This Storm

by James Ellroy

  The Jews were Commies and big anti-Nazis. Ruth and friends snitched them out for asylum. Their life savings bought them tickets to Mexico and the U.S. The dead three hundred were musicians and college profs. The death-squad Nazis were distantly allied with Meyer Gelb. The slaughter warned Comrade Gelb. His postwar scheme was a distant jerk-off dream at this moment. It could go blooey at any point.

  Ruth was braced in advance of the slaughter. You will survive. You will emigrate and inform. You will facilitate extortion. You will fink at Comrade Gelb’s behest.

  Comrade Gelb. Comrade Jean Staley’s shakedown boss. Comrade Elmer bought Comrade Jean off and scared her out of L.A. Comrade Elmer derailed Comrade Gelb’s current shakedown play. Comrade Elmer’s a big hero to Ruth Szigeti and friends.

  The Koenigs and old man Abromowitz have crowned him their king. Ruth throws herself at him in bed. Ruth’s omnivorous. She throws herself at cocktail waitresses and pizza-delivery boys. It doesn’t faze him. Her big hurt fazes him. He plays the fool to quash the hurt and make her laugh.

  Ruth runs abrupt. She whips him the woof-woof and hops out of bed to practice her violin. He lives to jolly her and eradicate her grief for a while. She flaunts her death-camp tattoo. He tickles it and makes her howl. He tells her Marine Corps and cop stories and lays on the laffs.

  They’re both treading quicksand. He’ll escape his patch or he won’t. She’s got it worse than him. Her quicksand is all in her memory—and it sure as shit won’t go away.

  103

  (LOS ANGELES AND BAJA, 3/12–3/25/42)

  Fractures.

  Fissures.

  Absences.

  Checkmates.

  Stalemates.

  Abandonments.

  Banishments.

  Rifts.

  Claire left him. Young Joan left him. Beth left him. His Mexican family has cut him adrift. Juan Pimentel is dead. Hideo Ashida has been imprisoned. Salvy Abascal is off, preoccupied. He’s running their biz ventures sans Salvy’s aid and Greenshirt collaboration. He’s neglecting his Army duties and his triple-murder case. The gold quest lies dormant. Army doctors have diagnosed Hideo’s “advanced fugue state.”

  Hideo masterminded the gold quest and their three-case inquiries. Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle have been removed from the klubhaus job. A hostile faction runs that investigation now. Elmer Jackson and Buzz Meeks are running rogue. Elmer read Joan’s diary. The rogue redneck knows the gold heist and fire jobs intimately.

  He misses Claire. He misses Young Joan. He misses Beth. His wife and daughters have booked passage to Ireland. He misses Hideo most poignantly.

  Hideo killed Juan Pimentel. A lust motive glimmers there. A hidden closet was revealed at chez Hanamaka. It was packed with garish costumes. Captain Juan’s severed tongue was found on the floor. Responding Staties noted Hideo’s blood-smeared lips.

  Hideo has withheld from him. He senses that. His hideous omissions feel paradoxically defined. Juan Pimentel’s death plays non sequitur. He interfered in some vexatious manner and caused Hideo to react. Hideo was doing microdot work at the SIS lab. Singed cardboard and misplaced equipment suggest it. The microdot work revealed something. Hideo is near catatonic and in no shape to tell him what.

  He had requisitioned a full range of three-case paperwork. A range of newly discovered files was cached within it. He gave the paperwork to Hideo to study and analyze. He searched Hideo’s quarters in Ensenada and L.A. The paperwork has gone missing. Hideo remains his sole hope for a three-case solution and shot at the gold.

  Missing paperwork. Three-case principals, missing in action.

  Link Rockwell—in Navy custody. Díaz, Carbajal, Santarolo—in Fed custody. James Edgar Davis—exiled to Terry Lux’s retreat.

  Count Joe Hayes missing. He called the Archbishop and requested a formal chat with Monsignor Joe. His Eminence brusquely refused. Count Orson Welles missing. He’s off carousing and moviemaking. He’s an unproven snitch, so far.

  Impasses.

  Stalemates.

  Checkmates.

  Credit Bill Parker’s strategic aplomb.

  Jack Horrall has not returned his phone calls. Parker’s Fed maneuvers have put Jack squarely in his debt. Thad Brown has fallen under Parker’s pious spell. The two great rivals for postwar Chief of Police. Now allied against Dudley L. Smith.

