This Storm

by James Ellroy

It pertains to Rice-Kapek. It pertains to Watanabe. My lips are sealed past that. It’s all very hush-hush.

  Jack Webb bird-dogged Sid. Jack was a Belmont alum. He bird-dogged Ashida and Bucky Bleichert in high school. He bird-dogged cops now. He was the PD’s favored stooge-mascot.

  A hot dog vendor worked the front yard. Cops and reporters swarmed him. Ashida shut the window and rephotographed.

  He deployed a Man Camera variant. It merged Man Camera and Camera Camera and created a merged tableau. His goal was full depiction. Capture the klubhaus-deathhaus full on.

  Ashida shot baseboards and closet corners. He worked with and without flashbulbs and lights. He got the walls. He got stacks of Thunderbolt and Stormtrooper Magazine. He should print-dust them. They hadn’t been dusted. There was no powder residue.

  He shot every page. Thunderbolt featured hate diatribes and cheesecake pix. Ashida saw Wendell Rice’s wife in fishnet stockings. He recognized a contributor’s name. George Lincoln Rockwell penned a back-to-Africa screed. He praised “Ebony Führer” M. L. Mimms at great length. Elmer Jackson and Lee Blanchard braced Mimms and Rockwell. They’d posted their report.

  Rockwell, Navy pilot. Mimms, gold-heist periphery.

  Ashida shot wall cracks and warped floorboards. He saw shoe scuffs on both sides of the bed. The bed engaged heavy traffic. He knew that.

  The floor creaked behind him. The bedroom door creaked.

  “I brought you some lunch, Hideo. Worker bees have to eat sometime.”

  Ashida wheeled. Jack Webb tossed him a hot dog. Ashida tossed his camera on the bed and snagged it.

  Jack said, “I’d call you the world’s hardest-working white man, except you’re not white.”

  Ashida laughed and unwrapped the hot dog. Jack lounged in the doorway.

  “I’m chasing leads for Sid’s private dish sheet. Like, ‘Call-Me-Jack’s dragging his heels on cutting old Hideo loose for the Army.’ Like, ‘Jack wants to build a new crime lab before he retires, and Bill Parker or Thad Brown ascends to the throne.’ Like, ‘Jack’s got it bad for the Conville cooze, and he’s sending her to the Academy and swearing her in as a captain.’ She’ll command the division, and you’ll jump to civilian chief chemist. How do them apples sound?”

  Ashida ate half the hot dog and wiped his hands. Jack smirked. He was Mr. Insider’s scent dog. He sniffed out the dirt.

  “Tell me about the Reverend Mimms. He owns this property, and he impresses me as someone you and Sid would have the lowdown on.”

  Jack chortled. “Hideo Ashida says ‘lowdown.’ Coontown’s getting to him. He’ll be wearing zoot suits and poking colored girls before you know it.”

  “Come on, Jack. Mimms. You and Sid must know something.”

  Jack ticked points on his fingers. Jack aped the Sidster’s gruff growl.

  “Okay, boychik. He’s the white sheep of a prominent Negro family. He bilks his own people with that return-to-our-homeland shuck. He’s got a southside network of snitches reporting to him, and he reports to Jack the H. exclusive, because they’re pals from ‘The War to End All Wars.’ As a snitch himself, he always bypasses the Dudster and goes straight to Jack. He’s got his minions pushing maryjane, in corrosive counterpoint to these Armenian shits who push white horse under Jack’s aegis, with Dud as the middleman. Both these factions service an all-jig clientele, which is the way Jack H. and his unillustrious predecessor, Two-Gun Davis, think narcotics should play out in our town.”

  Ashida said, “And that’s all the news that’s unfit to print?”

  “Well, you got your costar in this Mimms drama. He’s this Navy flyboy named Link Rockwell. He’s the white Abbott to Mimms’ Costello. He passes through L.A. when he’s on leave, and he’s a bagman for these rich white guys who back the Rev’s deport-the-spooks agenda.”

  Ashida sifted it. His brain gears clicked and meshed. Mimms was sacrosanct. That scotched an approach.

  Jack said, “Mimms has got darktown hot-wired. He could help the PD out with this job, but you’d have to bypass Chief Jack. He don’t like to be reminded that he’s asshole tight with the Rev.”

  * * *

  —

  Reckless Girl went to lunch. He hid upstairs and watched her walk to Central Avenue. He deployed Man Camera. He close-up shot photo trails.

