Perfidia

by James Ellroy

  Harry stabbed out his cigarette. “You’re a cock tease, you fucking mick ganef. Give me the dirt.”

  Dudley winked. “You shall have it. And I have a grand assortment for you today.”

  There—the ritual begins.

  Harry’s right hand leaves the desktop. Harry’s zipper scrapes. Harry’s right shoulder dips.

  Dudley said, “Rita Hayworth is playing hide the ham with a heroically hung drifter named Sailor Jack Woods. Barbara Stanwyck remains butch. She’s known as ‘Steamy Stanny’ in all the lez hot spots. Carole Lombard has been palling around with District Attorney Bill McPherson, who has been spotted dozing at official confabs pertaining to the detention of subversive Japs. DA McPherson is covertly known as ‘Darktown Bill,’ a nod to his penchant for jungle-bred trim. DA McPherson has been frequently spotted at Minnie Roberts’ Casbah, a noted coon whorehouse. Miss Lombard, a mud shark herself, accompanies him and enjoys Zulu warriors while the DA enjoys dark girls.”

  The ritual nears crescendo.

  Harry’s right arm jerks. Harry’s right shoulder spasms. Harry gasps and tissue-blots his face.

  Dudley lit a cigarette. “Ace Kwan wants to shoot smut movies. They’ll express anti-Jap sentiment, and perhaps feature Jap talent. I’d like to bring in you and Ben S. I can get you the money to cancel your debt with Ace. You’d be clean, and you’d be a grand one to assist us in this venture.”

  Harry swabbed his brow. “I’ll consider it, you mick cocksucker.”

  “Grand. And to an unrelated topic, then. Does Ruth Mildred do all your scrapes? I was thinking of an unfortunate Jap girl. Do you let Ruthie work freelance?”

  Harry shook his head. Moisture spritzed. His arteries groaned.

  “Ruth Mildred is my abortionist. She does the scrapes I tell her to, and no more. I have the exclusive medical rights to Ruth Mildred Cressmeyer, ex-M.D.”

  Dudley smiled. “A final question before I leave you to your work. Do you credit the rumor that our swell chum, der Führer, is slaughtering Jews by the millions?”

  Harry said, “I don’t give a fucking shit. He can kill all the fucking Jews he wants, as long as he doesn’t kill me.”

  4:31 p.m.

  “King Cohn must go! King Cohn must go!”

  Chants boomed outside Harry’s office. Dudley walked down Gower and scoped the Red riffraff.

  Seedy placard wavers. Kikes and coons predominant. A picket line up Gower Gulch. Cowboy extras milling by Rexall Drugs. Rightist lads geared for counterattack.

  “King Cohn must go! King Cohn must go!”

  He was parked down at DeLongpre. Doltish drudge work loomed. He was tired. The bennies wore off at dawn and dumped him in the cot room. Three hours’ sleep did not suffice.

  “King Cohn must go! King Cohn must go!”

  Dudley walked to his car and tucked in. Huey C. lived nearby. He was tied to two sets of apron strings. He stuck close to his dyke mommies.

  Drudge work. The reject file weighed in heavy. Dudley balanced sheets on his lap.

  Abbott, Adams, Allsworth, Arcineaux, Arthur. Drunks, wife beaters, all-around cretins. Atterbury, M. and Atterbury, S.—twin brothers and too-zealous Klansmen. Babcock, Bailey, Baltz. Consumptive physiques and suspect bonds with children. Beckworth—two jail jolts. Begley—a harelip. Bennett, Robert Sinclair—what’s this?

  R. S. Bennett, nickname “Scotty.” Applied in August ’41. Twenty years old then. Lied about his age. Aced the physical and written exams. Extremely high intelligence marks.

  Six five, 220. Hollywood High grad. All-city fullback and class valedictorian. All-state debater. Accepted at Yale’s divinity school. Father: the Reverend James Considine Bennett. Born: Aberdeen, Scotland, 1894. Mother: the late Mary Tierney Bennett. Liar Scotty, rejected for service. Note the principal’s cautionary aside.

  “This boy has gotten in numerous fistfights since his freshman year. He has achieved a very high scholastic and athletic standing, but he seems to overly relish his reputation as the toughest boy in the Los Angeles City School District.”

  Current address: 218 North Beachwood.

  “King Cohn must go!” The demonic chant carried.

  Dudley drove to Waring and El Centro. Huey lived in a shabby bungalow court. Slatterns sunned naked toddlers out front.

  Dudley parked and tipped his hat. They swilled sneaky pete and ignored him. He walked back to Huey’s flat.

