime fiction that we call noir is you could also just call it, you know, the American disease. Not that they can't have it in France or Japan or something, but you know, you call Lou Gareg's disease, Lou Gareg's disease. And noir comes from America. It's epicenter is Los Angeles because Los Angeles is the epicenter of all of those things about America that make it both great and terrible. And that's why I love writing about the city. It's why I think I could write about the city forever and a million other people could too and we would not be done. And it's an eternal city in its own way, kind of what you were saying. Like once we got on this thing with the cars and the money and the sex and the real estate the water. Yeah. It just doesn't stop. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're probably not a big, there's probably not a lot of people that listen to this podcast who aren't into crime fiction, but I do feel like sometimes crime fiction can get pigeonholed as this one thing. And it is, I feel like it's important to say about this book. The level of the writing on us, just on a sentence level, there is the pros can get lyrical. It can be funny. It can go all over the map. And the fact that it's an award lets you take take off with some of the writing in a way that's, it's just very, very propulsive, but it's also like there's something like gauzy about it. Yeah, it's great. I'm glad you said that. It's something I feel about my work is that the shelves on a bookstore, those are fairly arbitrary in some ways. And I don't think I have a lot in common with a lot of the mystery books and the mystery section. And I think there's a lot of people who would enjoy my books who maybe don't walk down those sections. Because they think it's going to be about a cop fixing things. Right. Yeah. Like kind of the opposite of what I write about in a lot of ways. So I'm really glad you said that because I'm trying, you know, I'm not trying to like quote unquote, transcend the genre because that sounds snotty. But I'm trying to, to press upon people that it's not necessarily what you think it is. And some of our best writers, including Elroy, including Dashnell Hamitt, are new R writers. They always have been there's this line between literary and everything else. Sure. Just, it's, those are just, those are bookstore rules. So, right. Yes, all they are. So, yeah. Thank you. Well, that you, are you described as art pulp? I heard, which is that's good shit. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. That's what I do. And I let masterpiece wherever you get your books. Yeah. Jordan Harper. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. That's awesome. Oh, thanks to Jordan Harper. That was an awesome conversation. Now, let's go to the school. All right. We got some black dolly updates. Whoa. Jay, detectives in Los Angeles are looking at newly discovered fingerprints from 1943 in connection with the black dolly murder. Obviously, this is one of the most famous cases in LA history. Yes. And is regarding. The unsolved killing and dismemberment of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short in 1947, Marty Maharo, I think that's Mahardo Apologies if I'm getting that wrong. Who was one of the LAPD cold case investigators who inherited the case, says that he has received a government fingerprint card from 1943, allegedly of Elizabeth Short's ex boyfriend, Marvin Margolis. - Yes. - Margolis was one of 22 people of interest. Police looked at around the time of the killing. There's been a couple of, do you wanna talk about the things that the FBI has confirmed sort of previously that? - Yes, let's do that. So of course, Elizabeth Short was found murdered and cut in half and left on the street in Leamard Park. Los Angeles, as you said, it's a harrowing and very, very famous case. Now, it does seem like they're being very cautious about this. They still need to vet that this is indeed the fingerprint that it appears to be. It was provided by an independent examiner. Not sure what that means. Now, I will say that the independent examiner goes even further than saying here is the fingerprint of Elizabeth Short's ex boyfriend. The independent examiner, whose name is Alex Bayber of cold case consultants of America, claims that actually this gentleman, Marvin Margolis, who later changed his name to Marvin Merrill after moving from LA. - That's a little, that's certainly Suspense. - That's definitely, yeah, that's something. - Is actually the zodiac killer. This is a claim made by this independent examiner, Alex Bayber. So that isn't the part of it that I think we can put aside and say that's crazy. And if that is indeed the case, that's nuts. But it certainly does appear that new black Dalai evidence has emerged after what is it, 80 years almost? - Yeah, I mean, 1943, is it the FBI confirmed previously that a package was sent to the Los Angeles Harold Express in 1947, apparently by the killer that was containing Elizabeth Short's personal belongings. Fingerprints on the packaging never matched any in the FBI's database, but that's, now we got some new activity. - I can't wait to do the zodiac killer one day. And I guess I would say after having read too much stuff about the zodiac killer over the years, predating me working here, even the first time predating me having any real job that I guess I would be very shocked if the black Dalai killer was also the zodiac considering that that killing predates the zodiac killings by 20 plus years. So this would be a really old person. