by James Ellroy
Constanza laughed outright. She covered her mouth, double quick. She had pronounced buck teeth.
“I was Kyoho Hanamaka’s lover. He showed me the gold bayonet you later found at his hideaway. Like you, I had heard of a companion piece, adorned with Soviet symbols.”
“I mentioned the Communist bayonet to your brother. Let me hazard a guess here. You had his living room bugged.”
“Yes. Again, I’ll state that you are very perceptive.”
Their hands were close. Dudley touched her fingers.
“Again, I’ll state that you are telling me quite a great deal.”
Constanza squeezed his hand. “You want the gold. Men like you deem such treasures irresistible. I share your desire, body and soul.”
The barge lurched. Dudley lurched. The room went double hot. He saw gold bars that weren’t really there.
“Do you know where it is, or who has it? As much as it pains me to ask, does your brother know?”
Constanza said, “I don’t know, nor does my brother. Kyoho most likely knows—but he is hiding somewhere undisclosed in the U.S.”
The room went triple hot. Dudley fluffed his napkin and wiped his face. Constanza leaned in and undid his necktie.
“Much of this dates back to a fire in Los Angeles. Kyoho and Comrade Gelb were burned there. Gelb lays the source of his wounds on the Spanish Civil War, which is rubbish. Kyoho tells a similarly self-serving lie. My brother and I know all of this—but no more.”
“And you don’t know who has the gold now?”
“The alliance that I have described to you has many layers of buffering. The top few men surely know the status of the gold. My brother is just a minor cog, who tells me things. I am a woman, and no cog at all.”
Dudley cracked their window and roused some gulf air. Constanza opened her clutch and removed a vial of perfume. She daubed her left wrist and held out her arm. Dudley took her hand and kissed the scented spot.
“And the Kameraden’s ultimate plans for the gold?”
“The establishment and implementation of a strategy of escape, resettlement, and credible exoneration. Select members of the world’s great totalitarian regimes, collaborating toward that end. Beyond that end, I know only of plans to hoard the gold and invest in U.S. defense industries, to further induce gratitude in our presumed conquerors, and to increase the likelihood that the new identities of our comrades will not be revealed.”
Dudley said, “Darling, you are recklessly impolitic. However much your revelations excite me.”
Constanza said, “I know something about you. The gold would be incomplete for you without a woman.”
* * *
—
Dawn broke bright and warm. Ensenada looked drab. La Paz creamed it, hands down. Ensenada was T.J. South. La Paz was Saint-Tropez for Irish arrivistes.
Dudley elevatored up to his suite. He was dead bushed. He closed that harborside haunt with Constanza and caught a late Army flight back.
He yawned and saw fatigue spots. He unlocked the door and saw Beth asleep on the couch.
The bedroom door stood ajar. Overhead lights snapped on. He heard radio hum.
He walked in. The fatigue spots made him blink. Claire threw herself at him.
She hit his chest and spit in his face.
She clawed at his mouth.
She ripped the buttons off his coat and tore the captain’s bars off his shoulders.
She beat at his face.
She defamed his redheaded whore and hexed her in Hell.
She called him a “fascist insect.”
She called him a “cowardly killer.”
She hurled herself up at him and bit off a piece of one ear.
It’s Dublin again. It’s 1919. He’s out sniping British soldiers. He comes home to Maidred Conroy Smith. She wields her razor strop.
84
KAY LAKE’S DIARY
(LOS ANGELES, 9:00 A.M., 3/4/42)
I waited on my front porch. I was to be Otto’s goodwill ambassadress and accompany him to Union Station. We would greet four Austro-Hungarian string players, late of Nazi concentration camps. A cryptically defined relief organization had secured their release and brought them here via steamship, transport airline, and overnight train trek from Baja. The extravagantly generous Maestro had secured them courtyard apartments in Santa Monica. My contribution was good cheer and a grocery bag stuffed with two-dollar champagne and paper cups.
The day was bright and cool; I glanced across the street and down to the Strip. A PD prowl car was parked at the curb, just above Sunset. I had no doubts as to the occupant. This is what Captain Bill Parker does. He perches outside the homes of provocative young women and plots his next move. He intrudes, he entraps, he blunderingly seduces. Ask yours truly and the late Joan Conville.
