by James Ellroy
Gelb balled his fists. Joan opened her purse and went for a hat pin.
He spoke soft now. “Who are you?”
She spoke soft now. “I’m a forensic biologist. I work for the Los Angeles Police Department, and I’ve extensively studied the causal factors of arson and spontaneous wildfires. Which was it in your case? Or did you burn your hands in Spain, where you valiantly battled the fascist beast?”
Gelb bolted. Pure bluff torqued him. He jumped up. He kicked his chair and kicked the coil heater. Joan went What did I do? Jean Staley went Sweetie, that’s just Meyer.
Lesnick chased after Gelb. Joan chased to the bar and chugged scotch. Her pulse dipped to 300-plus.
She walked back to the party proper. The Bauhaus beer hall throbbed. Parsifal replaced Tannhäuser. That Wagner cat came to work.
Where’s Kay? Let’s find her. Let’s get it over with.
The Maestro Manse ran labyrinthine. Joan cut down hallways and got lost. She traipsed downstairs and upstairs. She hit a third-floor corridor. Steam seeped out a door crack.
She saw Orson Welles and Claire De Haven. They huddled tight and missed her. They wore white cotton robes. They exited a dressing room and entered the steam room. Steam billowed out.
Joan debated it. She plumbed the when-in-Rome concept. She just filleted a Red shitbird. In for a penny, in for—
She stepped into the dressing room. She stripped and hung her clothes beside Claire’s. She donned a robe and walked straight to the steam room. The steam was all-the-way hot.
They sat on a top ledge, buck naked. She dropped her robe and sat across from them.
Welles said, “Hi, Red.”
Joan said, “Hello, Mr. Welles.”
He stage-laughed. It was Falstaff’s ho-ho-ho. He said, “This is Claire De Haven.”
Joan said, “I’m Joan Conville.”
Steam mist covered Claire. Joan squinted. She wanted to see Claire stark nude.
Claire said, “Are you a friend of Otto’s, dear?”
Joan gouted sweat. She smelled purged absinthe and scotch.
“I worked at a research lab, up until Pearl Harbor. A doctor I knew there invited me.”
Welles said, “Red’s a physician. I knew it. Hey, Red—write me a script for pharmaceutical cocaine. I need to curb my appetite and lose weight.”
Joan laughed. “You look fine, Mr. Welles.”
“Orson, please.”
“We’re fishing for your occupation, dear. What you currently do for a living.”
Catch this, dear. “I work for the L.A. Police Department. I’m a biologist.”
Welles said, “Red’s a brain. I knew it.”
Claire toweled off. Joan caught a look. Her rib cage showed. Her breasts flared unevenly. Her legs were too thin. She was all translucence and veins.
“I know people there. Do the names Hideo Ashida, William Parker, Dudley Smith, and Katherine Lake ring any bells with you?”
A steam vent clicked off. The haze dissipated. Everybody caught looks.
“I work with Dr. Ashida, so I know him rather well. I know of Captain Parker and Sergeant Smith, but I haven’t met them. I don’t know Miss Lake at all.”
Welles said, “Smith’s Claire’s new flame. They’re shacked up in Mexico now. He’s an Irish hothead. He’d shoot me if he knew I’d seen Claire in the buff.”
Claire caressed Welles. She ran a hand between his legs. Welles bit his lips and stifled a gasp. Claire eyed Joan throughout.
“Be careful of Dr. Ashida, dear. He’s duplicitous and unmanly.”
The steam vent kicked back on. The peep show clicked off. Welles coughed out vapors.
“Hey, I’m feeling ignored here.”
Joan said, “You’ll never be ignored, Orson.”
“Are you kidding? In this town?”
Claire said, “Orson’s set to tour Latin America. Our faux-left president has him eating out of the palm of his hand. It’s a cultural mission. Orson’s been told to brownnose fascist despots to shore up the Allied cause.”
Welles mock-whispered, “This from the lady shacked with a cop who gets his kicks beating up Negroes.”
Claire caressed Welles. He moaned and bit his lips. Claire full-on grabbed him. She eyed Joan throughout.
Joan stood up and put her robe on. Welles said, “So long, Red. See you in church.”
Claire said, “Are you a police informant, Joan? Did Kay Lake recruit you when I got wise to her?”
