This Storm

by James Ellroy

  It takes two to make this work. Ashida jumped—Eckelkamp to Gelb. He jumped ’29 to ’33 and the Griffith Park fire. He thumbed Arson Squad and Red Squad reports. Comrade Gelb’s cell is hotly scrutinized. Comrade Gelb is hard-nosed. What’s with your fingers, Jewboy? Let’s Bertillon-chart this kike.

  There it is. 10/18/33. The PD crime lab charts Meyer Gelb. Ray Pinker measures him.

  Ashida studied the two charts. Ashida dripped sweat on the pages. He compared the height and limb-length numbers. He compared the finger spans. He compared twenty-three separate phrenological marks. Every single mark matched identically. This is no extrapolation. Fritz Eckelkamp is Meyer Gelb.

  Now, we extrapolate.

  Jean Staley lied to Elmer Jackson. She omitted a key fact. The roadblocks are pulled just north of Terry Lux’s clinic. Jean takes Fritzie there. Dr. Terry and Lin Chung perform plastic surgery. They make Eckelkamp Gelb. Jean Staley knows this, full well. Fresh-cut Gelb joins the CP and forms his own cell. Jean S., the Lesnicks, and Jorge Villareal-Caiz join up. Sieg Heil—they raise the Red flag.

  Cut to summer ’33. It’s two months before the Griffith Park blaze. A rash of liquor store 211s plague the L.A. cops. Liquor-store jobs are Fritz Eckelkamp’s meat. Eyewits ID a man who resembles Wayne Frank Jackson. Let’s posit a two-man heist squad. Strange bedfellows. Faux Jew/face-cut Meyer Gelb and Klan klown Wayne Frank Jackson. Let’s posit that prefire Gelb/Wayne Frank bond.

  Ellen Drew has already confirmed it. She has not confirmed a Gelb/Wayne Frank chronological point of convergence. Ellen Drew was a mid-’30s Paramount starlet. She met Gelb-who’s-really-Eckelkamp then. She met Wayne Frank Jackson then. Wayne Frank was alive then. She ID’d Elmer’s wallet pic. That cinched her identification.

  Ergo:

  Wayne Frank did not die in the Griffith Park fire. Ergo: somebody else did. Ergo: somebody snatched Wayne Frank’s dental chart from the office of his cut-rate dentist. Ergo: somebody planted the real dead man’s chart under Wayne Frank’s name. Ergo: those efforts confirmed Wayne Frank’s death. Ergo: Wayne Frank’s perceived death was deemed essential—but to who and to what criminal end?

  Ashida surmised. Ashida tossed conclusions. Ashida linked three-case players, flesh-to-flesh. Eckelkamp-Gelb to Jean Staley to Leander Frechette. Leander to Martin Luther Mimms. Toss in the late Ralph D. Barr. Toss in Ed Satterlee. He suborned Jean Staley. He ordered her to fink out fresh-cut Meyer’s cell.

  Saul Lesnick’s in that cell. Satterlee makes him his snitch. Kay Lake has duplicate keys to Lesnick’s office.

  Ashida caressed the file stacks. He’d dripped sweat all over them.

  It’s all one story. I will not be denied the full truth of it.

  * * *

  —

  Kazio Hiroki. The same initials. It must be him. Al Wilhite has implied it. Who else could he be?

  A waiting room adjoined the burn ward. Ashida sat alone. Wilhite drove him from Manzanar to Lone Pine. The interview had been prearranged. The subject requested Dr. Ashida. Dr. Ashida was his preferred interlocutor.

  Hiroki was bilingual. They could chat in English or Japanese. Wilhite issued strict orders. “You will take no notes. You will write nothing down. You will report to Major Smith, verbally.”

  Wilhite sat downstairs. He’d worked off Dudley’s APB. Hiroki hid in plain sight. His cover was interned Jap, vouched by forged papers. He’d journeyed north-northeast. Baja to L.A. L.A. to Manzanar. He had a cot in “C” row, bachelor barracks 3.

  Hiroki was clearly insane. He torched his barracks and scorched himself, severely. A doctor noted preexisting burn scars. The doctor told Hiroki that some Army cops wanted to brace him. Hiroki said, “Dr. Ashida, one hopes.”

  A nurse walked in. Ashida stood up. The nurse walked him to the ward proper. It was three rooms off a hallway crammed with drip gizmos. Ashida smelled medicinal salve and charred flesh.

  The nurse opened the door and about-faced. The room was small. There was a crank-up bed and guest chair. Air vents diffused salve and burn stink.

