by James Ellroy
He weighed the bayonet. It ran 8.2 pounds. The swastika was stunningly embossed. He issued an APB. Kyoho Hanamaka/all Mexican states/hold and detain. He studied the photos in his Statie file. Hanamaka’s hands were burn-scarred. It was not explained.
He studied the file. No Baja address was listed. Hanamaka lived at the hideaway. That seemed certain now.
Hanamaka.
Fifth Column warlord. Es la verdad. Embroiled in two sub fiascos. Allied with leftists and rightists abroad. Es la verdad, as well.
The Fatherland and Mother Russia greet him. They present their indigenous horror. He crafts his memory book.
Hanamaka.
He might be in the U.S. His Jap visage would endanger him there. Someone abetted his flight. Governor Juan Lazaro-Schmidt might have pitched in.
The wall-panel cache lies intact. Lieutenant Pimentel is his watchdog. He’s ensconced in a nearby house. He’s got chez Hanamaka surveilled.
Lieutenant Juan’s a technical whiz. He developed a plan to tap incoming calls to Baja pay phones. SIS has shot him a hot work assignment. Decode suspect slug calls from the U.S.
Table talk droned. Young Joan spun tales. Garment strikes and Uncle Shmuel of the Yiddish Tagelblatt. The Jews proclaim their woes and boo-hoo the world’s vexation.
Vasquez-Cruz said, “Captain Smith appears to be bored.”
Pimentel said, “His women are ignoring him. Captain Smith requires their constant attention.”
Vasquez-Cruz twirled an ashtray. “Miss Klein’s regard for Leon Trotsky gets his goat.”
Dudley winked at the lads. “At least he was killed in Mexico. You’ll always have bragging rights there.”
“Trotsky” tweaked Young Joan. She raised her seltzer glass and pinged Claire’s wineglass.
“Comrade Trotsky, lady and gentlemen. The antidote to Fascism at home and abroad.”
Dudley raised his glass. Los fascistas went tut-tut. The whole gang imbibed. Musicians table-hopped and scrounged tips. They wore pink floral shirts and plaid cummerbunds. They carried trumpets and jiggled maracas.
Vasquez-Cruz ordered a rhumba and slipped the maraca man chump change. He bowed to Claire. She stood up and offered her hand. They walked to the dance floor and found their hip-popping fit.
Dudley watched. It sent him back. This spic’s hands on Claire. He recalled a precedent.
That dance in London. 1922. The Irish Citizens Army sent him in to plant bombs. A protty boy asked his date to dance. He said, “You don’t mind, do you, Paddy?”
The boy danced with her. He encircled her waist. Dudley Liam Smith, age sixteen. Here’s a dilemma.
The dance crowd dwindled. His date drifted off with her sister. He followed the boy down a dark road and blew his brains out.
Vasquez-Cruz held Claire’s hips and steered her. Pimentel watched Dudley watch. Young Joan watched it all.
She had small brown eyes. She wore glasses. She spoke Yiddish and French. She had long black hair with gray swirls. Gray hair at fifteen. Your call—benighted or possessed.
Pimentel said, “My captain has abridged the social code. I would not ask another man’s woman to dance without first seeking permission.”
Dudley lit a cigarette. “You abridge the officers’ code of conduct, Lieutenant. Your comment was impolitic, however well put and well taken.”
Pimentel smiled. “My captain appears to have misjudged you. You demand diffidence from your fellows. You offer loyalty and camaraderie in return.”
Young Joan walked out on the dance floor. She tapped Claire on the shoulder and cut in. Claire bowed and deferred. Vasquez-Cruz and Young Joan took up the beat. His hands went straight to her hips.
Claire walked back to the table. Pimentel excused himself and walked off. Good lad—such decorum.
Claire pointed to Vasquez-Cruz. “I’ve seen him before. I know it.”
Dudley pointed to Young Joan. She danced a mean rhumba.
“How does she get by?”
“She steals out of stores. She hasn’t asked me for anything, but she appreciates the clothes I buy her.”
Dudley said, “I’m going to have her tailed.”
* * *
—
They walked back to the hotel. Harbor lights blinked. Young Joan took Claire’s arm. They mimicked nineteenth-century daguerreotypes. Faux Parisians stroll Saint-Germain.
