by James Ellroy
Ashida said, “The positioning of the bodies seems wrong to me. I’ve seen mass seppuku photos in Japanese textbooks. Invariably, family members grasp for one another as they die, even though their original intent was to pose side by side. The bodies are always found in a heap.”
Dudley Smith lit a cigarette. “Let’s say that we attribute the hesitation marks to papa. He was afraid that his wife, son and daughter would falter at the last moment and be unable to wield the blade. He guided their hands, killed them, arranged their bodies, and then killed himself. He hesitated on himself because the act of killing his family had unnerved him.”
Ashida said, “Yes, it’s plausible.”
Brown shrugged. “We’re getting too far afield. It’s a goddam suicide.”
Blanchard haw-hawed. “It’s a back column in the Mirror. ‘Dead Japs in Highland Park. Emperor Weeps.’ ”
Dudley Smith said, “Apologize to Dr. Ashida, Leland. ‘I’m sorry, sir’ will suffice.”
Blanchard stared at his shoes. Blanchard said, “I’m sorry, sir.”
Ashida stared at his shoes. Layman produced a flask. Pinker grabbed it, took a pull and passed it around. Ashida caught the dregs.
A morgue man laughed. Brown laughed. Ashida laughed. Dudley pointed to the swords and the stiffs.
“We’ll print them and run comparisons. We need to determine whose hand touched which weapon.”
Pinker shook his head. “The handles are pebbled leather. They won’t sustain prints.”
Layman said, “Dust the blades. We might get something.”
Ashida opened his evidence kit. On top: print powder, print ink, print brush, print cards.
He balanced the kit on Ryoshi’s gurney. He examined the four sets of hands. Rigor mortis had set. Their fingers were curled inward. It made the potential print rolls difficult.
Pinker opened his kit. Layman picked up the swords. Dudley walked over and stood by Ashida. They shared a look. It felt telepathic.
Ashida grabbed Ryoshi’s left wrist. Dudley bent the fingers and broke them. Bones snapped audibly. Ashida got a stable print surface.
Blanchard said, “Fuck.”
Brown said, “Don’t go squeamish, son.”
Ashida inked the fingers and thumb. Ashida rolled the tips onto a print card and got perfect spreads.
Blanchard said, “Mother dog.”
Pinker and Layman worked on the swords. Dudley broke Ryoshi’s right-hand fingers. Ashida inked them, rolled them and got perfect spreads.
The room temperature climbed. Ashida started sweating. Dudley broke Aya’s fingers. Dudley broke Johnny’s and Nancy’s fingers. Bones snapped. Slivers pierced skin.
Ashida inked the fingers. Ashida rolled the fingers. Ashida got perfect spreads. Dudley winked at him. Ashida felt himself blush.
Pinker and Layman held up the swords. They were dusted, hilt to tip. Pinker said, “No latents. Just smudges and smooth-leather glove prints.”
Blanchard whistled. “Shit, it’s homicide.”
Brown said, “Not necessarily.”
Pinker said, “Someone could have touched the blades with gloves on.”
Dudley said, “Toss the premises, Leland. We’re looking for smooth-leather gloves. No rough-leather work gloves or ladies’ gloves. We’re working on suppositions now.”
Blanchard scrammed. Brown produced a flask. Layman grabbed it, took a pull and passed it around. Dudley passed it to Ashida. He took a pull. The booze sparked a brainstorm.
“There’s a samurai tradition called ‘accomplice suicide.’ Dishonored patriarchs would bring in close friends or Shinto priests to help them kill themselves and their families. They were the ones who would actually wield the blade.”
Brown said, “You’re thinking that would account for the hesitation marks and positioning of the bodies.”
“Yes, but there’s one detail off. The accomplice always leaves family pictures beside the bodies.”
Brown shook his head. “Why did I roll out on this one? I’m a ranking police officer.”
Layman shook his head. “We don’t need Jap homicides with the world in the straits that it’s in.”
Dudley smiled at Ashida. “As a confirmed isolationist, I would have to agree.”
Thumps echoed upstairs. Scrape sounds followed. Blanchard yelled, “No leather gloves! We got cloth gloves, and that’s it!”
Ashida felt the liquor. The room was packed. White men with booze breath. Cigarette smoke. Four dead Japanese.