  Hiroki was bandage-mummified and cranked up to face guests. An intravenous bag fed him pain juice. His face was uncovered. It was him. It’s all one story, you—

  * * *

  —

  Ashida pulled the chair up. He said, “芦田先生.”

  Hanamaka said, “花丸司令官.”

  His voice was firm. His neck was unbandaged. His vocal chords were most surely intact.

  Hanamaka shut his eyes. Ashida unscrewed the fluid bag. He pulled out an envelope and poured in three crumbled Benzedrine. Get your man perked up and loose-lipped. Dudley taught him the trick.

  They traded pleasantries. Hanamaka alternated English and Japanese. So happy to meet you and あなたの最近の人生に興味を持ってきました. 渡辺事件. 警察 署の仕事. Juan Pimentel and のメールドロップニュース.

  Ashida quick-translated. I’ve followed your recent life with interest. The Watanabe case. Your police department work. Mail-drop news from Juan Pimentel.

  “I would say that I’m notorious, more than justifiably famous.”

  Hanamaka switched to English. “I’m sure that you and Major Smith know a great deal about my endeavors, going back some years.”

  Ashida sat down. “Yes, but I’m sure you can fill in a few gaps.”

  The stimulant took hold. Hanamaka’s carotid vein pulsed. His hands twitched. He spoke more rapidly.

  “I should tell you that I love fire, and that the small barracks blaze was merely an experiment. I wanted to see if I could eradicate the burn scars the Griffith Park fire inflicted, along with the print-eradication scars that Meyer Gelb and I so foolishly marked ourselves with.”

  Ashida said, “Meyer Gelb is really Fritz Eckelkamp. Terry Lux and Lin Chung cut him a new face shortly after his escape from the gold train.”

  Hanamaka smiled. “The American Jew is the German Gentile, and quite the covert anti-Semite. The leftist firebrand is really an armed robber.”

  “That statement tells me a great deal about this politically diffuse cabal of yours.”

  Hanamaka said, “I’ll quote Meyer here. ‘This storm, this savaging disaster.’ The disaster is History, and the cabal was formed as a means to survive it.”

  Ashida smiled. “I’ll quote the Book of Proverbs. ‘Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.’ ”

  Hanamaka sipped water. Benzedrine spawned dehydration. He held a small canteen. He sipped through a glass straw.

  “Bible to Bible, Dr. Ashida. I read the Los Angeles papers on New Year’s Day. A rainstorm of biblical proportions had unearthed a man’s body in a wooden box. I knew that a reckoning of biblical proportions was about to occur.”

  Ashida tingled. “Yes?”

  “Yes, and I had been thinking about Karl Tullock for some time already. Two months earlier, I had read a locally distributed golf magazine, published in San Diego. An article described a driving range, soon to be built on the exact spot where Tullock reposed. I’m sure you’ve heard the complaint ‘It’s hard to find good help these days.’ That complaint proved itself especially true in the world of the domestic Fifth Column. I dispatched Wendell Rice and George Kapek to find the box and dispose of it before the excavation crews began work. Rice and Kapek bungled the job, because a reckoning was preordained.”

  Ashida coughed. The burn stink stifled him.

  “Who set the Griffith Park fire?”

  Hanamaka said, “Ralph Barr, on Red Meyer’s orders. Meyer wanted to create an apocalypse that would take the lives of many oppressed workingmen, which would be a Marxist-fascist ruse to rival the temerity of the Reichstag fire. Meyer also knew that Karl Tullock had found a spot on the CCC crew, and was closing in on Wayne Frank Jackson as a gold-robbery suspect. Meyer wanted Tullock dead and Wayne Frank believed to be dead. When wea
ther reports predicted one-hundred-degree heat and strong winds that day, he put Ralph to work creating a very subtle accelerant.”

  Ashida inched his chair back. Hanamaka oozed contagion. The Mummy escapes his crypt. His wrapping suppurates.

  “Wayne Frank was suspected of a string of liquor-store heists in the summer of ’33. It was shortly before the fire, and liquor-store jobs were Fritz Eckelkamp’s well-established pattern. Was Eckelkamp-Gelb Wayne Frank’s partner on those jobs? The gold heist occurred two years and three months previously, so I would assume that Wayne Frank met Gelb before May of ’31, or am I mistaken here? Were those robberies a means of Wayne Frank’s introduction to Gelb and your cabal et al.?”

  Hanamaka shook his head yes. Hanamaka shook his head no. He was fully Benzedrined. His eyeballs glowed.