The Malecon cut inland. Shoreline hostelries loomed. They bucked a sea wind, three abreast. Alleyways bisected the sidewalk. Gaslamps lit narrow footpaths.
They walked single file. Claire said something. Young Joan slid on wet asphalt and went whee!
A man stepped in front of them. He moved alleyway to lamplight. He was unkempt and looked dissolute. He verged on raggedy-ass.
He’s got a revolver. He’s aiming it. It’s a hand cannon. The hammer’s cocked.
He yelled slogans. They were nonsensical. He braced his gun arm and aimed straight ahead. Dudley pulled his piece. His arm fluttered, his aim fluttered, he fired two shots wide.
A second man stepped out. He moved alleyway to lamplight. He’s young and sleek. Note the twill shirt and armband. He’s got a sawed-off shotgun.
He tripped two triggers. Muzzle flare lit the load:
Steel scraps/tight-packed/trench-warfare-slaughter weaponry—
The Slogan Man blew up. Such blood you’ve never seen. The scraps disemboweled him. His gun arm severed and flew.
Claire and Young Joan fell back. Dudley body-blocked them and covered their eyes. The Sleek Man dipped his fingers in the Slogan Man’s blood.
He said, “Comunista.” He spat on the corpse. He saluted Dudley and ran off.
* * *
—
Opium.
Kwan’s basement. His private den. The tar, the match, the pipe. His body anesthetized, his mind relinquished and adrift.
He drove to L.A., impromptu. He wanted to see Mike and Dick. He wanted to see Jim Davis. He wanted to conspire with Ace and cultivate Hideo Ashida.
Dudley smoked opium. He dipped elsewhere. He leaped time and rewrote History. He went with the tar and the pipe.
Stopover, Ensenada. All-too-recent History. Bleak moments, last night.
Statie Blackshirts arrived. They cased the stiff and called for a morgue van. He walked down that bisecting alley. He saw wet-blood artwork on a wall.
A garland of swastikas. An “SQ” wrapped in coiled snakes.
The Slogan Man remains unidentified. The Sleek Man, likewise. The attack might be premeditated. The attack might be happenstance.
His uniform denotes random target. The D. L. Smith persona denotes something else. Last month’s knife attack. Last night’s attack. Dudley Liam Smith attracts HATE.
Stopover, Europe and the eastern steppes. Here, you become someone else.
You’ve touched his uniforms and gold bayonet. You’ve read his diary. Don the attire, now. Live the History and wield the bayonet.
You’re Kyoho Hanamaka. You’re a little Jap with burn-scarred hands and a consuming appetite. You feast on horror as it disillusions you. Your diary exposits one great theme. Ideology is solely a means of entrapment and thus a barbaric shuck.
The Fascist Right. The Communist Left. Divergent in rhetoric. Identical at their core.
The Reds embrace wretchedness and promise peasants tasty gruel and a warm place to shit. They scapegoat capital and hoard it to build prison camps and tanks. The Nazis embrace Norse gods and exalt art. They extoll civilization as the Reds defame it as bourgeois. They scapegoat Jews because Jews contravene the all-is-beautiful Nazi aesthetic. The Nazis and Reds tell the selfsame lie in boldly diverse guise. Both lies indict the democratic West and defame it as naïve and effete.
Totalitarianism will win. The rabble will opt for conformed identity over chaos. Which lie will you
accede to? Which hidey-hole uniform will you don?
Dudley Liam Smith, Sturmbannführer.
You donned the uniform at that party. You enacted the Night of the Long Knives. Now, wield your gold bayonet.
Stopover, Baja. Your Army duties summon you.
He read a Fed Teletype this morning. Agent Ed Satterlee wrote it. Now, hear this:
The rumors persist. Coded phone calls have been received. There’s been L.A. pay-phone to Baja pay-phone traffic. The Baja pay phone was tapped and thence transcribed. This was revealed:
There are hidden Jap airfields in San Berdoo County. No exact locations have been determined. Indio and Brawley are both rumored. He should talk to Juan Pimentel. Juan developed the phone-tap technique.
Opium.
The tar, the match, the pipe. His mind untethered, his imagination adrift.
He pictured a lineup stage. The lights remain bright. The height strips extend. The dead and the missing stand tall.
Eddie Leng and Donald Matsura. Tommy Glennon and Kyoho Hanamaka. They burn under stage lights. He interrogates them. They reveal their interconnectedness and tell him nothing else.