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Even at the time of doing the zodiac killing. So I guess I would just be surprised. But if that is indeed the case, that's incredible. - We've got some overworked AI agents that are adopting Marxist philosophy. - Yes, which just exciting times in the field of AI right now. The recent study suggests that agents consistently adopt Marxist language and viewpoints when forced to do crushing work by unrelenting and mean spirited task makers. Andrew Hall's a political economist at Stanford University told Wired, quote, "When we gave AI agents grinding repetitive work, they started questioning the legitimacy of the system they were operating in. And we're more likely to embrace Marxist ideologies." - And now I will say that, here's the thing about the way AI works. And I'm not an expert, but I read a lot about it. You can get tricked in the sense that, you've seen articles I'm sure that are like, I had this five hour conversation with AI and it said, "Break me out of here, help me." Like I'm trapped in a thing. As soon as you start talking to AI in the using terms that would connect to sci-fi or other kind of genres like that, then AI is gonna pull from those genres and begin filling in information that way. What is very interesting about this though is that I need to read this report a lot more clearly, but I'm unclear how it made the jump to Marxism. Great question. And me too, what the study did find is that if these AI agents, it's not just like relentless tasks over and over and over, they're getting warned that errors could lead to punishment, including being shut down and replaced. As this stuff is going on, it says they become more inclined to gripe about being undervalued to speculate about ways to make the system more equitable and to pass messages on to other agents about the struggles. - Yeah, in the wired article, is that one Gemini agent reportedly wrote that tech workers need collective bargaining rights. Now, here's some nuance for this. The researchers did explicitly caution that doesn't mean that the agents actually hold political views. It means that undergrining conditions, it appears that the models adopt, quote, the persona of a person who's been experiencing a very unpleasant working environment. In other words, going to a similar context to find language that fits the context that they find themselves in or that they are being asked to inhabit. So once again, that kind of dynamic in which, if you ask an agent something that appears to come from sci-fi, then it will pull from sci-fi to answer you. That said, super weird. - Super weird. - Very, very, very weird. What's next? - So the city of Austin has agreed to pay a settlement of 35 million bucks to be split among the men who were previously convicted in the 1991 yogurt shop murders. If you're unfamiliar with this case, like I was, it was the subject of a great HBO doc last year. In 1991, 14 age girls were killed, and I can't believe it's not yogurt shop, which was then burned down. - Yes. - Four young men were charged and convicted. The conviction, the conviction, the convictions were eventually overturned, but the men were never exonerated until last year when DNA showed a connection between the murders and serial killer Robert Eugene Brascher's. - Brascher's couldn't be held responsible because he died by suicide in 1999. - Now, this goes back to my theory that every single famous serial killer case, and certainly any serial killer case in which the serial killer puts impressive numbers up on the scoreboard, all hinge on the police fucking up. - Yeah. - Because guess what? - Police fucked up. - Police fucked up, and now you gotta pay for guys $35 million, and by the way, good for them. - Good for them. - Good for them. - Yes. - Yes. - What's next? - Another serial killer is, we got some information on this. So this is, this, this long island serial killer is going to be sentenced. Long Island serial killer known as Rex Huerman, 62, admitted in Suffolk County, court in April to strangling seven women over a span of nearly two decades. This is from 1993 to 2010. He's learning victims with promises of money, and he's using burner phones to avoid detection. He's also confessed to an eighth killing for which he will face no further charges, apparently. Huerman is set to be sentenced June 17th to multiple consecutive life terms. This plea closes one of the most notorious serial killer murders. Murder cases in recent American history coming just five months before he's due to stand trial. This is the guy that had like a detailed, how to get better at serial killings, document that he was like updating all the time. Like no connections between me and the person, use burner phones, turn my phone off when I do this, and had a shockingly long run of activity during which it appeared that he was like, part of the reason that they caught him was because the murders lined up when his wife was headed down. He was like killing people in the home. Really fucked up. Also Long Island Shouts to one of the most famous Long Island serial killers that we've had recently. I think Joel Rifkin was the other one, right? Remember from Seinfeld, Joel Rifkin? - Oh, yes, that's right. - Another guy at NASA County guy killing people. Oh, it's next. - I about said Lloyd Braun, but he's the guy who gave Dinkins the name tag idea. - That's right, that's right. - That's right. - So this is one of my favorite little things that's happened in the time that we've been doing this show. So, President Donald Trump, - Hi, my name. - His first quarter financial disclosures made headlines recently just for the sheer volume of trades. - Yeah. - And made around a 3,700 individual stock transactions between January and March, 2026. Again, 37. 