by James Ellroy
It happened very fast. He had a chance to destroy the film. He went by the Lincoln Heights jail to do it. Kay scotched his chance. The film was out in the trailer. Kay was holed up there.
The radio hawked toothpaste. Back to Fuji Shudo and grid great Scotty Bennett. Hollywood High’s hero blasts a tong thug last week! Last night, he storms The Wolfman’s Den!
“You look apprehensive, lad. Given recent events, I can hardly blame you.”
The door was open. He casts no shadow. He’s the Real Werewolf.
Dudley locked the door and walked over. He killed the radio. He pulled out a revolver and popped the cylinder.
He held up the revolver. Six chambers, one bullet stuffed in.
He shut the cylinder and spun it. He put the barrel to Ashida’s head and pulled the trigger twice. The hammer hit empty chambers.
Ashida opened his eyes. He didn’t know he’d shut them. He wasn’t dead. He was still at his desk.
Dudley lounged on the desk. Dudley tapped a legal pad.
“You are to swear out an affidavit in my presence. You will address it to District Attorney William McPherson, Chief of Police C. B. Horrall, Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz and Special Agent in Charge Richard Hood of the Los Angeles FBI. You will confess to all of your withholdings and suppressions of evidence in the Watanabe family homicides of December 6, 1941, both alone and in collusion with Captain William H. Parker. You will include your knowledge of Captain Parker’s covert actions aimed at Miss Claire De Haven. You will sign and date it at the bottom of the final page. Dick Carlisle’s wife is a notary public. She will affix the appropriate seals.”
Ashida squared off the pad. His pen moved all by itself. He smelled iodine. Dudley had salved an arm wound.
Saturday, December 6th. Whalen’s Drugstore. He pilfers bullet chunks and silencer threads.
Sunday, December 7th. The Watanabe house. He finds the shortwave radio, tape rig and ledger. He steals them on Wednesday, December 10. He plays the radio and learns of the Goleta raid. Dudley confronts him outside the house. He lies about the tracts he stole. They fiercely attack the Los Angeles PD.
Dudley touches his arm. It rewards his candor.
Monday, December 8th. He visits Japanese farms in the Valley. Ryoshi Watanabe sold his farm—but who to? Wetbacks pick crops, Valley-wide. Mex Staties boss them. He sees Carlos Madrano behind it.
Dudley smiles. Lad, you got there first.
Monday, December 8th. He 459’s the Deutsches Haus and steals their gun-silencer cache. He test-fires the guns. The ordnance used at the drugstore and house came from the Deutsches Haus batch.
Dudley winks. He knew that, somehow.
Thursday, December 11th. He views the sub-raid evidence. He sees a dead “Collaborationist.” His body bears a starburst-style stab wound. It refracts a similar wound found on Ryoshi Watanabe. The soles of another dead man’s feet reek of shrimp oil. That refracts the shrimp oil on the Watanabes’ feet. He views cans of chopped shrimp among the collected debris.
Dudley slaps his knees. Lad, you delight me.
Friday, December 12th. He discovers odd tread marks in the Watanabes’ driveway. The pattern looks familiar. He matches it to a Sheriff’s bulletin, issued 12/7.
Hit-and-run. One fatality. James Larkin/British/age sixty-seven. He lives in Santa Monica Canyon. There’s a vague description of the hit-and-run driver. He’s a white man in a purple sweater. This refracts the white man seen outside the house, 12/6/41.
Dudley gawks. It’s endearing.
Friday, December 12th. He takes the Larkin lead to Captain Bill Parker. They break into Larkin’s bungalow.
They find a Japanese-language ledger. They find seventeen Lugers embossed with Nazi symbols and a fortune in Axis cash.
He translates the ledger. He believes that it details the house and farm buyouts. There is no conclusive proof.
They 459 the bungalow again. They see that Larkin possessed no telephone. They recall a Sheriff’s bulletin. It lists “three pay-phone slugs” in Larkin’s property. They steal the seventeen Lugers. He print-dusts them here at the lab. He gets a match to the unknown print at the house.
His collusive friendship with Bill Parker tanks. Parker’s tirade at Kwan’s Pagoda does it. He knows very little about the Kay Lake/Claire De Haven incursion. Kay Lake lured him in. Her motives? Specious and incomprehensible.