  He began downstairs and worked upstairs. He detail-shot the stairway to the landing and the bedroom door. He was a camera lens and shutter. He went objective and subjective. He posited this:

  He’s a left-handed killer. He walks Rice, Kapek, and Archuleta downstairs. He walks them individually. His victims are terped to the gills. He’s got his ice pick pressed to their necks.

  His victims flail and bounce off the walls. Note the wall pictures knocked to the floor.

  Man Camera. Let’s shoot reverse-angle snapshots downstairs.

  Ashida walked back down. He’s the killer. His victims have ingested carbolic acid. All three are near death. He positions them on the couch. He’s got his ice pick to their necks. He steadies them with it. He one-hand strangles them. Or—he has help.

  Ashida went back upstairs. He reversed field and walked from the bedroom door to the stairway. He Man Camera’d the right-side hallway wall and the floor-juncture points. He snapped the downed pictures. Palm trees and seascapes. Pix that came with the crib.

  Let’s shoot close-ups now. Let’s shoot those floor-juncture points.

  He did it. He snapped scuff-mark indentations. They were low on the wall. They were sharp-point indentations. They’re in with the dumped pictures. Dent, dent, dent—here to there:

  Straight across from the bedroom doorway. Dent, dent, dent—all along the right-side wall. Dent, dent, dent—terminating at the steps leading downstairs.

  Man Camera. Let’s hypothesize. Let’s hazard a guess.

  They’re scuff-mark indentations. They’re sharply pointed. They connote a woman wearing high-heeled shoes.

  It’s all theoretical. It’s inconclusive and unprovable at this point.

  Ashida walked into the bedroom. He dumped his Man Camera and opened his evidence kit. He studied photos of the semen-stained sheets.

  Four semen stains. Four differentiated blood types. Two O-positives. One O-negative. One rare RH-positive. Dr. Nort blood-tested the dead men. Archuleta was AB-neg/not applicable. Rice and Kapek were O-positive secretors. It was odds-on NA. O-positive was the most common white-European blood type.

  Whorehouse. Fuck flop. Acey-ducey antics. Differentiated jizz stains. Perverted acts performed. Performed with men, performed with women. There’s no way to tell.

  Did sex acts precede the murders? Did the victims or their killer or killers watch/abstain/perform? There’s no way to determine that.

  Ashida donned his headband light. He bent over the bed and went in close. He quadrant-scanned and saw five small hairs. He’d run two prior scans and missed them.

  Dark hairs, curled hairs. Surely pubic hairs. The three victims were dark-haired men.

  He tweezed the hairs and prepped his kit microscope. He dialed tight and scoped the hairs, one-off and collectively. He determined this:

  Three hairs are male. Two hairs are female. The maxilla circumference indicates gender. He’s not a physician. It’s Dr. Nort’s final call.

  Ashida walked downstairs. He grabbed the PD’s callout phone and buzzed Dr. Nort. He described the hair samples and said he’d bring them in. Dr. Nort said he’d compare them to the stiffs’ pubic hair.

  Reckless Girl was due back. Ashida walked upstairs and went back to work.

  He stifled shrieks. He quashed effete exhalations. It came on belatedly. He knew what it meant.

  The stains. The shit traces. Inverted sex acts. He ran from Reckless Girl. She understood inversion and called him an invert. He should have fought back.

  Ashida wiped his face and
caught his breath. He redusted. He redid touch-and-grab planes. He hit one dresser, two nightstands, the closet door and shelves. He got smudges, smears, distressed latents. He pulled a stack of phonograph records. The grooved plastic would thwart lifts. The covers would sustain.

  Jazz records. Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Obscure Negro ensembles. The klubhaus rolls heterodox.

  Ashida dusted. He powdered twenty-one album covers. He got smudges, smears, badly distressed latents. He dusted cover #22. Erskine Hawkins and his ’Bama State Collegians. The White Dog Blues.

  He got more smudges and smears, more badly distressed latents. He got one partial latent—a top-half fingertip.

  Ashida tape-lifted it and rolled it on blank cardboard. The partial looked near-familiar. He checked it against his elimination prints. No loops, whorls, and ridges matched. He saw the two Statie print cards that Dudley supplied. Hector Obregon-Hodaka and Kyoho Hanamaka.

  He instantly nixed Hanamaka. All his fingertips bore burn scars. He ran eye clicks. He clicked the partial to the Obregon-Hodaka card. He matched three comparison points. He fell short of a conclusive ID.

  He dusted four more album covers. He got smudges and glossy-surface smears.

