This Storm

by James Ellroy

  And, what’s that, our sepia songbird?

  “Chuckie said, ‘I am the klubhaus killer,’ and ‘Man, what a gas.’ Johnny said, ‘Viva Hirohito’ and ‘Pearl Harbor was cool.’ ”

  Infamous last words, dear reader. But here’s our heroic happy ending. Police Chief C. B. “Jack” Horrall has stamped the coruscating klubhaus job “Case Closed.” Mayor Fletch Bowron will bestow the Los Angeles Civic Service Award on Hideo Ashida, posthumously. Elmer Jackson and Buzz Meeks will be feted with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Medal of Valor. Citing nervous exhaustion, Sergeant Dudley Smith has resigned his Army commission and is now recuperating at a swank beachside retreat.

  131

  (LOS ANGELES, 4/14–4/26/42)

  Niteclub Blastout to wartime exile. Official forfeiture and unofficial censure. Malibu is rarely intemperate. He goes back with Terry Lux. The Wolf carries news from the outside world.

  Deals were struck. Jack Horrall brokered them. The Staties commandeered his biz fronts. He resigned his Army commission and will not be court-martialed. He will not be prosecuted for his misjudged stateside misconduct. Here’s a cheeky footnote: “Sepia Songbird” Loretta McKee is DA Bill McPherson’s girlfriend.

  The Baja authorities will not seek indictments. Terry’s dry-out farm is not Folsom or San Quentin. He enjoys a grand suite of rooms. They remain locked at all times, and thus constitute custody. Two-man guard teams police him. He’s permitted late-night strolls around the property. His guards eavesdrop on his chats with the Wolf. They consider him whimsically insane.

  Meyer Gelb is dead. The true killer remains unknown. El Salvy remains at large. Jack H. has implied that he will be sternly rebuked. Mexican cops have been charged to infiltrate the Sinarquistas and disrupt them from within. Ed Satterlee remains under house arrest and has cut immunity deals. Monsignor Joe Hayes has been granted immunity. Wallace Jamie has divested his financial interest in Bev’s Switchboard and has pledged to leave L.A. The klubhaus job has been officially stamped a clean solve. Chuckie Duquesne’s woman friend remains unidentified.

  Jim Davis and Saul Lesnick also bunk at Terry’s farm. Lesnick resides in a locked ward and is prone to screaming fits. The gold remains unfound. Postal inspectors grabbed Bev Shoftel and arrested her on eighty-four counts of felony mail fraud. Treasury agents raided mail drops in twelve U.S. cities. The comrades-Kameraden have been nullified to the point of extinction. Jack H. was blunt here. Bill Parker told him the whole story. A ragtag band of opposed comrades engineered the coup. Parker, Elmer Jackson, Buzz Meeks. Kay Lake—most spectacularly.

  Claire has kicked morphine. She’ll leave the farm soon. Constanza joined her brother in Havana. She plays in a string quartet there. Terry said they’ve received a recording contract with RCA Victor. Resourceful Constanza. She’s taken Cuban strongman Prío Socarrás as her inaugural lover.

  He spends his time reading and contemplating his ultimate release. He’ll remain a policeman as long as Jack Horrall remains Chief. He plays the Bruckner symphonies. Otto Klemperer’s interpretations hold him spellbound. He plays Tristan und Isolde most obsessively. Kirsten Flagstad sings the latter part. He listens and transmogrifies her to Kay Lake.

  He sips mint juleps with Jim Davis. Chief Jim is lucid on one topic only. The Fifth Column is everywhere but rarely achieves coherence. It’s no more than an amalgam of mischief-minded souls hooked on current dangerous ideas. Jim mentioned a pervert party, back in ’39. Salvy noticed you then, Dud. He was there, but he was costumed and masked up. He had plans for you from that time on. He’s not really a fascist. He’s a Stalinist. He killed those priest-killers because they were Trotskyites. It’s a wild and fucked-up world, ain’t it?

  Yes, it certainly is. And he must absent himself for a spell.

  He needs rest. He’s earned this interval of meditative renewal. He’s a privileged dry-out-farm inmate. Kwan’s Chinese Pagoda caters his meals. Special chop suey cartons conceal opium. Uncle Ace visits him often. They guardedly discuss their postwar plans.