  Knock, knock—who’s there? Dudley Smith, so fiends beware.

  He pushed the buzzer. Huey opened up. He’s nineteen, six two, 140. He’s got dandruff and cystic acne. There’s model-airplane glue congealed on his face.

  Dudley shut the door and locked them in. Huey mumbled something. The room was four-walled with Kraut banners. Balsa-wood Messerschmidts dangled from the ceiling.

  Huey mumbled anew. Dudley picked him up and threw him into the wall. Huey pinwheeled and crashed a shelf of toy panzer tanks. He fell face-first on a sofa. He was too glue-addled to shriek.

  Dudley pulled five bennies out of his pocket and jammed them in Huey’s mouth. Huey gagged and swallowed. Dudley brushed glue crusts off his hand.

  “You’ll revive in a few minutes, lad. We’re here to discuss the Whalen’s Drugstore heist Saturday morning, the Lugers and silencers you procured at the Deutsches Haus, and the recently dead Watanabes. You know me, lad. Your mothers and I are great chums, which will not prevent me from killing you if you dissemble.”

  Huey mumbled, precoherent. He wore a Luftwaffe jumpsuit. Dudley swallowed three bennies and cigarette-chased them. The smoke stifled a pervasive glue stench.

  Hubert Charles Cressmeyer II. Ruth Mildred named him after her dermatologist dad. Huey doted on mama’s squeeze, Dot Rothstein. The Dotstress was Jewish. Huey graciously overlooked it.

  Dudley pulled a chair up. The room spun a bit. He was skipping meals and losing weight.

  One, two, three cigarettes. Smoke clouds over low-hanging aircraft. Dudley cracked a window. Huey yawned and stirred.

  He rubbed his face. He stretched. The Night Creature, revived.

  “Hi, Uncle Dud.”

  “Begin with Whalen’s, Huey. I’m ill-suited for amenities today.”

  “Them Watanabe humps are dead? I didn’t do it.”

  “I believe you, lad. The county grand jury might not.”

  “It’s a Jap caper. The Japs mind their own paper, just like the Chinks. That shouldn’t cause no work for your white man’s police force.”

  Dudley said, “A cogent analysis, but irrelevant. Start with Whalen’s, lad. Omit nothing.”

  Huey said, “Okay, I clouted Whalen’s on Saturday, but that was the only time. I knew the store was a patsy, and nobody could place me there for the first four or five jobs, which half-ass alibied me for my slot. I got some wallets and some phenobarb to give to my mom for her scrape gigs, and I poked around in the morphine paregoric. This babe I knew had been pregnant and got her doctor to script her the morph for her cramps. She shared it with me, and I started appreciating it. I was about to clout some, but I thought, Uh-uh, you’ll build a habit. I brought an Army MP’s armband with me but forgot to put it on. See, I read about this MP rape-o in the papers, and I wanted to put the onus off on him. I had the Luger all silencered up, and I popped off a round for grins.”

  Credible. Quintessential Huey. Adroitly conceived and shoddily done.

  “And the pregnant girl was Nancy Watanabe? You didn’t know she had a scrape?”

  Huey picked his nose. “Nancy. How’d you know that?”

  “Did you impregnate her?”

  “Shit, no. You know my MO, Uncle Dud. I like older stuff. Anything under fifty is jailbait to me. I lick snatch like a hound dog on a biscuit, but I never put it in. You won’t see me slammed with no paternity suits. My mama taught me better than that.”

  Still credible. “And your blood type, Huey?”

  Huey patted his hip. “It’s O plus, Uncle Dud. And I got my reform school donor card right here in my pocket.”
>
  The bennies kicked in. Dudley’s cells reawakened. His bloodstream went aaaaaaaaaahhh.

  “The Deutsches Haus. Are you well established there? Are the fools in residence chums of yours, or just acquaintances on the right flank?”

  Huey said, “The latter, Uncle Dud. Fifth Column’s Fifth Column, but only the real die-hard guys make a religion out of it. I’d see them guys at Hindenburg Park and rallies here and there, just enough for them to trust me and consign me them suppressors and guns. But I’m a heist boy and a lone wolf at heart. I didn’t want them political types sniffing around my illegal shit.”

  Pure Huey. Self-preserving, self-deluded. He signed the Deutsches Haus ledger in his own name.

  “Do you recall specific Deutsches Haus employees or habitués? Can you relate telling incidents or give me specific names?”