“There’s one more thing. The whole family was attired in smooth woolens, from the waist up. If Mr. Watanabe assisted in the suicides of the other three, he would have stood behind them to hold the swords, so he might have left foreign fabrics on their posteriors. A fifth person—a suicide accomplice or killer—might have left foreign fabrics on all four people, Mr. Watanabe included.”
Nods circulated. Yeah, we get it—but.
Pinker tossed Ashida a flashlight. He pushed the gurneys up flush and rolled the stiffs on their sides. The morgue men stepped back. Ashida went in two-handed—flashlight and magnifying glass.
He started with Nancy. She wore a thin wool blouse with embroidered snowflakes. In close now. Yes, there—light-colored foreign fibers. They were coarse and brightly dyed. Yes—mauve Shetland wool.
He went at Aya next. Her blouse was a wool-cotton blend. In close now. Yes—identical fibers, on her upper back.
Ashida oozed sweat. He wiped his hands on his suit coat and regripped his implements. Johnny wore a flannel shirt. In close now. Yes—mauve Shetland wool fibers, curlicued.
Ryoshi wore a fine-gauge cardigan. In close now—confirm or refute the thesis—
Yes. Mauve-colored Shetland wool fibers, along his entire back.
Ashida wiped his face. “There are identical fibers on all four of them. It’s a common sweater fiber, so it was an easy make. It’s mauve-dyed Shetland wool.”
Blanchard walked in. He looked slaphappy. He’d stuffed his pockets with comic books.
Dudley collared him. “Toss the place again, lad. Look for mauve-colored Shetland wool garments. Mauve is a light purple shade, in case you were wondering.”
Blanchard about-faced. Dudley said, “I want photographs. Create a perspective of the whole house. Let’s see if we’ve missed anything.”
Pinker dug in his kit. He grabbed flashbulbs and film. Ashida dug in his kit. He grabbed tweezers and an envelope. He wrote “Watanabe/Avenue 45, 2:17 a.m., 12/7/41” on the flap.
Pinker snapped posterior pix. He got close-ups of the fibers, four bodies across. Brown and Layman walked out to the porch and lit cigarettes.
Ashida tweezed fibers and sealed them. Blanchard thumped around upstairs. He yelled, “I tossed all the dressers and closets! There’s nothing like that!”
Dudley watched Ashida work. Ashida tweezed fibers. He filled four envelopes. Pinker waved his camera. It meant Chop, chop. Ashida grabbed his evidence kit.
Photo sweep.
Pinker snapped the shots. Ashida carried the film and the flashbulbs.
They moved fast. Dudley followed them. They shot, reloaded, shot. The dead bulbs burned Ashida’s hands. He tossed them in his kit.
Photo sweep.
Living room, dining room, kitchen. A service porch and damp clothes on a line.
The detail tweaked Ashida. Why wash clothes on this day? Does this detail logically rule out seppuku?
Photo sweep.
They moved to the hallway. Floor pix, wall pix, ceiling pix—
Ashida looked down. Pinker looked up. They caught metal shards on the floor. They caught a small hole, directly above them.
Ashida said, “The floor.”
Pinker said, “The ceiling.”
Dudley saw it. He looked up and down. He said, “I find this compelling.”
Ashida squatted by the shards. They had to be silencer threads. They resembled the shards from the pharmacy heist.
“Did you read my report on the drugstore 211,
Sergeant?”
“I did, Doctor. It was brilliantly etched and hypothetically rich. You said the bandit who brushed the book rack might not be the rape-o MP.”
Ashida nodded. He scooped the shards into an envelope. He wrote “Watanabe/Avenue 45, 2:42 a.m., 12/7/41” on the flap. Pinker pointed to the ceiling. The hole was bullet size.
Dudley went After you. They quick-walked upstairs. A long carpet strip covered the landing. Dudley grabbed the near corner and pulled. The carpet flew off the floor.
Dudley yanked it to one side. There, on a floorboard—two bullet chunks.
Ashida got to them first. He knelt close. He put his magnifying glass in tight.
The chunks matched the drugstore chunks. It was a sure match or near match. It wasn’t a coincidence.
Pinker knelt close. “It’s a Luger with a shell catcher. I read your final report, Hideo. I know you did a recheck at the lab. There’s just one discrepancy. This bullet had to come from a different ammo batch. I could crush these chunks with my bare hand.”
Dudley knelt close. He picked up the chunks and crushed them. Powdered metal sifted off his hands.