Joan stepped outside. She went light-headed and hugged the wall. She stepped into the dressing room and dressed in two seconds flat.
Her pulse dipped crazy high and low. She walked downstairs and got lost. She caught Lohengrin blare and cut down a side hallway. She ran straight into Kay Lake.
Kay said, “Isn’t this party the most?”
* * *
—
They two-car’d back to the Strip. Kay trailed Joan this time. Dave’s Blue Room stayed open late. They rendezvoused there. They noshed steak sandwiches and quaffed gin fizzes.
Joan kept mum per Dudley and Claire. Meyer Gelb, likewise. They wolfed their food. They juiced. Andrea Lesnick had nicked Joan’s cigarettes. She smoked out of Kay’s pack.
A barman whipped up refills. Brenda A. and Elmer J. owned a house percentage. Kay dined and boozed gratis. They dished the dish and unfurled the hot ticker tape.
Kay said, “I’m wondering what you know that I don’t.”
Joan said, “I credit everything I hear—because I’m the new girl in town, and I haven’t developed a knack for discernment.”
“Run one by me. I’ll confirm or refute.”
“The Fed probe’s a shuck. J. Edgar Hoover’s a secret fairy. He goes for beefcake types like Ed Satterlee, and they both get their real jollies entrapping Reds.”
Kay lit a cigarette. “Don’t stop there.”
Joan played kamikaze. Her drift featured Dudley and Hideo Ashida.
“The Watanabe job’s a frame. The Werewolf looked convenient, so they nailed him. I’ll quote your chum Lee Blanchard. ‘The PD was running a fever on Pearl Harbor and the internment, so Jack Horrall told the boys to come up with a Jap-kills-Japs solve.’ ”
Kay whistled and went woo-woo. She said, “Here’s one you don’t know, because Jack H. can hold his mud, and it concerns you. Are you listening?”
Joan said, “Give.”
Kay said, “Jack dates Brenda once a week, at her place. It goes back to when Brenda was a line girl. She’s his confidante, and he tells her everything. The dish is he goes for you, and he wants you to run the lab and the whole Scientific Division. Ray Pinker’s taking a teaching post at Cal Tech in ’44. Mind your p’s and q’s, and the job’s yours. You’ll be the highest-ranking woman on the PD, and you’ll be sworn in as a full-boat police officer. Are you ready? You’ll attend the Academy and come out a captain.”
The room rolled cockeyed. Joan went breathless. Obscure psalms passed through—
Kay pushed her water glass over. Joan took big gulps.
“He likes my legs. I know that.”
“He told Brenda they go on forever.”
“I’m better qualified than that.”
“Jack’s soft on odd people. It’s an endearing trait for a crooked police chief.”
“I saw that with Hideo Ashida.”
Kay said, “Hideo’s a twisted little pansy. He framed the Werewolf to get next to Dudley Smith. They put Bill Parker in the middle, and devastated him.”
Joan said, “He was devastated, and he did nothing. Bill put his career and the PD’s reputation before an innocent man’s life, and what will it do to his soul when Shudo goes to the gas chamber?”
Kay crossed herself. She formed the protty cross. She’s a prairie Lutheran.
“I know. Es
la verdad, muchacha.”
Joan squeezed Kay’s hands. “So, who tells him? Who holds him when he’s terrified and the world veers away from him? Who tells him that certain principles supersede his idiotic ambition?”
Kay laced up their fingers. “You’re saying, ‘Who gets him?’ ”
“Yes, I am.”
“There’s something that Lee used to tell his opponents, before the first-round bell.”
“Which was?”
“ ‘Luck, short of winning.’ ”
* * *
—
Joan drove home. She kept saying it. Captain J. W. Conville, Los Angeles PD.
She kept seeing it. The blue uniform. The silver bars. The rank parity with Dudley and Bill.
Two years from now. 1944. The war might well be over. America would win. She’d be twenty-nine then.
Joan pulled up to her courtyard. A prowl car was parked right in front of her. The driver’s window was down.
She walked over and looked in. Bill Parker was passed out in the front seat. A photograph was taped to the dashboard. It was sun-yellowed and bleached.
Winter, ’38. Bowler, Wisconsin. Big Earle Conville, shutterbug.