  Huey shook his head. “Nein, Obersturmbannführer. They were all ‘Fritz’ and ‘Wolfgang’ to me.”

  A radio squawked next door. Try the “Blackout Special” at Blackie’s Lounge. Black-tie cuisine at a workingman’s price!

  “Tell me about the Watanabes. Again, omit nothing.”

  Huey sighed. “I got the same answer for you, Uncle Dud.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is Fifth Column’s Fifth Column.”

  “Elaborate, lad.”

  “Fifth Column’s Fifth Column. Which means everybody knows everybody, and everybody’s all linked up in these ways they ain’t revealing to nobody else. You got the Bund, America First, the Silver Shirts with them snazzy getups. The fucking Watanabes always spoke Jap around white folks, even them they were simpatico with. I knew Johnny a bit on his own, and Nancy likewise. Old man Ryoshi and old lady Aya? Them as a fucking family? I didn’t know them from hunger.”

  Dudley said, “Really, lad?”

  Huey reptile-flicked his tongue. “I offered Aya twenty scoots to let me lick her snatch. She slapped me. Jap women don’t take it the French way.”

  Dudley smiled. “Proceed, please.”

  Huey bummed a cigarette. “I ran with Johnny W. He was one of those wild-on-the-outside, live-with-mom-and-dad kind of Jap kids. We clouted a few liquor stores, and Johnny held his mud, so that made him a white man to me. Johnny knew an older guy named Hikaru Tachibana, who up and vanished one day. He was about to get deported to Japan, but he scrammed on his bail and started running prosties, and then he plain disappeared. Johnny played his shit close to the vest, but I got the feeling that he knew lots of strange-o Japs like Tachi.”

  Huey—credible, snitch-frenzied.

  “And you shot your silencered Luger into the ceiling at the Watanabe house.”

  “Yeah, last Friday. Ryoshi said he was in the market for a piece, so I gave him a demonstration. You know me, Uncle Dud. I get trigger-happy sometimes, and I go a bit crazy. The silencer dropped threads, so Ryoshi nixed the sale.”

  Dudley lit a cigarette. “Let’s discuss Nancy.”

  Huey reptile-flicked his tongue. “I licked her snatch at the Nightingale prom. This Mex kid I know spiked the punch.”

  “Can you offer me anything more substantial?”

  “How’s this? I didn’t knock her up, and my mom didn’t scrape her. She shared her morph with me a few times, but that was it. Okay, I rifled that shelf at Whalen’s with her in mind, ’cause I didn’t know she got scraped. But I didn’t knock her up, although I got a pretty good line on who did.”

  Dudley said, “I’m listening.”

  Huey picked his nose. “Johnny introduced me to this fucked-up crowd of Japs he ran with, but I pretty much steered clear of them. They carried these poison-dipped knives that had all these different blades on them. Johnny said there was four of them, young guys, with these beliefs that were too crazy even for him.”

  Dudley got goose bumps. They were bennie-enhanced.

  “Please continue.”

  “All right. The guys pulled heists, worked shit jobs and donated all their moolah to the Imperial Jap Cause. I met this scary-shit Jap-Mex half-breed who was part of the cell. He had bad cysts on his back, worse than mine. He bragged that he knocked up a Jap girl, and I’m pretty sure he meant Nancy.”

  “His name?”

  “I never got it, and Johnny told me the guy lammed back to Mexico. The guy bragged that he killed a family in Culiacán, but I thought he might have been pulling my pud.”

  “Please continue.”

  “That’s it. You’ve got these four fucked-up Japs who live in Griffith Park, ’cause they give all their money to the Emperor. They hate the Chinks more than the Krauts hate the Yids. They think you got to rape and kill the female relative of a tong boss to achieve ‘transcendence,’ but they ain’t got the nuts to do it.”

  Call Huey credible. Call his tale unverifiable. Call his knife spiel corroborative and tangential.

  “I have a task for you, Huey.”

  Huey gulped. “What task?”

  “The city will be blacked out tonight. I concede the short notice, but you’re a resourceful lad. A Sheriff’s van carrying a great deal of money will be traveling southbound, en route to Terminal Island. I would call 74th and Broadway the ideal spot to take it. You are to rouse your ascetic Japanese chums, set up a diversion and rob the van. You will carry the pump shotguns and use the rubber bullets that I know you stole from the Preston Reformatory. I will allow you to keep five thousand dollars for yourself, and to pay your pals one thousand apiece. You are to subtly interrogate them about the Watanabe family, Hikaru Tachibana and the esoteric knives they carry. They sound too mercurial to have killed the Watanabes, despite your speculation on young Nancy’s pregnancy, but they may be good for Tachi. Failure to perform this task and bring me the balance of the money will mandate your premature death.”