He omitted The Knife in Griffith Park. Bill Parker believed that Dudley and Ace Kwan killed those three men. He omitted the Wallace Hodaka interview. It provided no follow-up leads.
That’s it. Sign it—Hideo Ashida, Ph.D.
Dudley made the hand-on-heart sign. “I am moved by you and honored to know you, Hideo. You bore up to the one-in-three prospect of instant death valiantly, and you are the only detective on God’s grand earth who stands as my equal. I pledge my continued loyalty, as malign fate continues to plague your people. The next several months will surely be unkind, but I will do my best to provide you and yours with succor and devilish good fun.”
Ashida swooned. It felt like a head-to-toe flush.
“My Irish brother.”
“My yellow brother.”
Rain drummed the window. Dudley smiled and lit a cigarette.
“Have you the skills to craft a preexisting document, lad? I was thinking of a letter from Fuji Shudo to Ryoshi Watanabe, vintage 1933.”
Ashida smiled. “Yes, I can do it. I assume that you want it in kanji script.”
Dudley said, “I do, yes. The text should detail a political disagreement pertaining to Asian geopolitics, and should foreshadow Fuji Shudo’s ultimate psychic collapse. Can you apply convincing age spots to the paper and forge a postal cancellation?”
“Yes, and the letter should have been sent post office to post office. We can’t be sure that the Watanabes had their house in ’33. That official records backlog is still in effect.”
Dudley said, “Bright child. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I’ll cut a stencil and write the characters within it. I’ll get the closest approximation of Fuji’s script that way.”
Dudley smiled. “The cancellation mark?”
“Purple vegetable dye.”
“The aged paper?”
“A chloral-phosphate spray and ultraviolet light.”
Dudley blew smoke rings. “Have you a final perspective on the Parker-Lake matter?”
Ashida said, “They’re both insane. They’re in love with each other, but they’re so crazy that they don’t even know it.”
4:02 p.m.
I was back on the women’s tier at Central Station. My first visit was eleven days ago. I’d improvised at the Paul Robeson concert, in an effort to force a meeting with Claire. She was in the adjoining cell now, withdrawing from her narcotics habit at a spiraling rate. Our male comrades were on the men’s tier. Hideo Ashida was probably upstairs at the crime lab, or off subverting justice for Dudley Smith.
The women’s tier was packed with Japanese women. They sat on their bunks just like their comrades did eleven days earlier. Pearl Harbor was twelve days ago. Did the world exist before it?
I watched Claire thrash. We had been here for nearly six hours; we’d been fingerprinted and forced to change into jail smocks. A Sheriff’s matron named Dot Rothstein watched us undress. She was the largest butch I’d ever seen—Andrea Lesnick had told me about her. She wore Sheriff’s greens, with beavertail saps stashed in the trouser-slit pockets. She chewed Beemans pepsin gum, vigorously.
My purse had been confiscated. Dot Rothstein saw Claire shivering, and snatched her overcoat. I knew of the impending raid, and assumed that the Feds had warned off Saul Lesnick. I burned my movie, and destroyed that evidence trail. I saved two film strips. They were tucked into a small rip in the lining of my purse.
Claire thrashed. I reached through the bars and stroked her hair. We’d been booked for reckless endangerment and placed on a Federal hold. Ed Satterlee kept strolling down the tier. He told us that the real
charges would be determined by a Federal grand jury. “You’re looking at a gas-chamber bounce—so I’d advise you to cooperate.”
I felt weightless. It was like the time I had measles and ran off during a blizzard. I was nine years old. My fever broke while I played in the snow. My father found me a few blocks from home, dressed in a nightgown. I wasn’t shivering or sweating. My father believed me to be possessed from that moment on.
Claire burrowed into her pillow. Two women meet in a doctor’s office nine days ago. A woman lights a woman’s cigarette—and now we’re here.
Claire slid down the mattress. Her smock was soaked through; it was dark wet from the hem to the neckline. I gripped the bunk ledge and sat there, facing the Japanese women. They all turned away from me.
My hands numbed on the ledge; I was grasping a sharp metal surface. A piece snapped off in my hands. I released my grip and snapped it back into place. I’d gouged my fingers near bloody.