  The Wolf sleeps at the foot of his bed. Their dialogue takes in the world and the cosmos. They mourn their most dear Hideo Ashida.

  He misses Hideo. He snipped a lock of his hair in the ambulance that transported him to the morgue. Hideo’s betrayal does not trouble him one whit. The great gift of Hideo himself renders it small.

  Hideo was put to rest at Manzanar. He wires graveside flowers each week. He sent condolence notes to his mother and brother and got thank-you notes back. He keeps the lock of hair in a Japanese lacquered box.

  His bedroom window overlooks a tree-lined walkway. He keeps vigilant watch for Kay Lake. She wears cashmere dresses and heather-toned skirts. Her eyes are so dark brown that they’re black.

  Stunning girl, I can’t begin to imagine your fate.

  132

  KAY LAKE’S DIARY

  (LOS ANGELES, 8:00 A.M., 4/27/42)

  A certain Kamerad was due. I expected her to be prompt and to be candidly forthcoming. It took a great deal of effort to ascertain her identity and determine her whereabouts at the time of the klubhaus killings.

  I sat on a walkway bench near Claire’s bungalow. I was within view of Dudley’s locked domicile. Extensive records checks and cross-checks brought me here. I began pulling paper in the wake of the Niteclub Blastout. The Blastout was a local sensation. Elmer Jackson was its most auspicious surviving casualty. His stray shots killed Hideo Ashida. He aimed at Dudley Smith, fully intending to kill him. He told me this and told no one else. The papers pinned the blame on the conveniently dead Big Daddy Gordean and Johnny Shinura. My dear Elmer. Volatile and impetuous. Sweet-natured and tolerant for a cop. Guilt-racked now. Done in by internal sabotage and Hideo Ashida’s death. The man who reminded me that Hideo had sussed it all out. A woman attended the klubhaus deaths and may have helped commit them. We owed Hideo his clean solve. Elmer said, “Maybe there’s some records checks you can run.”

  I was at loose ends; Elmer was at loose ends, verging on shell shock. He was estranged from Ruth; Annie was visiting her ailing dad in rural Idaho. Ellen was off with her husband and son; Brenda was tending to their call-service business. The Blastout remained hot news. Loretta McKee replaced Lena Horne as Charlie Barnet’s colored canary. Mrs. Big Daddy sued Los Angeles County. Duke Ellington was busy composing his “Niteclub Blastout Suite.” A land baron purchased the Taj Mahal, with plans to refurbish and reopen it as the Klub Blastout. Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers will play the gala opening.

  This blithe exploitation enraged Elmer. He raged against himself and the Kameraden and his long-gone brother, who started the whole thing. He told me to run directory and phone-call checks on Chuckie Duquesne. “You might turn something there.”

  Bill swore me in as a PD clerk-typist. He assigned me a cubicle with a desk and a telephone. I ran jail checks first. I learned that Johnny Shinura was in Lincoln Heights on the night of the murders. Chuckie Duquesne had never been arrested. Johnny and Chuckie were bunked in at the East 2nd Street warehouse then. That was their collective last known address. They squatted there after the Federal seizure and Johnny’s formal eviction. Chuckie lived somewhere before that. He had to have had a formal address. I ran DMV checks and turned up an address in Echo Park.

  Chuckie rented a house there, and had a telephone installed. I called PC Bell and secured his phone bills from October ’39 up through last year. One suggestive female name repeatedly popped up.

  I recalled Hideo’s theory. The case was definitively homosexual. It derived from two-person animus. The foot scuffs on the upstairs hallway wall had been made by a woman.

  I ran DMV checks. I learned that Chuckie did not own a registered automobile. I secured car stats for Chuckie’s female friend. I spent many hours in the former Crash Squad command post. I studied the master file; I studied the initial canvassing sheets in particular. I noted the north/south/east/wes
t canvassing perimeters. The crime occurred on a Wednesday night into Thursday morning. The proximity of the jazz strip troubled me. I walked the strip and saw that most of the clubs possessed no parking lots or assigned parking spaces. The strip hopped on weeknights; patrons had to park their cars somewhere; the somewhere within the canvass perimeters would be packed with club hoppers’ cars. The klubhaus killer or killers would have had to park outside those perimeters and walk to the haus.