  He got out Tommy Glennon’s address book. Ray Pinker pulled two Glennon latents off the front cover. He didn’t dust the pages. They were semigloss paper. They might sustain prints.

  Ashida flipped through the book. He got hackle bumps. Something seemed wrong. He noted four names. All four played wrong.

  Dr. Lin Chung.

  Dr. Saul Lesnick.

  Orson Welles.

  Wallace N. Jamie.

  Tommy Glennon’s a rape-o. Lesnick and Chung are dubious physicians. He knows their reputations himself. Jamie and Welles. A private eye and a film wunderkind. Those names, this address book. It does not logically track.

  The address book was pocket-sized. Page dusts were difficult work.

  Ashida adjusted his headband light. He placed the book atop the dresser and opened it flat. His car keys held it steady. He arrayed his powder and brushes and jumped—

  He got thumb-ruffle smears on page one. He got straight smears on page two. He got zero on pages three, four, and five. He got something on page six.

  It looked familiar. I’ve seen you before. You look like a smooth-glove print, but—

  You lie flat below the top-digit line. Glove prints don’t do that. I’ve got a hunch that I know what you are.

  Man Camera now. Strike an all-objective pose. Observe yourself as you do this.

  It’s auspicious. You’re trembling. Open your evidence kit. Pull that print card Dudley sent you. There it is. You willed it. Yes—it’s a perfect match.

  Kyoho Hanamaka. His burn-scarred right forefinger. The ghoul touched Tommy Glennon’s address book.

  53

  (LOS ANGELES, 2:30 P.M., 2/3/42)

  The boys are back in—

  Elmer and Buzz hit the Gordon Hotel. They parked their prowl sled on the sidewalk and opened strong. They pinned their badges to their sport coats and tornado’d the lobby. The desk clerk went Oh shit.

  Elmer went Oh shit. That selfsame guy worked the desk New Year’s Eve. He’d tossed Tommy G.’s room then. Buzz knew shit per all that.

  Rumdum tenants snoozed in chairs. A radio spieled war news. The fucking Japs stormed the Pacific. They barbecued white missionaries and keestered stray cats.

  The clerk said, “Gentlemen?”

  Buzz said, “We’re looking for Tommy Glennon. This is his last known address. We figure he might have come by for old times’ sake, or he might have had folks coming by to say hi.”

  The clerk eyeballed Elmer. Buzz retrieved the look. Elmer gulp-gulped.

  The clerk picked his nose. “Tommy skedaddled New Year’s Eve. He said, ‘Adios, muchacho,’ so I figured he was Mexico-bound. He gave me ten clams to store his boxes, which I summarily did.”

  Buzz slid him a ten-spot. “ ‘Summarily,’ huh? That’s fine for then, but now’s now, which means you should show us Tommy’s shit.”

  The clerk unlocked a door upside his switchboard. He pulled a light cord, all nice-nice.

  Elmer and Buzz stepped behind the desk and scoped the doorway. Elmer gulp-gulped. Buzz woo-woo’d Tommy’s shit.

  It was old news to Elmer and new news to Buzz. There’s Tommy’s New Year’s Eve gear.

  The smut books. The Jap flags and Nazi armbands. The tattoo stencils—swastikas and Sinarquista snakes.

  The clerk futzed with the switchboard. Buzz pulled Elmer in tight.

  “You seen all this before. How’s New Year’s Eve sound? You, Breuning, and Carlisle fluffed that stakeout on Tommy. You got this dimwit notion to go out rogue.”

  Elmer smiled and zipped his lips. Buzz said, “Who put that burr in your tail?”

  “I wasn’t about to shoot some fucker in cold blood. It all came down to the Dudster messing with me.”

  Buzz winked. “This partnership is starting to gel. We’re looking at some big fun.”

  * * *

  —

  Big fun, huh?

  Buzz tattled his own Dudley tale. It’s the Watanabe job, post–Pearl Harbor. Dud’s working a land grab. He’s out to snatch Jap property and promote boocoo gelt. Buzz extorts the mick fucker. He gets cash plus a biiiii­iiiii­iig bonus.

  Buzz had three pregnant girlfriends. Dud was tight with Huey Cressmeyer’s mom, Ruth Mildred. Ruthie was a licentious lez and defrocked physician. She worked at Columbia Pictures. She did all the film-goddess scrapes. She scraped Buzz’s girlfriends, gratis.