  He’s made moves to restore a counterbalance. He’s requisitioned a second set of three-case paperwork. He’s saving it for Hideo’s hopeful return to health.

  Hideo haunts him. He pulled strings with U.S. Army courts and secured binding writs. Hideo will not stand trial for the murder of Juan Pimentel. He will not rot in Leavenworth or a Mexican prison. Hideo will be interned at a U.S. relocation center later this month.

  Three-case paperwork will await him. The U.S. Army is building him his own crime lab. Hideo will waltz the day that fascist Japan surrenders.

  Countermeasures.

  Logical applications.

  Counterbalancing tasks.

  Kyoho Hanamaka haunts him. He’s the crux of all explication. He’s the secret sharer. The gold heist and fire precede his tour of fascist-Communist hot spots. His friendship with Meyer Gelb precedes. His German-Russian schooling sets the course of hellish events to come. The gold is hoarded and left to snowball in value. World war looms as inevitable. Hanamaka envisions a postwar brotherhood. The gold will finance the survival of totalitarian rogues in extremis. A conspiracy is born. Murderous pratfalls occur. Personal agendas surface. 1942 marks a chaotic nexus. He must exploit it.

  Countermeasures.

  He’s issued a second APB on Kyoho Hanamaka. He’s tapped police agencies, jails, hospitals. Plus relocation centers and travel hubs. He’s blanketed Mexico and the U.S. Kyoho Hanamaka—arrest and detain.

  Countermeasures.

  Makework.

  Tasks to tether him.

  He’s adrift. He’s not demoralized. Constanza tethers him. They thrive as one imagination. Constanza loves the Wolf and trusts in his powers. They envision the gold and lust for it as one shared dream. Brother Juan lusts for the gold—but lacks their imagination. Brother Juan attended the ’40 conference. He knows things he might not have revealed. Constanza was Herr Hanamaka’s lover. She rutted with the one man who knows the whole story. Her body consecrates their dream quest.

  Constanza withholds from him. He’s yet to brace her. He needs to know the mail-drop secrets of box 1823. He falters with women, on occasion. It’s his Achilles’ heel.

  Constanza’s passion exceeds Claire’s. Terry Lux told him that Claire is kicking morphine at his retreat. Kay Lake urged the treatment and visits Claire daily. The Wolf views Kay Lake suspiciously and considers her a deadly proposition. His own opinion vacillates and finally rests at disbelief. The Lake girl is grandiose and heedless to her core. Claire has always overestimated her and vilified her to a fault. Kay Lake and Claire De Haven now live in rapprochement. They are casualties of early-wartime L.A. Only the war could have spawned such a fatuous misalliance.

  He found Claire’s morphine stash in their hotel suite. He injects the drug periodically. He drifts off on a cloud where no woman ever beats or betrays him.

  104

  KAY LAKE’S DIARY

  (LOS ANGELES AND BAJA, 3/12–3/25/42)

  We were fated, Bill and I. He knocked on my door last December 6; he’d concocted an injudicious plan to entrap Communists and recruited me on the day before Pearl Harbor. He instilled my bitter loathing of Dudley Smith and introduced me to Claire De Haven. I was sucker bait for the heady series of events that have followed. I was at loose ends, in the Joan Conville manner. Bill hopped from crush to crush and ensnared us both. He pointed Joan on her way to self-immolation and allowed me to glimpse a blithe evil that I cannot turn my back on. The late diarist has provided the current diarist with the means to recti
fy her botched knife assault. I shouldn’t have done it; I could not have taken a human life and lived with the consequences. And why kill when one can facilitate a self-immolation of the sort that consumed my dear friend?

  Joan’s words indicted Dudley. I will draft a freshly revised indictment. It will take various epistolary forms. I will create scripts for the Catholic Bill and Claire to perform for their confessor, Joe Hayes. The scripts will contain innuendo and misinformation calculated to push Dudley to blunder. Dudley is blunder-prone now. Elmer told me that Salvy Abascal has monumentally betrayed him, and has hinted at possible deadly ramifications. Dudley collects protégés. Witness Mike Breuning, Dick Carlisle, and—most auspiciously—Hideo Ashida. I encountered Breuning at Lyman’s a week back. He was in his cups and mourning the loss of some essential Dudley Smith. He told me that Dudley’s women are leaving him, one by one. Dudley’s corps of able and compliant men must be made to follow. This is the basic design of my malicious levy of words.