He walked downstairs. Pinker went slack-jawed. Ashida thought he got it. It brought back his talk with Buzz Meeks. It brought back the green light on the Army rape-o.
Pinker stayed slack-jawed. Ashida walked downstairs. He heard voices in the kitchen. He hugged the hallway wall.
Brown said, “Maybe it’s our killer, maybe it’s not. All we probably have is the same man with a probable same firearm at two locations on the same day. Maybe he’s a rape-o, maybe he isn’t. We don’t know for sure that he left those fibers at the drugstore. Yeah, they were an MP’s armband fibers, but so what? If you’re thinking we’ve got a rape/robbery/homicide parlay, you might very well be right—but you sure as shit might be wrong.”
Dudley said, “It can’t be a full parlay. Nort Layman never fucks up his approximate time of death.”
Brown said, “Give me a road map, Dud.”
Dudley said, “I identified the rape-o off a mug-shot run. Jack Horrall gave me the green light. My boys and I killed the man at 3:30 p.m. yesterday. He couldn’t have killed the Japs.”
Ashida tingled with it. Another brainstorm sparked. Introductory Forensics: “Instincts will cohere.”
Deutsches Haus, West 15th Street. That Subversive Squad report. It’s a meeting place for pro-Nazis. They allegedly traffic in Lugers and silencers.
3:07 a.m.
“… and Call-Me-Jack has a standing order in with Brenda. The PD has this private room over at Mike Lyman’s Grill, where the ranking guys all hide out from their wives and entertain gash. Brenda sends a girl over, once a week. She blows Jack while he’s on the phone with Gene Biscailuz. They discuss jail transfers, who’s got the motorcade detail when Roosevelt blows through town, all that horseshit. Get this: The Sheriff’s getting blown by one of Brenda’s girls, simultaneously. There’s a message in all of this, but I’m not sure I want to know what it is.”
I held down the lever and squelched the rest of the chat. The device is quite the thing. A thin wire passes through two spools on a machine about the size of a small phonograph. Levers inch the wire back and forth; I wear earmuffs to contain the sound. The preceding conversation typifies the ones I’ve been hearing since 1:00 a.m. I’m alone in a mop closet, in a blocked-off and empty hallway two floors above the Detective Bureau. It’s a cramped space, about eight by eight. I have a desk, a chair, an ashtray, a pack of cigarettes and a thermos of coffee that Captain William H. Parker has supplied. I have only the vaguest of ideas as to why I’m here.
I’m stationed within an “open secret.” There are purportedly dozens of these “listening posts” dotted throughout the closed-off and seldom-used hallways here at City Hall. The practice of phone-tapping began under the reign of Jim Davis. Policemen tap phones to learn what other policemen are thinking and plotting. The taps record internal phone calls here at City Hall, and calls to the DA’s Office at the Hall of Justice, three blocks away. Policemen monitor the calls on a weekly basis and keep coded logs of the calls that go in and out. There’s a stack of these logs on the floor by my desk; shelves hold boxes of wire recordings that match the code numbers for the calls. It is an astonishingly arrogant and heedless practice, perpetrated by astonishingly arrogant and heedless men. How did Captain William H. Parker know that I’d be perfectly at home here?
The preceding conversation is labeled “HD116 to BS014,” 6/12/39. I’m sure that it means “Homicide Division to Bunco Squad.” Captain Parker has instructed me to identify incriminating conversations, record the code numbers and dates, and outline the gist of what was said. He flushed when I asked him why he chose this listening post. He said that he chose it because the logs denoted calls from the Robbery and Homicide squads, along with Central Vice. I found the explanation disingenuous. Captain Parker is entrapping me. He wants me to do something that will further his pious notions of justice and advance his career. He believes that I will hear something that will put me in his power. Until that moment, he knows that I will be entertained.
So, I’m wide-awake at 3:32 a.m. Captain Parker snuck me up in a freight elevator, to make sure that Lee and any Bureau men I might know didn’t see me. Lee is most likely asleep on Dudley Smith’s couch. I’m here, eavesdropping on covert chitchat from 1939.
I rewound the spool, placed it back in its box and picked up a new spool. It’s labeled “BD 214 to DBML 442,” 10/6/39. It’s an easily ID’d call: Burglary Division to the Detective Bureau’s main line.