  “You must realize that the Comintern and their kindred fascist counterparts are criminals first and foremost, over and above whatever ideologies they might express. You should not be surprised to see armed robbery as a recurring motif in this account of political misdeeds. On that note, yes. Gelb was Wayne Frank’s partner in those robberies. Yes, Karl Tullock suspected Wayne Frank of complicity in the gold heist. Tullock had, in fact, been shadowing Wayne Frank—but Wayne Frank’s presence on the CCC work crew was at first largely coincidental. Wayne Frank had been scouting potential targets for Meyer’s ‘workingman’s apocalypse,’ and the work crew seemed like a good candidate. But then he saw Tullock’s name on a hire sheet, and told Meyer. That was when Meyer truly conceived his notion of workingmen burned alive.”

  Ashida coughed. “Sensei, when did Meyer Gelb and Wayne Frank Jackson meet?”

  Hanamaka said, “Wayne Frank met Meyer in his Fritz Eckelkamp incarnation. They met in the Alameda County Jail in 1928, before Fritz was sent to San Quentin. Wayne Frank was serving time for plain drunk and vagrancy, and Fritz Eckelkamp was plain Fritz. That jail became a point of convergence for the gold heist—Fritz, Wayne Frank, and Leander Frechette. That was the genesis of the robbery. That was the moment that Fritz inculcated Wayne Frank with Marxist rhetoric and converted him. It was culminatingly the moment when Fritz and Wayne Frank saved Leander from a gang of race-baiting jailhouse thugs, and ensured that the robbery would actually occur.”

  Wayne Frank Jackson. Elmer’s Klansman brother. Revealed as a Comintern dupe.

  “Something troubles me, Sensei. It’s Wayne Frank’s statements pertaining to the robbery. His brother Elmer speaks of Wayne Frank as no more than a sad fantasist.”

  Hanamaka smiled. “You are quick to note that, Sensei. Let me add that Wayne Frank was then a man of intemperate appetite, and is now a man of strict circumspection. He went on a bender shortly after the robbery, and awoke one morning in an opium den in San Francisco. A nosy Chinese man told him he had been mumbling about the robbery while in his opiate haze. Wayne Frank was already a seasoned treasure dreamer, albeit one who had now transcended his sad origins. That moment in the opium den shocked him. He incorporated the gold robbery into the repertoire of his once-obsessive persona. He used it as a means to publicly express ‘I could not have done this.’ ”

  Explication. Revelation. Ashida had clenched himself numb.

  “You torched the klubhaus, didn’t you? You were holed up down the block. You used the same accelerant that Ralph Barr used in Griffith Park.”

  Hanamaka said, “Yes, and those were taxing days for me. Some unknown person killed Rice, Kapek, and their friend Archuleta, and the puerile Cal Lunceford was chaperoning me. They were all manipulated and given tasks via mail drop, and the murders felt like yet another preordained catalyst. I felt you, Major Smith, and the other policemen converging. I took advantage of the Negro riot and burned the klubhaus. I wanted to divert your investigation and create a new level of chaos, and the angry Negroes proved themselves to be convenient scapegoats.”

  Ashida said, “Whose body stood in for Wayne Frank’s? A dental-plate substitution must have been worked.”

  Hanamaka smiled. He was Sensei Death. He was Mr. Death’s-Head.

  “Wayne Frank’s assignment was to kill Karl Tullock during the fire, and then disappear. We were afraid that Tullock had informed other Santa Barbara policemen of his suspicions, so Wayne Frank’s disappearance was deemed a necessity. Wayne Frank decided to kill a second man during the fire, and pass that man off as himself. Wallace Jamie was quite young then, but he was already acquainted with another comrade named Joe Hayes. Wallace and Father Joe were fellow travelers on the Right, and dabbled on the Left. They would reunite a few years later, at a German technical college. Wallace had a meddlesome younger brother named George. Wayne Frank got George a job on the CCC work crew. George ran a German-American Bund cell, and began recruiting at the work site. George was also about Wayne Frank’s size and build. Wayne Frank decided to kill him and disguise it as his own death. George only came to work occasionally, and was never carried in any sort of official CCC log.”

  Gears snapped in place. Ashida heard clicks. He’d guessed abstract parts of it.

  “And then?”

  “Then Meyer had Terry Lux build prosthetic dental work off of Wayne Frank’s actual teeth. Then the fire occurred. Then Wayne Frank beat George to death, knocked out all his teeth, and inserted the prosthesis. Meyer preinserted forged dental records for Wayne Frank at a downtown L.A. dentist. It facilitated the coroner’s decree. Wayne Frank died in the fire. Then Wayne Frank deftly disappeared.”

  Ashida said, “Leander Frechette?”

  “Last seen in San Francisco, some years ago.”