She’s sitting on a split-rail fence. She’s wearing a plaid shirt, jodhpurs, and lace-up boots. Her shotgun’s there in the frame.
Joan looked at Parker. She squared up his glasses and kissed the top of his head. He can’t weigh much. He’s not tall. He’s cumbersome at worst.
She pulled him out of the car and slung him over one shoulder. His gun belt bumped her. She tottered on her stupid high heels.
She lugged him inside her bungalow and laid him down on the bed. She unhooked his gun belt and took off his shoes.
A fresh rainstorm hit. She closed windows and kicked off her shoes. She sat at her desk and crossed herself like Kay did. She opened her lab notebook and wrote this:
“For better or worse, I am as one with this man.”
40
(LOS ANGELES, 6:00 A.M., 1/29/42)
He came in early. He locked the door. He had the lab free and clear.
He developed photo prints. He enhanced his snapshots of Dudley’s bayonet. He close-up shot his gold bar and microphotographed them both. Eureka. The mint marks matched.
Ashida clamped two photo slides and prepped his two-lens microscope. He’d prepared for this. He read gold textbooks and monographs. He gained metallurgical knowledge. He studied forge componentry and learned how gold spun and knit.
The L.A. Times supplied facts. Gold-heist sidebars laid out mining data. The stolen bars were forged from one Alaskan lode. He bet on knit bonds identically fused.
Dudley knew nothing of the gold heist and subsequent fire. He determined that at his swearing-in bash. The bayonet was stashed in Kyoho Hanamaka’s stash hole. It was the fetishistic apex of his Red/fascist cache.
Ashida dialed the two lenses. They maximum-magnified. He studied knit lines and melt marks and noted flaw patterns. He sifted them through his new knowledge. He concluded this:
His bar and Dudley’s bayonet. Separate-source items. They comprise a perfect match. They’re both gold-heist contraband.
Perfect symmetry. Dudley Smith. All roads intersect.
Ashida heard key-in-lock sounds. Ray Pinker opened the door. He said, “Hello, Lieutenant.” He shuffled his feet. He looked mortified.
Ashida said, “Is something wrong, sir?”
Pinker said, “I’m what’s wrong. I’m short on lawyer money, so I back-doored you. The Feds have got me cornholed, so I sold the plans for your photo device to the Mexican Staties. A Baja officer named Juan Pimentel brokered the sale.”
Ashida sighed. “You didn’t have to do that. I’ll be stationed in Ensenada. If the Staties require assistance, I’ll be happy to provide it.”
Pinker sighed. “God bless you, Hideo. And, before you say it, I’ll concede that I’m a shitheel. And, before you ask, I’ll kick back half the gelt.”
Joan Conville walked in. She sidestepped Pinker and Ashida. Pinker skulked back out the door. He dragged his feet. He looked hangdog.
Joan stood at Ashida’s desk. She looked in his microscope and adjusted the right- and left-side eyepieces. She dialed tight and saw the two photo blowups. She glimpsed the gold bar that he’d hid from her.
Ashida shut his eyes. He shut out Reckless Girl and Cunning Girl. He braced for her voice.
She said, “Well?”
Ashida opened his eyes. Reckless Girl and Cunning Girl stared him down. Shameless Girl. He saw suck marks on her neck.
“We both want the gold. You’ve withheld from me. That might be a good place to start.”
He stammered. His hands twitched. He fought back chills and nausea. He laid out what he’d withheld.
Joan said, “Half the gold’s mine. Don’t trifle with me. I’ll ruin you with Dudley Smith if you do.”
41
(LOS ANGELES, 11:00 A.M., 1/29/42)
Annie was goooooood. She laid on the gee-whiz. Her tell-me-more, sweetie? The cream de la cream.
Elmer adjusted his headphones. The wire gizmo covered his desk. He kicked his chair back and put his feet up.
The Vice squadroom was yawnsville. Elmer’s cubicle cocooned him. He heard party sounds and extraneous voices. Annie laid dat voodoo on old Saul.
She said, “That was Red Claire you were talking to, right? I’ll tell you this. She looks like a hophead. I know from hopheads, ’cause my kid brother’s one.”