I paced the cell. I counted out one hundred bar-to-wall trips. I thought of Bucky and Scotty.
Ed Satterlee walked up. He said, “Hello again, Katherine.”
I walked to the bars and faced him. I said, “Call me ‘Comrade.’ ” Satterlee laughed. I said, “Get Miss De Haven a doctor.”
“Any doctor we come up with would make her suffer through it. This isn’t supposed to be easy. If she cops to a few Federal charges, though, I might find her some stuff that she’d like.”
I said, “Habeus, you cocksucker. You have to let us make bail.”
“Not for sixty-five hours and fourteen minutes, ‘Comrade.’ We’ve got that much more time to make you feel antsy. You’ll be snitching your dipshit granddad back in Sioux Falls by this time on Sunday.”
I said, “You’re a limp fuck, Ed. You’ve never been laid.”
Satterlee smiled, oh so bored. “I’ve got a niece your age, back in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. She reminds me of you, without the pretense. Prairie du Chien was too small for her. She didn’t know what to do, so she ran off with an eye-talian guy and got knocked up.”
“Give me a cigarette. I’ll be more inclined to talk if you do.”
Satterlee shook his head. “I’m not in the mood to be nice. I think you were the one who torched the film in that trailer. Normally, I’d look to the men, but not with these guys. It’s bees where the women rule the roost, right? That’s why I’m looking to you and Claire, and she doesn’t seem like the firebug type right now.”
I said, “Habeus, Ed. Monday morning at 10:00.”
Satterlee shook his head. “You can’t bluff your way out of this one. You’re in superseding Federal custody, and you can’t flash some toy badge and say you’re a cop’s girlfriend.”
I flashed my right middle finger. Satterlee feigned amusement and walked off. I stretched out on my bunk and held an arm over my eyes. The ceiling lights threw down a red haze.
It felt like I was back in that blizzard. The red haze was just like Sioux Falls in the snow. I heard key-in-lock and sliding-metal sounds. I opened my eyes and saw Dot Rothstein sitting on the edge of the bunk.
She said, “Sweet dreams, cupcake?”
I said, “Call me ‘Comrade.’ ”
She said, “That’s a hard girl’s name. You’re not a hard girl. You’re a sweetie pie.”
She placed a hand on the mattress. She wore signet rings on three fingers. Her right knee brushed the bed rail. She carried a sap in that trouser-leg pocket. The handle sat flush on her calf.
I smelled Beemans pepsin chewing gum and Butch Wax. I watched her eyes, I watched her hand.
She said, “You’re a soft girl.”
She put her hand on my knee. She ran it slowly up my thigh. She leaned in and opened her mouth to kiss me. I opened my mouth and ran a hand up her leg, toward the sap. She shifted as she pressed down on me. I moved my hand to the bunk ledge and pulled that piece of loose metal free.
Her mouth was wide open. Chewing gum was stuck to her teeth. Our lips were in close. I gripped the mock shiv and brought my arm up.
I stabbed her in the arm. I stabbed her in the side. I stabbed her in the back. I held on to the shiv as she shrieked and punched straight down. My nose snapped—red, black, red. Blood blew into my eyes.
I rolled off the bunk. I stabbed her in the leg as my back hit the floor. She shrieked male falsetto. Her blood was all over the shiv. I gripped it that much harder. The mock blade cut my hand.
She rolled off the bunk and fell on top of me; she pinned me to the floor with her knees. She cocked her right fist and punched straight down.
I flailed. Her fist hit the floor. The blow carried her full weight.
Bones shattered. I heard it.
She shrieked. I stabbed her in the shoulder, I stabbed her in the back. She kept pressing down on me. I felt a rib snap. It’s another kiss, her head’s coming down, open your mouth.
She opened her mouth.
I opened my mouth.
I reached up and showed her my tongue.
She shut her eyes for the kiss.
I bit off her nose and spit it back in her face.
She shrieked and rolled off of me. She rubbed blood from her eyes and shrieked. I stood up and kicked her where her nose used to be; I stabbed her in the back, the arms, the legs. She shrieked and tried to pull herself under the bunk. I pulled the sap off her leg and smashed her hands on the ledge. She sobbed something like “Ruthie.”