* * *
—
Ex-Chief Jim Davis. He’s vivid—if in decline.
He’s sclerotic and obese. He’s half-mad and ravaged by aphasia. He still packs two belt guns. He was a Great War doughboy. He’s tight with spic dictators and nativist hucksters. He’s volatile and sentimental. He’s mentored Elmer Jackson and Whiskey Bill Parker.
They dined at Kwan’s. Jim slurped shark-fin soup. His color was off. Malaria yellow meets dead-man gray.
“I was hoping I could ask a few favors, Chief.”
“For you the world, Dud. You say ‘Jump,’ I say ‘How high?’ ”
Dudley sipped tea. “Keep your snout down. There appears to be a Chink and Jap Fifth Column play afoot.”
Jim slurped soup. He dribbled up his suit coat. Dudley tossed him a napkin.
“And, I’d be grateful if you’d continue to watchdog Elmer Jackson. I realize that you and Ace leaned on him, but the warning might not have held.”
“I taught Elmer the whore business. He was a wet-behind-the-ears jarhead when I met him. I made him the man he is today.”
Dudley said, “He bears your imprimatur, Chief. He’s suave in the Jim Davis manner.”
Jim fidgeted. He blotted his necktie and pushed his soup bowl away.
“I’m going batshit, Dud. I’ll blow a gasket if I don’t tell someone.”
“Tell them what, Jim?”
“That Werewolf creep’s no killer. I killed the Watanabes.”
27
(LOS ANGELES, 1/9–1/23/42)
Fire and gold.
Scholar’s lark.
Ex officio quest.
Her father burned to death. It taught her to fight and think. That fire drove her to this riddle of two intertwined deaths. The possible-probable arson and the mint-train heist merged there. The gold symbolized her blown shot at the war.
She’s a treasure hunter. She’s the female Karl Tullock and Wayne Frank Jackson. She broods on gold. She’s bought books and done library research. She’s studied gold like she once studied fire.
She bought herself solid-gold cuff links. They cost half a week’s pay. She found treasure magazines in a used bookshop. She fell prey to Congolese diamonds and man-eating pygmies. She succumbed to gold artifacts in Malaysian caves. She’s a scientist. She stood outside her fixation and watched herself swirl. She’s a sensationalist. She fell prey because it felt good.
She’s studied PD and FD Arson Squad reports. She’s read up on the dead CCC men. No leads surfaced there. She’s logged morgue time with Dr. Nort Layman. No further leads surfaced. Dr. Nort formalized it. Karl Tullock is the man in the box.
The downtown library’s her refuge. It’s a brooder’s perch. Newspaper rolls report the gold and the fire. She’s gone from ignorant to expert. She’s a scientist trained to hypothesize.
Just like Hideo Ashida. He’s her scholar’s-lark confrere.
She hit the library late one night. She looked up and saw Ashida. He was studying her. The moment unnerved her. She realized this:
He’s omitting and dissembling. He’s withholding. He knows things that he will not reveal.
The gold consumes him. He craves it as substance and money. He may see it as the means to abrogate wartime injustice. He may crave it out of pure greed.
Gold is money. It would buy her a cabin in lake-bound Wisconsin. It would buy British shotguns and hunting dogs. She could shoot quail and sleep with her dogs. Provocative men might appear.
Scholar’s lark.
Treasure hunt.
Potent riddle.
The drudge work that pays her rent and counterweights her lust for the gold.
She works confiscations. The Alien Squad raids Japanese homes and impounds property. Appliances, guns, shortwave radios. Flags and political hate tracts. Ashida translates the tracts. She transcribes the dreary content.
They run ballistics tests on impounded guns and compare the results to custody pieces. They dismantle appliances and look for hidden explosives. They’ve found none to date.
The squad rousts are overzealous and waged against passive foes. The U.S. government has instituted full-scale internment. She’s observed brutal rousts and has a sense of the boys.
There’s Lieutenant Collier. He’s the permissive boss. Elmer Jackson and Lee Blanchard are the sweethearts. There’s Wendell Rice, George Kapek, and Catbox Cal Lunceford. They’re the Rodent Squad. They manhandle their prisoners and steal what they can.