  I drove to 46th and Central and walked my own expanded perimeter. I noted NO NIGHTTIME PARKING signs in all directions. That’s when I knew I had a chance to solve it; that’s when I knew that the debt to Hideo might be repaid.

  It took one more phone call. I buzzed the PD’s Traffic Bureau and requested a list of parking tickets issued on the night in question. Her name was on it. She had parked on 41st Street, east of Hooper. It was three blocks past the northeast perimeter.

  I placed my cigarettes and matches on the bench beside me. I’d met the woman twice before; she bummed out of my pack on both occasions. She smoked too much and talked too much and divulged inappropriately. I beckoned her here. I wrote to her and told her I knew. She had my full consent to divulge inappropriately.

  Andrea Lesnick walked up. She sat down and went straight for the cigarettes. Her fingers were nicotine-stained; her nails were bitten down to the quick.

  She said, “Miss Lake knows my secret. She figured out what the dumb cops couldn’t.”

  “You parked in a red zone. They missed the citation you were issued.”

  “They raped me.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve been to Tehachapi. San Quentin can’t be any worse. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ I’ll enter the green room with my head held high. I’ve groveled enough in my lifetime. Chuckie convinced me of that.”

  I lit a cigarette. “I was wondering how you met him.”

  Andrea said, “I met him at a party at Otto’s place. Everybody who was anybody was there, but we all wore masks. Chuckie was gigging there. Wendell and George were there, but they were chauffeuring some America Firsters, so they had to stay outside. Archie stayed outside, too. The car-park boys were Mex, so Archie spoke Mex to them, and Jewed them for half of their tips.”

  “I’ve heard of this party, Andrea. People wore Nazi costumes. Orson Welles screened a pornographic movie.”

  Andrea shook her head. No, no, no. Let me tell it my way.

  “Miss Lake’s a C.T., and a provocateur. She’s a snitch, and she’s in with the cops. It’s my story, and I don’t have to let her prompt me or tell me how I should confess.”

  I touched Andrea’s arm. She pulled away and chained cigarettes.

  “Wendell and I got stoked on each other, and we necked in this limousine he was driving. We petted, but he wanted more than I wanted to give him, so I said, ‘Whoa, son.’ Wendell got ticked off, because the party was very libertine, and he told me I should give him what everybody else was getting, but I left him high and dry instead. Chuckie and a boy Robby Staley set him up with were necking, outside by a pergola. They witnessed some horrible thing that gave Chuckie nightmares for the rest of his life, but he never told me what it was.”

  I glanced out at Dudley’s jail suite. Andrea poked me and brought my gaze back to her. Look at me, look at me. It’s my story I’m telling you.

  “Wendell was hateful and spiteful. He started sending me letters and snapshots of him and his wife, doing you know what in the you know where. It went on for a year and a half or so, then it stopped, and some time passed. Then my daddy sent me to the klubhaus to pick up a eugenics book he’d lent this boy Link Rockwell. Wendell, Georgie, and Archie were there, alone. That was when they raped me.”

  She’d dribbled ash on her blouse and sweater. Both garments were burn-marked already. Her fingers were gnawed. She gnashed her hands when she wasn’t smoking. She was unbearable to behold. She condemned me as glib. She commanded my prayers for the rest of my life.

  “ ‘Vengeance is mine,’ saith You Know Who. Which is just what Chuckie and I started planning. It was a double-dip. I got keestered, and he got nightmares from that party. We started frequenting the klubhaus, and Chuckie poked boys upstairs. I told Wendell, Georgie, and Archie that I wanted to do it again with them, while Chuckie watched. That’s how we got them alone at the haus.”

  Her hair. She curled strands around her fingers and twisted them taut. She maimed herself. She left bald spots. Self-inflicted stigmata. Collaborator women shaved bald.

  “We lured them upstairs. Chuckie gave them terp cigarettes laced with poison. They smoked them and became woozy, and we led them back downstairs. Chuckie sat them down on the couch. He was left-handed, so I had to scooch around him just so. He held an ice pick to their necks, and I put on these strangling gloves that Johnny Shinura gave me, and I strangled them right there.”