I blinked away blood. Men made male noises and ran down the tier. Dot sobbed for Ruthie and crawled away from me.
8:22 p.m.
He touched her things.
She was locked up a block away. He parked at 1st and Hill, so he’d be close. He couldn’t go home. Whose purse is that? Helen Parker, meet Kay Lake.
He filched the purse from the property room. He got in and out, unseen. Claire De Haven’s slaves fomented. The Queen herself looked sedated. Miss Lake swapped jokes with the jailer. The man thought she was a sketch.
Joan Conville’s picture sat on the dashboard. Miss Conville, meet Miss Lake.
Parker went through the purse. It was scotch-grained leather. Miss Lake owned a cheap lighter. It was a fight-night souvenir. Bleichert versus Saldivar, 4/12/39.
Lipstick-blotted tissues. A paisley scarf. A ticket stub for the Carthay Circle Theatre. She’d gone to the first L.A. showing of Gone with the Wind.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way. They were supposed to work together all through the war. She was supposed to gain Claire De Haven’s trust and slowly come to know her perfidy. They were supposed to work together as the Allies won the war and the Queen worked to further the Kremlin’s agenda. They were supposed to build evidence and drink Russian vodka to toast the impaneled grand jury.
A cross on a chain. All too Protestant. A tortoiseshell comb and barrette.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way. She was supposed to snap photographs at two dozen locations. They were supposed to dissect the subversive mind-set in a thousand late-night talks.
The cross was chipped at the four corners. She’d clutched it in girlish prayer or skeptic’s frustration. Her hair brush matched the comb and barrette. Auburn strands were laced in.
A lipstick tube, a compact, a blue handkerchief.
He held the fabric up to his cheek. He recalled her scent that first Monday in the rain.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way. They were out to create a decorous courtroom document. They were out to destroy a barbarous ideology. They were supposed to exchange letters and call each other Katherine and William in due time.
Parker emptied out the purse and put everything back in perfect order. He saw a rip in the lining. He felt something inside it.
He reached in. He touched a slick surface. He pulled out two film strips.
They were both two feet long. One was fully developed. One was a white-on-black negative.
He flicked on the dashboard light. He held the strips up, side by side. The developed strip showed images of two men talking.
The negative strip showed a still figure.
Parker squinted at the white-on-black. He recognized the cut of her dress. It was her speech yesterday.
Blood libel.
“We are thus charged to the near-impossible task of enacting love that much more ruthlessly, and with a self-sacrifice that would have been unknowable had History not summoned us. At this moment, our options become do everything or do nothing.”
Katherine, the valiant and foolish.
He ran his eyes down the strip. She barely moved. The picture run encompassed just seconds. He saw her in mute white on black. He heard her every word.
Blood libel. Moral duty and small-minded fear. Sioux Falls and Deadwood. Sodden Indians and nativist fiends.
He studied the developed strip. He recognized details and followed them, frame by frame.
1st and San Pedro. He knew that building. He knew that tall man, with that hat. It’s Ed Satterlee. There’s a small Chinaman. It’s Ace Kwan’s toady, Quon Chin.
Quon ran bag to Call-Me-Jack. Quon pimped Chinese girls to Brenda Allen. Quon laid bribes on the County Zoning Board.
Quon killed sixteen rival tong men. Quon purportedly beheaded four hundred Jap soldiers after the Rape of Nanking.
Parker studied the strip. Bravos to Kay Lake. She knew what she saw.
A bagman, a rogue Fed, a payoff. An evidential hole card—nailed on film.
He prayed off The Thirst. Sunday Mass would mark five days sober. He heard sirens running eastbound on 1st Street. It was ambulance pitch.
He saw cherry lights spin outside the station. Something said NO—
Christmas shoppers swarmed Hill Street. Buses blocked the north-south lanes. Some loudspeaker blared “Jingle Bells.”
He ran. He left his prowl car unlocked. He ran and got winded inside two seconds. His holster flopped and almost flew off. He ran across Hill Street. He sideswiped a thin Santa Claus.
An ambulance was parked outside the station. Two men rolled a gurney up. A big woman was strapped in. She wore Sheriff’s green. She was nothing but slash wounds and blood.
She shrieked. She shrieked for Ruthie and Huey. Parker sidestepped the gurney and ran up the steps.