  Huey picked his nose. “Suppose the Japs won’t do it?”

  “Then round up a band of your fellow Preston grads.”

  Huey grinned and ate his pickings. What a resilient lad.

  6:04 p.m.

  It was dark. The slatterns and tykes had decamped. The blackout would begin at 7:00.

  Dudley walked through the courtyard. Thought and Act, Benzedrine. The van heist was impromptu and high-risk.

  He got his car and cut south. Army sentries stood at Melrose and Gower. They manned a searchlight and packed carbines. Beverly and Larchmont was fortified. Sheriff’s bulls cradled tommy guns.

  Dudley stopped at 1st and Beachwood. The house was ’20s Spanish-style. Tile roof, casement windows, brushed adobe walls. He walked up and rang the bell.

  R. S. Bennett opened the door. This big Celtic Brownshirt. A hammer hurler. Bred for kilt-clad brawls.

  Dudley flashed his badge. “Mr. Bennett, my name is Smith. I’ve come to recruit you for the Los Angeles Police Department.”

  Scotty Bennett said, “I’ve been rejected, sir. I’m only twenty.”

  Dudley said, “We’re at war, lad. Extreme circumstances provide for a stretching of the rules. We need you more than you need the United States Marine Corps.”

  Scotty Bennett smiled. The doorstep glowed. The boy was born to fight crime and break hearts.

  “Would you consent to an audition? It will save time and spare you ten weeks at the Police Academy.”

  Scotty snatched a sweater off a wall peg. Note the big H pinned for basketball and football. Note the seven rings on the left sleeve.

  “Tell your dad you’ll be out late, and not to wait up. There’s mischief in the air.”

  Scotty shut the door. They walked to the K-car and piled in. Dudley unhooked the two-way and roused the Bureau. Thad Brown counseled Call-Me-Jack. He should see this.

  The radio crackled. Thad picked up.

  “Lieutenant Brown. Who’s calling me?”

  “It’s Dudley, Thad. And it’s not a frivolous call.”

  Brown whistled. The line went screeeee.

  “I can read tone, Dud. Tell me what you’ve got.”

  “Can you be across the street from the liquor store
at 74th and Broadway in half an hour? What you see will be self-explanatory.” Brown said, “Sure, Dud.”

  The radio screeed and went on the fritz. Dudley hooked it up and kicked the gas. They pulled out, southbound.

  Hollywood, Hancock Park. Big blackout-ready houses. We’re thirty minutes shy. Pull your shades, dim your lights.

  Scotty said, “Green or orange, sir? I know you’re from over there.”

  Dudley smiled. “Green everlastingly, lad. I’m a separatist, a militant papist and more.”

  “Dublin?”

  “Yes, Dublin. And how did you discern that?”

  “I’m quick to learn, sir. I understand things instinctively.”

  “Don’t call me ‘sir,’ call me Dudley.”

  “All right, ‘Dudley,’ then.”

  They took 6th to Vermont and cut south. Car traffic decreased. Foot traffic increased. It was 6:53. The siren would blast at 7:00.

  Scotty stared out his window. Bright lad—you see everything.

  “I’m orange, sir. I wear the color on Saint Patrick’s Day, but I’ve got no grudge with the green. I got in a fight at Blessed Sacrament in ’38, but that’s as far as it went.”

  “And how did you fare in that engagement?”

  “The orange prevailed, sir. I hope that doesn’t make you think less of me.”

  “On the contrary. And don’t call me ‘sir,’ call me Dudley.” Wilshire, Olympic, Pico. Venice, Washington. We’re approaching the Congo. There’s the—

  It was fucking loud. Pole-mounted horns squawked. Shades went down. Neon signs vanished. Traffic lights flashed through cellophane. Car lights beamed amber and low.

  BLACKOUT.

  Scotty cracked his knuckles. Dudley hit his parking lights. Coontown came on, dark and sloooooow.

  Dark folk on de sidewalk. Dark sky, dark streets, dark skin. Washington to Broadway and south. Say what, what’s dis?

  BLACKOUT.

  72nd, 73rd, 74th. Hear the tom-toms and oooga-booogas? It’s de deep Congo now.

  The Dark Continent. Blackout dark. Dark desires sizzle here. There’s Lew’s Liquor. It’s dark, inside and out. The clerks wield flashlights and peddle hooch. Clock their all-spook clientele.