  “And the gold? Where is it now?”

  Hanamaka went C’est la guerre. “Meyer entrusted it to a Mexican Stalinist. I think he was a money conduit for the assassination of Leon Trotsky. The gold was transported to Mexico, to be deployed for political purposes, with one bar left in a Los Angeles storage facility, to cover pertinent expenses. Meyer has hoarded the gold, and now it is pledged to the cause of postwar resettlement. Only Meyer and the Mexican Stalinist know where it is. Meyer trusts the Stalinist, because he made him endure a rigorous initiation. Meyer had him butcher forty Trotskyite priest-killers, and make it look like fascists did it. The man fawningly complied.”

  Ashida watched the fluid bag drain. The mixture was down to mere drips.

  “Where is Meyer Gelb hiding?”

  “No one knows that.”

  “Let’s return to the gold.”

  Hanamaka shrugged. “It has lain fallow, and has exponentially increased in value. A good deal of time has passed. A convergence in Dresden brought about an enlargement of our original band of Kameraden. Wallace Jamie brought Joe Hayes, Mondo Díaz, and Juan Pimentel in. You killed Pimentel, and I’m sure you know of the other men.”

  Ashida checked the fluid bag. It had drained dry.

  “Would you call Meyer Gelb the key architect of the gold robbery?”

  “No. It was Wayne Frank.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Are the Kameraden really Communist or fascist?”

  Hanamaka said, “At this point, who can tell?”

  110

  (LOS ANGELES, 9:00 P.M., 3/28/42)

  Oooga-booga. The DTs, dead sober. It’s like this gag song. I gots jitters like Jell-O in an earthquake.

  Ashida called him and Kay. He relayed his talk with Kyoho Hanamaka. Wayne Frank masterminded the gold heist. Wayne Frank was sure as shit alive.

  Elmer boozed and noshed at Linny’s Delicatessen. His table fluttered. The pickle jar leaped. The walls talked back to him. He is Risen, He is Alive.

  Buzz was three blocks over, on Bedford. They were set to 459 Saul Lesnick’s office. Buzz brought cans of paint and brushes. Buzz brought pistol silencers. The rendezvous time was 9:30.

  Elmer snarfed Old Crow and pastrami. Him and Buzz had spent the day at Kay Lake’s pla
ce. Kay dished Buzz her version of the whole story. It put Buzz up to speed with him, Kay, Whiskey Bill, and Thad Brown. Buzz buzzed straight to Meyer Gelb. He vowed to find that whipdick.

  Whiskey Bill showed up. He brought subpoenaed phone bills for Ed Satterlee and Doc Lesnick. He wrote a quickie writ and ran it by a PD-lapdog judge. PC Bell kicked loose bills going back six months.

  They divvied up the bills and worked at Kay’s dining room table. The bills listed the callees’ names and phone numbers. The tally job took four hours. It revealed this:

  Doc Lesnick and Ed the Fed called each other boocoo times. They were snitch and snitch runner. There was no surprise there. Ed called Bev’s Switchboard nineteen times. Woo-woo—it’s a spy mail drop. Ed called Padre Joe Hayes fourteen times. Hot potato—El Padre went waaaaay back with the spy-ring boys and owned points in Bev’s.

  Here’s a scorcher. Doc Saul and Ed the Fed called the Baja phone-relay number fifty-nine times, all in all. Up till Ashida and Pimentel torched the relay room. Those calls indict both callers up the ying-yang.

  Satterlee called Tommy Glennon’s L.A. hotel room. Satterlee called Tommy’s La Jolla crib. Mark that forty-two times, total. Satterlee and Lesnick called Jean Staley’s Hollywood place. Mark that twenty-three calls.

  Here’s an El Scorcho. Ed the Fed called Baja’s governor, Juan Lazaro-Schmidt. Mark that fourteen calls. Hideo said El Juan was jungled up with El Dudster’s rackets. El Dud was bonking Juan’s sizzling sister. Hideo said the seditious sibs were spy-ring complicit.

  Doc Saul and Ed the Fed called AX-4869. It’s a darktown exchange. They called the number twenty-four times, total. Dig: it’s the hideout-house number. Kyoho Hanamaka holed up there. Cal Lunceford died there. The klubhaus was just up the street.

  Ed the Fed called Martin Luther Mimms. Twice at his crib, thrice at the Congregation of the Congo. Mimms was deeply gold heist–embroiled. Ed and Doc Saul called Wallace Jamie—fourteen and nineteen times apiece. Both gents placed umpteen calls to Drs. Terry Lux and Lin Chung. Both gents called the C-town flop of James Edgar Davis.