Bill had something on his mind now. Provocation abets provocation. I had sent Joan’s diary special delivery. He’d received it, read it, and wanted to talk.
Otto’s big Chrysler turned left on Wetherly and headed up to me; the chauffeur wheeled a clumsy U-turn and bumped the curb in front of my house. I walked over and hopped in the back. The Maestro kissed my cheek and wrangled me in. We passed the prowl car, southbound. Bill slept behind the wheel. Incident recalls incident. Joan returned home from a party at the Maestro Manse and found Bill parked outside. She wrote her first diary pages with Bill passed out on her bed.
It was a half-hour drive downtown, and Otto wanted to yak. I positioned myself on his good side and played to his vanity. The brain tumor had constricted his facial muscles and marred his fierce good looks. It made conversation difficult and frustrated a man born to yak at great length. Otto is six-foot-seven and disposed to yak and command. When Otto yaks, one listens.
We lit cigarettes. Otto settled in to run discourse. Dr. Saul Lesnick had diagnosed the tumor. Otto credited Dr. Saul with saving his life; I credited Dr. Saul with the array of damning mischief exposed in Joan’s diary.
The Maestro held forth. He was composing a nightmare tone poem in the Richard Strauss–Elektra mode. The piece would depict events that had occurred in his own haunted house. Declining chords would portray a murderous occurrence in Nazi Germany’s past and sequentially link it to a rumored reenactment in his own home. The orchestral part would subside to a hush then. Low-register piano chords would announce the first of his brain-tumor blackouts.
The Maestro yakked orchestral structure, and paused only to light cigarettes. I squeezed in a few questions about our goodwill mission and how our exile chums had escaped Europe. Otto cited vague rumors. Exoneration-minded Nazis had bounced for their repatriation. They were moved out on a transport flight to Mexico; the airplane was loaded up with precious mercury ore for the return flight. Our exiles comprised a first refugee wave. Otto said it seemed like a ruse to him; exoneration-minded Russians were purportedly releasing prisoners to establish their own humanitarian credentials.
The blithe hypocrisy stunned me. I asked Otto where he picked up the “vague rumors.” He said, “A chatty Communist named Meyer Gelb told me. The man impressed as fraudulent, so perhaps the rumors themselves are just propaganda or idle schmooze of some sort.”
Meyer Gelb appeared in Joan’s diary. Joan met him at the Maestro Manse. His Communist cellmates Jean Staley and Saul and Andrea Lesnick attended the same party. The cell was scrutinized in the Griffith Park fire inquiry. Joan considered the cell germane to the welter of cases that had so consumed her and Hideo Ashida. I asked Otto how he came to meet Meyer Gelb. Otto said, “He’s Saul Lesnick’s analysand. Saul invites him to my parties.”
* * *
—
We found our chums by the taxi stand outside Union Station. They stood by a large mound of luggage and stringed-instrument cases. It was an up-to-the-moment Ellis Island snapshot. They weren’t quite the huddled masses. They
looked exhausted and apprehensive and exhibited not one ounce of relief.
Sandor Abromowitz fell into Otto’s arms; they were former comrades from the Berlin Opera. The Koenigs were heavyset, frail, and proud. I carried their luggage, but they refused to take my arm for support. Magda Koenig gave me the stink eye. She figured me for a party-crashing dilettante and Otto’s young whore. Ruth Szigeti was thin and wobbled on brand-new high heels. She took my arm and wasted no time bumming a cigarette. Her flat, straight hair and hollow cheeks were straight out of Brecht and the horror musicales of Weimar Berlin. She had schizophrenic gray-green eyes and warmed to the notion of brushing against me. I pegged her as a lezbo or at least an avant-garde creature who veered any and all ways.
The gang piled into Otto’s imperial-sized auto. The chauffeur pulled down the jump seat, but we were still strapped for room. The Maestro yanked fat Abromowitz up on his lap; the frail Koenigs scrunched in side by side. The jump seat was narrow and built for one only. I staked my claim and hopped onto it. Ruth Szigeti staked her claim and hopped onto my lap. She said, “Do you mind, Liebchen?” I said, “Given your ordeal, how could I?”