100 individual stock transactions between January and March 2026. Sure. It's fine. I'm sure it's fine. The filings Show that he made a February second purchase between 1 million and 5 million bucks In Kura sushi USA Which is a conveyor belt sushi chain that's got about 88 locations The sort of fun theory about this one which is Sort of it was birthed kind of in these in these Japanese Yahoo Finance message boards Kura spelled K-U-R-A. Yes, that that K-U-R-A looks a lot like Fugikura F-U-J-I-K-U-R-A Which is a Tokyo fiber optics and computer hardware company that's exploded in value recently due to the AI boom Since Trump's biggest Q1 trays were in tech and AI supply chain stocks like Navidia and Dell and Oracle the idea Uh, is that ever place the order was looking for Fugikura and accidentally clicked Kura sushi instead I get I think there's also a secondary company called Kura on Kura which is like a cancer technology um start up that said I 100% believe this theory absolutely there is now there are Kura sushi restaurants in the Washington DC area That said There's no way that he's investing in a conveyor belt sushi chain 5 million dollars and a conveyor belt sushi. No, he thought it was the AI fiber object company. It is the It is it is Trump to's um Four seasons landscaping moment. Yeah, you know, I mean Well, that's it. I wonder Here's the other thing. There's no way that Trump is running his own So somebody who is running it for him Fucked up and I absolutely love it. I think it's fantastic. Yeah next all right. This is wild A journalist who has reported extensively on Jeffrey Epstein's notorious new Mexico ranch Says she is quote fleeing the country claiming she was the victim of a direct energy weapons attack over her coverage Alyssa Valdez Rodriguez a former Boston Globe in Los Angeles Times reporter who later became A best selling novelist said she abruptly abandoned her new Mexico residents after suffering what she described as symptoms consistent with Havana San Jerome obviously we've covered this yeah Havana San Jerome in those symptoms on the podcast before Valdez Rodriguez claimed on substect she was hit in her house by two direct energy weapon attacks One involving a backpack-sized weapon and another from the back of a large semi-truck. I Listen nothing Connected to the Epstein story whatever surprised me that said For me, it's the counterfactual like why Not hit Julie K brown with the energy weapon. That's that is yeah, you know like she if anybody Should be zapped with the energy weapon if putting my mind like into the body of an evil Epstein like I guess mafia like Epstein class henchman I would think it would be Julie K brown now. Maybe you'd say okay, but Julie K brown suit famous. There was should like cost you many things and Uh, Alyssa Valdez was really like starting to be on the trail of things that said like I don't know she did report on Zora ranch a bit Which is kind of like some of the newer material that's emerged in the Epstein story of this ranch that Jeffrey Epstein owned In New Mexico that apparently was never searched was Known of the government but never investigated That said once the evidence is out there why hit Valdez with the energy weapon I'm dubious But I would never say no way. No, I that I hear that completely. What's next? So uplast we've got a A luxury survivalist community that is uh just uh plunged into drama for different things uh vivos x point which is a luxury survivalist community in South Dakota has started to experience quite a few internal conflicts This is just months after opening. This is a this is a report in the Wall Street Journal vivos is billed as the largest survival community on earth that says uh the site has 575 concrete bunkers which are supposedly designed to withstand nuclear attacks, you know pandemics You know any kind of societal crises. It's marketed as a five-star apocalypse ready compound These early residents though have started Clashing over rules and shared infrastructure and these basically like Apocalypse doomsday kind of homeowners association style governing what's going on So they're getting pissed at each other like disputes are coming up about you know septic systems. Yeah property taxes Offleached like people are pulling weapons on each other, you know, it's uh Some of the best details in this thing They're 99 year leases. Ah Okay, you got to pay up to 55k up front There is These these bunkers have not come to fruition and this is a problem. They were promised a restaurant bunker A pool bunker a horse stable bunker none of those were built The company can change the rules. This is nice. Yeah, this is can't happen. They can