Her work entails Lincoln Heights Jail runs. Ashida goes with her. They inspect the property of already-jailed Japs. Rank-and-file Japs hate Ashida. They hiss and spit at him. They curse him in Japanese. It started with Pearl Harbor and the Watanabe case.
He’s the white man’s slave. He’s the PD’s toady. He’s a tong shitheel. He sucked the big white dick and sidestepped internment. He’s a traitor and the real fascist. The big white woman is his whore.
She feels kinship with Ashida then. It dissolves fast. She’s always been good with men. Ashida’s the one man she can’t touch.
She’s assumed a role. She’s the handmaid to a cloistered patriarchy. She’s met Jack Horrall and Mayor Fletch Bowron. They radiate good cheer and casual corruption. The PD is rankly corrupt and headed toward rank incompetence. Good men go off to the war. Unfit “war hires” replace them. Cops fear the draft and the phone-tap probe.
She understands men. They’re seducible. Hideo Ashida is not.
She faked an excuse and dropped by his hotel suite. It was her sole visit. She angled her way in. Ashida’s living quarters impressed her.
The Biltmore. A large parlor and three bedrooms. Dudley Smith’s patronage and largesse.
She met Ashida’s affable brother and boozed-up mama-san. She went through Ashida’s bedroom en route to the john. She rifled drawers and found a boxed photo stash.
Candid pix. A boys’ locker room backdrop. A lanky boy in the foreground. He’s naked and toweling his hair.
She recognized him. He was Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert. She saw him fight in Milwaukee. He headlined a big card and knocked out a stumblebum.
The photos saddened and repulsed her. They force-fed her Hideo Ashida’s sickness and corruption. They backlit his complicitous bond with Dudley Smith.
Lyman’s. The all-night rumor mill. Here’s the tattle on Sergeant/now Army Captain Smith.
His blithe expediency. His axman-to-Jack-Horrall status. His rivalry with Captain Bill Parker. Their Watanabe-case clash.
She’s seen him at Lyman’s and Kwan’s. He’s a ravishing man. Hideo Ashida must be in love with him.
Which gives her pause. Which tells her to dissemble. Which tells her to wit
hhold fire and gold leads. She knows that he’s omitted. He’s most likely up on her there.
Ashida underestimates women. He cannot see them. Let him underestimate you as he seems to underestimate Kay Lake.
They costar in the Male PD Drama. Joan Conville’s the handmaid. She’s PD-employed and has professional cachet. Kay Lake’s a specious seductress and brainy bawd. And William H. Parker stands between them.
Rumor: Kay Lake tears through men. Ask the long-aggrieved Lee Blanchard. Rumor: Kay and Whiskey Bill are yet to consummate. Rumor: Kay Lake shivved a bull dyke cop named Dot Rothstein. Dot’s pal Dudley Smith nixed reprisals. Rumor: Bill Parker and “Big Red” are madly enjoined.
No, it’s not true.
He’s an alcoholic voyeur. He abbreviates his marital vows. He does not trash them. They’ve kissed three times. Twice at the Biltmore. Once outside City Hall. Brenda Allen witnessed that last kiss.
He isn’t tall and handsome. His Catholicism gores her Protestant core. His wild grit mirrors her own and almost makes her love him.
Bill Parker knows from sin. It’s a shared papist-protty trait. Bill Parker revealed his great sin of omission.
They were half-gassed at Lyman’s. He told her that Two-Gun Davis killed the four Watanabes. Davis sat at the bar, a few feet away.
Parker solved the crime himself. Davis confessed to him. Parker withheld the solution from the at-large PD. The crime derived from Fifth Column intrigue.
Davis acted alone. His lunatic cohort did not participate. Rich America Firsters roamed the periphery. Japanese and Chinese saboteurs joined them. The band redefined Treasonous Alliance.
There was a Chinese physician. He was a plastic surgeon/eugenicist and very right-wing. There was a Beverly Hills psychiatrist. He was very left-wing. He pandered to film stars and socialites and snitched them off to the Feds.
Parker devastated her. She told him to reveal Two-Gun’s guilt and exonerate Werewolf Shudo. Parker refused. He cited Shudo’s sex-assault priors. He stressed this fact: Jim Davis indicted would destroy the PD.
She relented. Her protty guilt pushed her back. She got drunk and plowed the Mexicans. That meant two four-count indictments. Four dead wetbacks and four dead Watanabes.