The chauffeur pointed us westbound on Wilshire Boulevard. Otto played host and served up my bargain-basement champagne. War and music talk bubbled in English, French, and German. There was no talk of death camps or the oppression of Jews in Hitler’s Germany. An implicit pact rendered the topic verboten. I stifled my curiosity and kept my mouth shut.
Otto was throwing a party tonight. He announced it and leaned back to read reactions. Mr. Abromowitz and the Koenigs went stone-faced. Ruth Szigeti said, “Will you be there, Liebchen?” I assured her that I would be and summoned up my own ideal guest list.
Claire De Haven and Meyer Gelb. There’s two party cards. I’d love to meet Communist carhop Jean Staley. What about Dr. Saul and Andrea Lesnick? I went back to Bill Parker’s incursion with them and would adore a chance to get reacquainted. Don’t forget Orson Welles, Dudley’s newly cowed informant. He might be in the market for a new steam room pal.
Magda Koenig gagged on cigarette smoke and rolled down a window. I looked out and saw that a PD prowl car was providing an escort. Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle sat in the front seat; a man in Mexican Statie garb sat in the back. Breuning looked over and saw me. I waved; he waved back. Carlisle yelled, “Hey there, Kay!”
Mrs. Koenig rolled up her window and cut off the exchange. I got chills in an overheated limo. Ruth Szigeti jiggled into me and draped an arm around my neck.
Joan’s diary. Dudley Smith’s orbit. The ubiquity of a single rogue policeman.
We journeyed through Beverly Hills and West L.A. A sea breeze welcomed us to Santa Monica. The chauffeur turned north on 4th Street and pulled up in front of a palm-lined courtyard. Our exile chums got out and surveyed their new home. Ruth Szigeti reluctantly undraped me. Her left blouse sleeve had rolled up; I saw knife scars and an ominous tattoo.
I got out last. I smelled salt air and watched the prowl car park behind us. The chauffeur unloaded the luggage and instruments; Otto escorted the gang to their new digs. The Maestro owned numerous beachside properties, the Seabreeze Court among them. He was forfeiting rental income from three bohemian bungalows. Otto Klemperer defined noblesse oblige.
I lagged back and strolled over to the prowl car. Breuning and Carlisle were piling gift baskets on the hood of the sled. The baskets featured withered fruit and cheese of the hold-your-nose ilk.
The Statie introduced himself. He was Captain Juan Pimentel. The captain was an emissary of Governor Juan Lazaro-Schmidt and the governor’s friend Dudley Smith. The baskets denoted the governor’s warm bienvenidos to our immigrant pals.
Pimentel impressed me as a vicious little shit. His spiel indicted the repatriation plan as a shuck. Meyer Gelb had uttered “vague rumors.” That was suspect in itself.
Pimentel clicked his heels. “Your new Americans are the first wave of the governor’s humanitarian effort to rescue persecuted Jews from the horrors of fascist Germany.”
I pointed to his SS-style hat. His spit-shined jackboots and flap-holstered Luger were just as snazzy. I said, “I’m all for the rescue of persecuted Jews, but I must note that you dress fasco yourself.”
Pimentel clicked his heels. It expressed disdain and moral confusion. He clicked his heels again. It gave him something to do and suppressed his urge to kill infidel women.
Breuning and Carlisle cracked grins. That Kay Lake’s a sketch. I’d belted a few with Sid Hudgens at the PD’s New Year’s bash. The Sidster plied his crazy craft. He called Mike and Dick “maladroit mastiffs on a mission to maul for their master.” And, who’s their master?
Who else but?
* * *
—
Rain drove the party indoors. That was okay by me. Joan described the Maestro Manse as a lodestone for the Meyer Gelb–Saul Lesnick set. I came to perch and observe. Sid Hudgens had attended numerous Klemperer soirées. He called them “bilious bacchanals and Baedekers of early-wartime indulgence.” Sid was right about that. The Klemperer crowd came to harangue, gesticulate, bloviate, and dubiously critique. I was there to worry the Griffith Park fire and the proximity of Meyer Gelb’s cell.
I stationed myself on the second-floor landing and looked down on the huge main room. I had been home to change clothes and see if Bill Parker was still poised to pounce. He wasn’t. He’d be back, though. He’d have Joan’s diary memorized and worried down to page pulp.