Old Saul said, “I’ll credit Claire with a certain courage. She took that Parker and Lake pogrom that I told you about in her stride. Did I tell you that she converted to Catholicism a while back? It softened her regard for Parker, I’m afraid. They attend the same church and confess their specious woes to the same priest. I met the man at one of Claire’s tedious mixers. He impressed me as a fruitcake.”
Go, Annie, go! You gots me all voyeurizized!
Old Saul hacking-coughed. It fritzed up Elmer’s headphones. He said, “…and she’s prone to grandiose whim. To wit—this brutal cop-beast she’s shtupping. Her soul veers right as she poses left, and she thinks I don’t notice. To wit—she critiques my friendship with the esteemed racial scientist Lin Chung, who’s more politically savvy than ten Claire De Havens at their dilettante best.”
Annie lobbed a soft one. Gee-whiz meets sugar pie. “Racial science. It’s the same thing as ‘eugenics,’ right?”
Old Saul harrumphed. “Yes, and in that regard, I must concede that Hitler really does stand as the vanguard of a new world order. Who can fail to applaud his stand on euthanasia and the sterilization of mental misfits? Are we seriously to believe these idiot claims that he’s slaughtering Jews en masse? I pose that question as an informed Jew myself, and I’ll go on to add that all enlightened people must be ready to accommodate Hitler, should he win the war.”
Annie said, “Gee, Saul. You’ve really given this some serious thought.”
Elmer haw-hawed. Go, Annie! Skewer that bug-fucker!
Old Saul said, “Claire accedes to none of this, of course. She accedes to her cop-brute lover and passively condones his horrid beliefs, but she can’t comprehend the simple truth as far as Hitler is concerned.”
Party noise escalated. Elmer heard strange music. Annie came through, skunked.
“Welles…oh, dear…he’s put on weight.”
Old Saul said, “Orson was coddled in his crib and improperly toilet-trained. He wet his bed into his teens and still sucks his thumb when nobody’s looking. He eats too much, drinks too much, fucks too much, and sniffs too much cocaine. He’s a sucker for flattery and a shill for the OIACC—and every other acronym shuck that FDR’s ever dreamed up. Claire’s been known to orally copulate him in steam rooms—”
Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle popped in the door. They looked
hot-fevered. Elmer dumped his headphones.
Mike said, “There’s a callout. We’ve got three down at 46th and Central. Thad Brown wants you there.”
* * *
—
It was niggertown. It was Code 3, lights and siren. Jack Horrall decreed a hot rush.
Eight vehicles rolled. Lab car/foto car/morgue vans. Newton Station sleds ran escort.
Thad Brown ran the pole car. Breuning and Carlisle dogged him. Elmer bumper-locked them. Sirens blared god-awful loud.
It was one fucking big cop armada. It rolled eastbound and south. It magnetized street fools. They bug-eyed the white man’s hurried-up shit.
Call-Me-Jack was due later. He told Thad to tight-seal the location. It can’t be some triple shine killing. Shine killings drew zero heat.
Cop cars made like bumper cars. They siren-blared and snout-bashed civilian cars out of the way. The caravan strafed the jazz-club strip. Elmer gassed on the marquees.
Club Zamboanga, Port Afrique, Club Alabam. Pasteboard music clefs two stories high. Club Zombie, Ivy’s Chicken Shack, Mumar’s Mosque #3. The Church of the Living Dead and Congregation of the Congo. Rae’s Rugburn Room—the darktown dyke den.
There’s 46th. It’s a sharp left turn. Newton blues have got the crib cordoned off.
It’s a two-story backhouse. It’s dilapidated. The in-front house looks gutted. Note the surrounding crabgrass and discarded short dogs.
The caravan screeched up and braked all in sync. Fenders smashed and locked eight in a row. The blues stepped aside. Plainclothesmen hauled ass straight over and in.
Elmer elbowed up to the front. He got there first. He saw this:
It’s some jazz fiend/dope fiend/right-wing-geek klubhaus. There’s two pool tables. There’s ratty furniture. There’s a terp still. There’s a dry bar stocked with Mex mescal and tequila.
There’s a phonograph. There’s a sax, trombone, and trumpet dumped on a chair. There’s smut mags piled beside them. There’s Hitler pix taped to the walls. There’s Sinarquista flags interspersed.