  Big fun, huh? Yeah—and Buzz figured this:

  Dud would up and kill him. He’d frame some jigs for it and get away clean. He figured he should bide his time and kill Dud first.

  Big fun, huh?

  Elmer perched in Lyman’s back room. Lunch was two highballs and three bennies. He was alone. The rest of the Crash Squad was gonesville. Buzz was occupied elsewhere.

  They went by Huey C.’s bungalow and saw Dud’s prowl car out front. They staked the crib and saw Dud lead Huey outside. Huey’s face was glue-smeared. Huey was glued to the planet Mars. Dud tossed him in his car and drove off.

  Address-book duty loomed. Elmer had dropped Buzz at St. Vibiana’s. His gig: brace Monsignor Joe Hayes. Elmer drove to Lyman’s then. His gig: bone up on Jean Clarice Staley.

  Jean bounced for maryjane, back in ’36. He knew that already. It was old news. Lee Blanchard posted a background-check note. Jean Staley was allegedly an ex–Paramount starlet. She works as a carhop now. Blanchard attached a mug-shot strip. The Jeanstress wore glasses and still looked goooooooood. Blanchard closed out his note: “Additional file at Red Squad office/Wilshire Station.”

  Oooga-booga. That’s food for thought.

  The Red Squad was hush-hush. It was cloak-and-dagger and a one-man show. Lieutenant Carl Hull lock-and-keyed the files at the Wilshire DB. Hull was in the Navy now. Hull was an ardent anti-Red and pal of Whiskey Bill Parker. Hull hoarded one file set only:

  The Communist Party (U.S.A.), its own self.

  * * *

  —

  Parker greased the skids. The Crash Squad rated top access. He called Whiskey Bill. Whiskey Bill called Wilshire. The watch boss opened the office and found the file.

  Some file. It ran mucho brief. Tortilla-thin meets threadbare.

  Elmer sat at Carl Hull’s desk and put his feet up. He looted Hull’s cigar and liquor stash and got comfy. He read through the file. There’s our girl:

  Staley, Jean Clarice. White female American. DOB: 1/28/09/Beaumont, Texas.

  Jean graduates high school, 1926. Jean migrates to L.A. Jean’s mom and dad kick in a dust storm, summer ’32. Jean’s got a kid brother. Robert Arthur Staley’s a homo prostitute. He does a two-spot juvie bounce at Preston. Jean does tha
t reefer bounce. Before that, there’s this:

  She’s live-wire CP. She’s in a cell with four other Reds. She carries the card. She toes the Red line and wears the Red beret. She’s a part-time starlet and full-time Red reptile.

  The cell boss is one Meyer Gelb. Jean’s cellmates are a beaner named Jorge Villarreal-Caiz and two Commos—

  Oops—

  Named Lesnick.

  Dr. Saul. Dr. Saul’s daughter, Andrea.

  It’s old home week. Small world, huh? What goes around comes around. Life’s one big circle jerk. It’s who you know and who you blow.

  Old Saul. Annie Staples’ trick. Ed Satterlee’s snitch. Psych doc of Orson Welles and Claire De Haven. Fuck-flop target of Sergeant E. V. Jackson.

  Elmer skimmed file sheets. They ran threadbare. He ran dozy. An occurrence sheet jerked him awake.

  October ’33. That very hot month. The PD Arson Squad rousts the cellmates.

  Per the Griffith Park fire. The blaze that scorched Wayne Frank. It’s all Meyer Gelb’s fault. He made “apocalyptic remarks.” He predicted “big antifascist chaos.”

  The rousts went nowhere. Gelb retracted his remarks. The hullabaloo died out.

  Kay Lake jive-talked this deal called the Spiritus Mundi. It’s some eastern swami hoodoo. It’s the place where all our shit coheres and our souls intersect.

  Elmer got the heebie-jeebies. Kay just sold him on the Spiritus Mundi. Woo-woo—he’s heading there now.

  * * *

  —

  The carhops hopped on skates. They hopped cars-to-kitchen, round-trip. They wore red-and-white tunics and puffed-leg slacks. The girls looked good and hopped good. Jean Staley looked and hopped the best.

  Simon’s Drive-in stood across from Hollywood High. It was a streamline-moderne job. Cars circled a walkway ramp and an inside counter. Some bleached-blond cooze hopped Elmer. He popped her for whore vag in ’39. She didn’t recognize him.

  Elmer sipped a pineapple malt. He spiked it with Old Crow and three bennies. Jean Staley hopped cars in his perv-view. He watched her sling burgers and glom tips.