The party swirled below me. Mr. Abromowitz and the Koenigs beat back admirers; Ruth Szigeti drifted off with Barbara “Butch” Stanwyck. Party delirium had set in. Folks harangued, gesticulated, bloviated, and dubiously critiqued. Cigarette smoke obscured faces. Saul Lesnick arrived with a zaftig young woman. I recognized her. It was Annie Staples, Elmer and Brenda’s college-girl vixen. Elmer told me she was jobbing Dr. Saul for the Feds. Elmer had worked the camera at Brenda’s Miracle Mile trick spot, and had caught Annie’s act.
Orson Welles arrived. I noticed his plastic-surgery scars straight off. The Sidster told me that Terry Lux did the plastic job. It smoothed out the obvious signs of the Dudster’s thumping. Claire arrived, with two young girls in tow. The older girl was Beth Something. She was Dudley’s reputed spawn. I made the younger girl as Joan Something. She was Dudley and Claire’s enfant sauvage. Joan Conville’s diary supplied explication. Joan Something perplexed Dudley. He found her otherworldly and considered her a counterpart to his fantasy wolf. Claire was haggard, ever the doomed poetess. I knew her MO. She’d seek out Dr. Saul and hit him up for a fix.
The party would run late. Otto’s parties always did. I had time for an interregnum before I hit the main floor. I ducked into the conservatory and sat down at the piano. “Sonata Reminiscenza” was embedded within me and fully memorized. I decided to play it all the way through.
The piece demands a meditative approach. It is both pictorial and diffuse. The piece depicts recollection and portrays the sweet heartbreak of time lost and recalled. I always mark the moment as I sit down to practice it. Today is March 4, 1942. I am twenty-two years old and have knocked around a bit. A late and dear friend of mine willed me some words she wrote. The words comprise a debt I must repay and punitive measures I must enact. This is for Joan Woodard Conville.
So, I played. I hit notes too soft, too hard, and just right. I veered off the established score and hit notes to the words “This storm, this savaging disaster.” I veered back to the score and lost myself in shifting tempos. Someone entered the room behind me; I heard rudely loud footsteps in approach.
“You’re playing Nikolai Medtner. I hate him, because he hates the Bolsheviks.”
I stopped playing and looked up. Joan Something stood to the right of the bench. She wore a red party dress I’d seen Claire in. A tailor had altered the sleeves and hemline to fit someone much smaller. Joan Something was fifteen or sixteen and
discernably otherworldly. She wore dark-framed glasses; her black hair bore gray streaks.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name.”
“Sure, you do. My aunt Claire says you know everything. I’m Comrade Joan, and you’re Comrade Kay, but you’re really not much of a comrade if you like Medtner.”
I said, “Rachmaninoff hates the Bolsheviks. Scriabin hated them, as well. I’d say that puts Medtner in good company.”
“You think you’re clever, but you’re really just glib. Rachmaninoff and Scriabin are yesterday’s news. Comrade Shostakovich is au courant. I’m part of the collective that’s smuggling in his new symphony, in case you think I’m just a silly young girl who has no business being in Comrade Otto’s house.”
She spoke Brooklynese. She had Dudley Smith’s small brown eyes. She flexed her jaw while she spoke and glared more than looked at you. Her part in the smuggling effort surprised me. I felt confluences merge.
“It was nice of you to come up for this party, Comrade. I’m sure Comrade Otto appreciates it.”
Comrade Joan lowered her voice. She leaned against the piano and dropped into stage-whisper range.
“I’ve gone undercover down in Mexico. My fake dad’s an Army officer in Ensenada. My aunt Claire’s his lover, but I don’t think for much longer. My mock dad’s a fascist, but he’s nice to women, even though he cheats on Aunt Claire. He’s got a wife and five real daughters, and his illegitimate daughter is nice, but she’s stupid and boy crazy.”
I said, “You’re very perceptive, Comrade.”
The girl swooped over to the low-register keys. She sat down at the bench and banged the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth. She did it one time, two times, three times—each time harder and faster. I looked over my shoulder and saw Claire De Haven standing in the doorway.
We stared at each other and nodded in sync. Comrade Joan hopped off the bench and ran to her mock mom. They disappeared down the hallway.