  Hideo’s current gambit is no words. I have visited him at the Army stockade and am convinced that he is feigning a catatonic state. He is doing this in order to circumvent confrontation and capitulation in all matters pertaining to Dudley Smith. Dudley Smith and Hideo Ashida love each other deeply. Dudley’s love is fraternal. It’s the love of a brutalized Irish boy who saw British soldiers murder his brother, leaving him alone to suffer the whims of a sodden and vicious mother. Dudley holds Hideo Ashida to be James Conroy Smith, reborn. Dudley worships brilliance and mastery and possesses the generous gift of acknowledging it in all manner of people. He sees Hideo as his fascist-utilitarian kin. Hideo’s love for Dudley is wholly lustful and at odds with his fulsome knowledge of Dudley’s evil.

  Hideo has omitted and withheld from Dudley. Dudley will not crack unless Hideo cracks first. Dudley sees the Smith-Ashida alliance as a perfect wartime union. Hideo sees it as a vouchsafe of his wartime survival and fugitive sexual urge.

  I will rob Hideo of his early-wartime love. I will covertly engage and collaborate with early-wartime fury and racial animus. I will rip Hideo free of Dudley Smith—so help me God.

  I am possessed of a ghastly agency here. The war facilitates me; I consider the war to be a dear friend. I worship catastrophe in the manner of the nineteenth-century romantics. Chaos vitalizes me and assigns me tasks. I accede to the fact that this is my personal madness.

  The war gave me the great Otto Klemperer and his nightmare story of beating a man to death. The war gave me a small part in the American passage of Shostakovich’s new symphony. The war gave me a brief colloquy with an imbecilic monster.

  I’ve been visiting Claire during her dope cure at Terry Lux’s clinic. Jim Davis is now enrolled there. Two male nurses were walking him back from the infirmary. He recognized me from various PD functions and said hi.

  I asked him how it felt to betray your country and side with fascist and Communist killers. I asked him why he molested underaged girls. I asked him how it felt to disembowel four human beings and let an innocent man take the rap.

  Davis didn’t seem to understand me. Terry most likely had him doped up.

  Claire and Chief Jim head the sick list; numerous three-case witnesses top the custody list. Hideo Ashida remains in stir. The internment push has leveled Japanese communities throughout Los Angeles County. City jails, work farms, and barracks shantytowns overflow with imprisoned Japanese. They’ll soon be scoured Jap-free. The exodus to permanent relocation centers will kick into high gear. Hideo Ashida will head northeast to the Owens Valley. Dudley Smith will surely enhance his accommodations. I might run into the Dudster some fine visitors’ day.

  105

  (LOS ANGELES, 8:00 A.M., 3/25/42)

  Exodus, 7:14. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Pharaoh’s heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go.”

  He watched. He pointed his binoculars east and tracked the migration. He’d spent his last free night at the Biltmore Hotel. A high terrace supplied the view.

  Whole families trudged. They pulled handcarts piled with luggage and folded overcoats. Prowl cars trailed them. FBI men walked alongside. The pickup spot was north-northeast. Army buses revved their engines there.

  Ashida watched. He stood by himself. His mother and brother had already been interned. They were sequestered at Heart Mountain. He was Manzanar-bound. The Owens Valley. Up in the Sierras. A two-temperature zone. Broiling heat, freezing cold.

  He got off lucky. There would be no Mexican jail or U.S. prison. He sidestepped death by torture and brutal mistreatment. All praise to Dudley Smith.

  Manzanar would suit him. Preferential treatment had been arranged. Dudley assured him of that. He canned his I’m catatonic act. They had a nice chat.

  He detailed the text of the microdot postcards. He laid out Juan Pimentel’s spy-ring complicity. He did not snitch off the two Lazaro-Schmidts.

  Dudley was Constanza’s lover. She was spy-ring complicit. Dudley would or would not determine this for himself.

  He played God with Dudley. It was a jilted-lover move. He employed need-to-know tactics with Dudleyesque aplomb. He apologized for killing Pimentel. It left Dudley’s “business fronts” understaffed.