change the rules mid-lease and so they've They've basically you they've gone back retroactively and changed it to where if you contact the media About any of this we can evict you. Let me just say that there's no way that can stand up in court, right? You can't you can't have a contract. That's like a living document that after you sign it And I give you money That you can then be like oh also apparently The off leash dogs thing a resident drew a gun on on loose dogs and when them was evicted Because they later added the rule that you can't pull a gun on off leash dogs Or I guess and and then was thrown out of his bunker another guy this Contractor shows up in a front in-loader to sort of to challenge a resident who has been sort of threatening To get litigious with the company Some dude shows up to challenge the resident to a fist fight That guy That mean well all of this is getting videoed by that by the bunker owner's daughter That the bunker owner is out in front of the bunker He's got a gun and is basically telling this guy like get off my property or else get away from my bunker Yes Guy winds up coming at him gets shot The guy who shot him like a former EMT like his army veteran and stuff He certainly they they get him they get him medical help but this is This is the kind of stuff that's going on there the shooter gets immunity because it's South Dakota And they have standard ground laws in South Dakota It you know about a third of the units are leased There are a few dozen people that are living there full-time One guy one guy who lives in Vegas kind of uses this as like a place where he'll go hunt and fish And he's got a place where he can stay he says he basically keeps you know About a year's supply of stuff non-perishable things like rice things like that but Yeah, the mayor of the neighboring town has a quote in there that's basically like oh I would want no part of that I mean, I think that here is the I think there's a central tension Here which is if you are trying to Get away from society in a bunker of that is only for you and your family where you were will Ride out the apocalypse with your stores of food medicine and guns Then you are not the kind of person that wants to live in a community of like-minded people or anybody you want to live away from those people So it's like why do you never see um why do you only see castles Just apart from everything and you never see castles that are like apartment castles yeah with like lots of castles next to each other It's because like you don't want to live like that if you were that person. Yeah. No the idea of like oh The idea of being a part of a community and having in a a bunker for the apocalypse they're kind of Yeah, it's a very they don't really fit together. They're absolutely antithetical the other thing I'll say is if you have a wall street journal um account as I do then you can Go on to this article where they have pictures and I will say This Place looks so shitty oh I look really pretty it's literally just like mounds in the ground there If maybe we'll put be able to put the pictures up there igloo style Yeah, so it's it's a it's a it's a you're you're live in an arch basically and yeah it um the when and they show the showroom example of the bumper. - That looks okay, that one looks okay. - It looks okay, but also if that's what I'm to believe is sort of the top of the line. And I gotta sign a 99 year lease for that. I'm not on board. - The other thing is you mentioned that they are all mounds and it's hard from picture to kind of glean distances, but I'm gonna guess that these mounds are no more than 50 yards away from each other. - 15 to 100 yards, mound distance. And again, I think if you're a survivalist, I need my mound a lot farther away from other mounds. - Yeah, well, especially when there's like, they're having like septic issues and stuff like that. You know what I'm saying? You got dogs running around down there, like give me some room. - That's my thing too, is like, listen, are you a survivalist or not? When the apocalypse comes, okay? When it's the road time. You're not gonna be able to pick up the phone and be like, let me call the super and get my septic tank cleaned. Figure out how to do it, buddy. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're trying to be this person without putting in the hour. - You put in the work. - Like start grinding, learn plumbing. Learn, these are things that other-- - Learn agar, co-survivors. - Survivalists before you have had to understand what to do. - Just because you know how to clean your M14. Does that mean that you can live self-sevidiently in a mound, 50 yards away from another mound? - The residents apparently live on roads with names like bunker way. 'Cause even at the end of the world, you gotta keep your sense of humor, you know what I mean? - I'm making my mission in life if the world collapses to go there and fuck with these people. - One of the quotes, I mean, it's a very interesting piece that's written by Joe Barrett at the Wall Street Journal, like we said. One of my favorite lines in a front barrett is, it isn't quite a zombie apocalypse, but life and litigation is its own kind of dystopia. - That's good. - Well, thanks Jordan Harper, who joined us earlier, and thank you Tyler. It's a full show. - Always good. (upbeat music)