  I looked in her eyes. One was blue, one was gray. Her eugenicist daddy. I suspected experiments gone awry. She sat on her hands so she wouldn’t gnash or pull her hair out. What would Hideo Ashida do? It came down to that. I said, “I wish you safety,” and walked away.

  133

  (LOS ANGELES, 8:00 A.M., 4/28/42)

  Union Station. The Welcome Wagon awaits. They’re packing brass knucks and belt saps. Bienvenidos, señor.

  Jack Horrall dispatched them. His orders ran succinct. Beat the fuck half dead. Tell him no sabotage. Return to Mexico. Come back, we kill your spic ass.

  Elmer and Buzz lurked outside the station. Cars clogged the front lot. The breezeway hopped. Porters schlepped suitcases. Tourists hailed taxicabs. The Baja train was past due.

  Elmer and Buzz lurked. They got their orders. They got their reward. They were acknowledged whizbang detectives. Jack H. shot them two Homicide slots.

  El Salvy walked outside. He scanned the front lot. Cars zigzagged through. Elmer and Buzz swooped.

  They grabbed him and hustled him. They pinned his arms. He went along, peaceful. They worked the two-man accordion press.

  Salvy complied. They waltzed him off to the side of the building. Elmer grabbed his hair and elbowed him in the windpipe. Salvy gasped and squeaked. Buzz pinned him against the wall. Elmer stuffed a sock in his mouth. They unhooked their knucks and saps and let fly.

  Octopus job. They worked him, four-fisted. Elmer smashed his ribs. Bones crunched and snapped. Buzz squatted low and ripped uppercuts at his balls. Elmer punched his teeth out. The sock trapped loose choppers and sopped up blood.

  Buzz hurled sap shots. They sliced Salvy’s ears half off. Buzz intoned the edict. Elmer hummed the “Marine’s Hymn.” He checked the parking lot. He saw this man upside a Cadillac. He thought, Maybe, maybe not.

  He dropped his hurt kit and walked over. Well now—and amen. It was good old good-looking Wayne Frank.

  He sported some gray hair. He wore wingtip shoes and a swell chalk-stripe suit.

  He said, “Try not to kill Salvy. Him and me share a history.”

  Elmer said, “I like your car. Life’s been good to you.”

  Wayne Frank spit tobacco juice. “I’ve got a wife and two kids in New Orleans, and a wife and three kids in Atlanta. If I can avoid this here futile war, I’ll have it made in the shade.”

  Elmer smiled. “You always believed in the Resurrection. It was your favorite Bible story. You always said you might die young, but you’d just as likely return.”

  Wayne Frank smiled. “I visited Wisharts last year. Sue Bailey asked about you. She’s with the TVA now. She had herself a damn fine job with the Willkie campaign.”

  Sue B. was a six-foot blonde. She justified the climb. Him and Wayne Frank fought over her. He kicked Wayne Frank’s ass good.

  “Those New Year’s rainstorms stirred up some grief, didn’t they?”

  “Let’s not talk about that.”

  “New Year’s is New Year
’s. Remember? We always listened to Cliffie Stone’s Hometown Jamboree.”

  Wayne Frank spritzed tobacco juice. “You look pretty good, for a man who’s just seen a ghost.”

  “I’ve learned a few things since New Year’s. I’ve had a good spell to prepare.”

  Wayne Frank said, “I always told you I’d make something of myself.”

  * * *

  —

  Ghosts. Apparitions. Warlocks, poltergeists, ghouls. Wayne Frank’s alive. Hideo Ashida’s dead.

  Elmer drove out to Santa Monica. He hadn’t seen Ruth in a coon’s age. He should put her at ease. You never know. She might throw him some woof-woof.

  Wilshire was bright and breezy. The beach air felt sweet. He parked outside Ruth’s courtyard. Longhair music wafted over. Ruthie sat on her porch. She played her radio full blast.

  Elmer got out and walked over. Ruthie saw him. She primped and turned off the radio. She looked grim—per always, these days.

  “I’ve been reading about you. The widow Big Daddy Gordean asserts that you are trigger-happy.”

  Elmer dittoed Wayne Frank. “Let’s not talk about that.”

  “Shall we discuss Brahms? That was the Double Concerto I was enjoying.”

  Elmer relit a cigar. “Let’s discuss what’s eating you. Maybe I can help you out.”