  Dudley took it all in. There were no accusations. There were no probes or digs per the murder and no displays of pique.

  They embraced. They vowed to retain close contact. Ashida pledged his loyalty.

  I’ll remain assiduous. I’ll study any and all files you provide. I’ll press for a three-case solution and shot at the gold.

  Dudley said, “Chin up, lad. We’ll both survive and prevail.” Dudley evinced psychopathic good cheer.

  That was last night. He trained up from Baja then. He packed one suitcase and ordered a last room-service meal. He slept on the living room couch. Early sunlight roused him.

  Ashida walked out. He affixed his blinders and took the back service stairs down. He cut through the lobby and walked north on Olive. The migration was due east. He looped in west of the swarm.

  He cut east on 1st Street and passed Central Station. He took a last look up at the crime lab. The pickup spot was dead ahead.

  He dawdled over. Two hundred Japanese huddled at 1st and Los Angeles. They pushed off the sidewalk and covered the street. Four buses were double-parked.

  Army noncoms cinched luggage to above-the-bus racks. They unloaded handcarts and checked names off clipboard lists. Men, women, children. Knots of four, five, and six. Name tags pinned to overcoats. Families in tight little cliques.

  Ashida scanned faces. The Japanese suck it up. The kids stuck close to mom and dad. He saw flat eyes and no spilled tears.

  He jostled into the throng. He removed his blinders and donned his Man Camera. He picked out details. People recognized him.

  Little girls clutching dolls. Who’s that man there? Little boys clutching toy trucks. It’s Running Dog Ashida.

  Name tags pinned to coat lapels. More eyes pinned his way. Old men with canes. Running Dog Traitor. Luggage lashed to bus racks, piled skyscraper high.

  He dialed his Man Camera close. He saw men hiss. He saw women dodge his lens. A fat man mimed spitting. A high school boy mimed FUCK YOU.

  The boarding commenced. The noncoms herded people onto buses. Ashida stood his ground. Men elbowed and jostled him on purpose. Spit globs hit his coat. He heard Shudo/Werewolf/Watanabe. The crowd thinned a bit. He Man Camera’d the sidewalk and saw them.

  Bill Parker. Elmer Jackson. Kay Lake.

  They smiled at him. They waved at him. They made no moves to screw it up with words. His eyes clouded over. Tears doused his camera lens.

  Two noncoms approached him. They called him Dr. Ashida. They said something about Major Smith and sitting up front.

  Ashida waved to his friends. Elmer Jackson bayed like a hound dog. Kay Lake blew him a kiss.

  * * *

  —<
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  The driver and gun guard gabbed. It was all baseball and promiscuous Wacs. They’d rigged up a jump seat. Ashida sat between them. Wire mesh closed off the hoi polloi Japs.

  They looked forlorn and apprehensive. They played it stoic. They saw Ashida up front with the round eyes. Ashida supplied thought balloons. Race traitor/white man’s tool/running dog.

  The bus rolled through L.A. and San Berdoo counties. Ashida’s bus took the pole spot. Three buses trailed it. The gun guard yakked Ashida up.

  Manzanar ain’t too bad. The weather bites Chihuahua dicks. Families get housed all together. The mess halls are done up homey. You can plant your own garden. There’s Christian and Shinto chapels. There’s work assignments. Kids go to school.

  That Major Smith’s a sketch. That’s some brogue he’s got. He’s got swell quarters set up for you.

  The journey slogged. The driver and gun guard shot the shit and yakked over engine throb. The buses refueled at a filling station outside Visalia. The guards passed out sandwiches and declared a piss stop. The Sierras loomed off to the east.

  The stop consumed an hour. The captive Japs hogged both rest rooms and pissed the local yokels off. Hooligans went Banzai and made like the Zeros at Pearl. The gun guards pulled their billy clubs and moved them along.

  The slog resumed. The temperature dropped. The caravan chugged through steep mountains. Ashida shivered. The gun guard passed him a blanket.

  They hit the Owens Valley. It was wide, flat, and bleak. Tall mountains bordered it. The air was dry and cold. Snow covered the peaks and iced up the ground.

  There it is. Manzanar War Relocation Center. It’s all the way off by itself.

  There’s all these claptrap buildings and all this barbed wire. The family huts extend a mile out. It’s perfectly symmetrical. It’s all jerry-rigged.