The caller engaged the callee. It’s Bob Denholm at Burglary. He’s calling Jim Yardis on the Pawnshop Detail. “Jim, I’ve got a trace on that old Jew lady’s fur coats.”
“This coon” escaped from Chino and shagged a car in San Berdoo. He headed to L.A. and 459’d a house in South Gate. He left a fat set of prints, so we made him. We put the car on the hot sheet. The coon hit a house off the Miracle Mile. He got the Jew lady’s fur coats and jerked off on her nighties. He pawned the coats downtown and started boozing at a he-she bar on South Main. He was on the wire for auto theft, escape and 459 with perversion. The parlay mandated a “coon hunt.” Two bluesuits on a tavern check made him. The coon bolted. The bluesuits slayed his “coon ass.”
The conversation continued; I timed it at seventeen minutes and forty-two seconds. Police gossip reigned. I learned which cops were fucking which cops’ wives and heard speculation on the quality of the fucking. Call-Me-Jack Horrall would step in the shit sooner or later; Lieutenant Thad Brown or Captain Bill Parker would then ascend to Chief. Officer Larry “the Lizard” Linscott possessed a two-foot penis. DA Bill McPherson fell asleep in City Council meetings and enjoyed Negro prostitutes.
I rewound the wire, replaced it and grabbed another one. I didn’t recognize the code letters; the recording was dated 4/9/41. I put the wire on the spool and tapped the lever. I recognized the voices immediately: Call-Me-Jack Horrall and Mayor Fletch Bowron.
They discussed Japanese aggression in the Philippines. Bowron said, “We’re going to war, Jack.” Horrall said, “Mr. Mayor, you’re right as rain. I’m against intervention, but you’re sure as shit correct.”
Bowron said, “It’s this whole Jap angle that troubles me. The Feds have got a detention list a mile long. A colonel in the Fourth Interceptor Command told me the Army’s cooking up plans for the long-term imprisonment of all the sketchy Japs they can lay their hands on.” Horrall said, “A Jap’s a Jap, as far as I’m concerned. They’re clannish, and you never know what they’re thinking. What’s that goddamn word?”
Bowron said, “Inscrutable?” Horrall said, “Yeah, that’s it. You want my opinion? They’re all Fifth Column. They all breathe, drink and eat Fifth Column, when they’re not eating broiled eel.” Bowron laughed and said, “Look at it this way. We’re going to have a lot of government-confiscated property on our hands, and that means rental revenues if the Japs stay in stir until Armistice Da
y. L.A.’s a tourist mecca, we’ll have lots of servicemen passing through, and they’ll need lodging while they’re here.”
Horrall made cash-register sounds. Bowron said, “That’s what I’m thinking. And don’t call me a war profiteer, because we can kick back something like 10% to the Japs while they’re cooling their heels. I’ll keep them in cigarettes and candy bars.”
Horrall chuckled and said, “Or broiled eel.” Bowron laughed and went into a coughing spell. Horrall said, “Dudley Smith would be a good man to implement a deal like that. He’s the smartest man in the Department.” Bowron said, “I give the edge to Bill Parker. He’s even smarter, and he’d be savvy enough to see something like that as a stepping-stone to Chief.”
Static hit the wire. I heard snippets: “Who’s got the slush fund?” “Who gets the gash?” “Who’ll enlist if we fight this Jew-engineered war?” “Will the PD face a manpower shortage?” “Will FDR sign a wartime draft bill?”
The wire ran out; I rewound it and replaced it. There was one box left. It was marked “3,” for three extensions. It noted the Bureau clerical pool, Headquarters Vice, and the Pickpocket Detail. The date: 8/14/39.
I slipped the new wire onto the spool and pushed the lever. The entry talk was garbled; southern drawls eked through. I sensed the voices before I actually heard them. I sensed William H. Parker’s intent, as well.
Brenda Allen and Elmer Jackson hailed from Mississippi. Call-Me-Jack let Brenda use the clerical-pool phones. Lee played cards with a Pickpocket Detail lieutenant.
I made the assumption instantaneously; it played out as true. It was thrilling. Captain William H. Parker knew it would be.
It was August of ’39. The Boulevard-Citizens trial concluded in June. I heard static and heist and trial a good dozen times. Full voices hit the wire then.
Elmer said, “I know you bought that house for Kay.”
Brenda said, “You must have money left over, sugar. You could invest in our service.”
Lee said, “I’m not running whores.”