by James Ellroy
Dudley sipped tea. “You are quite astute and farsighted on this fateful day. And I would venture that you have a favor to ask.”
Ace sipped tea. “That Four Families boy was rude to my niece again. I would hope that my reprisal would not engender a war.”
The cobwebs dissolved. His circuitry reconnected.
“I’ll kill the boy. We’ll broker a truce then. Jim Davis will translate for me.”
Ace pointed to a mismatched wall panel. It looked freshly varnished. A Chink flag hung askew.
“I want to show you something. I have new ideas to go along with some work I had done. Please, follow me.”
Dudley stood up. Ace opened the panel. A dark hole dropped way underground.
A stairway, wall rails, overhead lights. Ace bowed and went After you.
The drop went thirty feet. The stairway featured red carpet. The steps hit a loooooong corridor. Hanging bulbs swayed and lit a path.
A generator hummed. The labyrinth was heated and air-cooled. Rooms lined both sides of the corridor. They were prelit. They had that grand model-home look.
Rooms with easy chairs and couches. Rooms with full kitchens attached. Rooms with card tables and wet bars. Rooms furnished with beds and whorehouse peeks.
Secret wall compartments. Hidden camera stations. Movie cameras pointed at two-way mirrors.
Thirty rooms. Wartime chic. The slant-eyed Statler Hilton. A gambling mecca and smut-film set. Chop suey always piping hot. A handy opium den.
Ace bowed to Dudley. Dudley bowed to Ace. The tea hit the back of his head.
Ace said, “I just completed the construction. I had originally planned it as a stag resort. Now, I see it as a luxurious hideout for Jap beasts in flight from prison. I had a fan-tan game here last night. It was profitable. We are at war now, which means that rich folks will need entertainment. Do you see socialites and movie stars coming here to mingle with Jap beasts and other riffraff?”
Dudley laughed. “Yes, my yellow brother, I do.”
“Your friend Harry Cohn dropped nineteen G’s here. If he lost that much to me, how much do you think he has lost to your friend Mr. Siegel?”
Dudley winked. “Indeed. What exploitable losses?”
Ace started babbling. High-test tea always sent him cross-eyed. He lapsed into pidgin English. He sputtered like Donald Duck.
Aaaaaaaah, yes—the Japs.
Jap roundups, Japs in chains, Japs consigned to luxury cells. Dead Japs at the morgue. Hideo Ashida—that stunningly bright Jap.
4:11 p.m.
Ashida pulled up to the house. Ray Pinker rode shotgun. The sidewalk was rope-cordoned. Patrol cops held gawkers back.
A tomato hit the windshield. Ashida hit the wipers and thinned out the pulp. Somebody yelled, “Kill the Japs!”
A tomato hit the roof. Ashida and Pinker grabbed their evidence kits and ducked under the rope. The porch was tomato juice. Goldbrick cops and their mascot lounged. Mike Breuning, Dick Carlisle, Buzz Meeks, Jack Webb.
Taking some air. Ensconced with a fifth of Old Crow.
They shook hands with Pinker. Breuning and Carlisle shined Ashida on. Meeks winked at him. Jack said, “What’s shaking, Hideo? Your so-called people sure put you in the shit.”
Ashida put Jack in a headlock. Jack laughed and swatted him off. Meeks pointed out to the street. Oh, yeah—the shit.
The mob was all local yokels. Fools lugged tomato crates, fools burned Japanese flags. Sailors and Waves jitterbugged. A phonograph blared Count Basie.
A tomato hit the mailbox. Meeks said, “I’m getting ticked off.”
Breuning said, “You can’t blame them.”
Jack said, “Sure you can. What did the Watanabes ever do except die? What did Hideo ever do except work for this white man’s police force?”
Carlisle said, “You’re not a policeman, kid. Don’t get your signals crossed on that one.”
Breuning said, “Leave the kid alone. The Dudster likes him, and he’s only half Yid.”
Jack flinched. A tomato hit the porch rail. Pulp spritzed Meeks’ coat. Carlisle said, “Look alive. You don’t get a show like this every day.”
Meeks charged.
He ran straight at the mob. He tore down cordon ropes. The blues stood back and supplied room. He hit a knot of sailors, low.
He pulled his belt sap and arced backhands. He came in low and stayed low. He went for their faces. He hit noses, he hit mouths, he hit skulls. The sailors froze. Their gawker comrades stood and watched.
Ashida watched. Meeks was a legendary sap man. His sap featured raised stitching and leather-laced lead.
Meeks dug in low. Meeks grabbed necks and pulled faces close.
Ashida watched. The gawkers shrieked and turned tail. The beat-on sailors covered their faces and stumble-crawled away. One man held a handful of teeth. One man puked blood.
The fools cringed off. Meeks picked up an ice-cream bar wrapper and wiped off his sap. That phonograph was still out there. Erskine Hawkins’ band brayed “Uproar Shout.”
The needle spun off the record. Ashida caught his breath. Jack passed out cigarettes.
The jug went around. Meeks walked up to the porch. He grabbed the jug, drained it and tossed it. Breuning started to gush. Meeks shoved him flat on his ass.
Ashida walked into the house. He still smelled decomposition. Pinker walked in. They signed the logbook and opened their evidence kits.
The living room carpet was rolled up and cinched. The dining room table was covered with Kwan’s takeout.
There was more here. There had to be.
Pinker went Whew. “How are you holding up? The Webb kid’s right. It’s not like you did anything.”
Ashida said, “I’m worried about my mother. She’s right there at 2nd and San Pedro, with the FBI and Sheriff’s coming in. My brother’s out at the farm in the Valley. I think he’ll be all right for now.”
Pinker tapped his arm. “I forgot to tell you, but Bill Parker called me. He’s supervising the case for Call-Me-Jack, and he said he wants you on it. Here’s the surprising part. He’s posted a guard with your mother, a Fed named Littell. Parker said the guy’s got no beef with Japanese folks. He hit it off with your mother, and they started playing pinochle right off the bat.”
Ashida smiled. “Whiskey Bill.”
Pinker smiled. “He’s not my cup of tea, but he looks out for the guys who get him results.”
“On that note, then.”
“Yeah, on that note.”
They got out their cameras and flashbulbs. They split up and covered the downstairs. Ashida shot nine rolls of film. He got the kitchen and service porch. He shot the clothesline and hanging garments. Why wash clothes on the day that you plan suicide?
Pinker shot the living room and downstairs hallway. Ashida bagged fibers. They got out their print gear and the print cards for the Watanabes. They dusted touch-and-grab planes.
Shitwork. Furniture backing, windowsills, ledges. Smears and smudges. No evidential-quality fragments or full prints.
Ashida felt woozy. He’d been up since the Creation. He withheld drugstore evidence. He saw Bucky and caught this job. His country and ancestral homeland just went to war. His whole world just went blooey.
Jack Horrall quick-rigged an “Alien Squad.” He saw the first muster back at Central Station. “Alien Squad” meant “Goon Squad.” It was all hard boys.
Strikebreakers, America Firsters, ex-Klansmen. Lee Blanchard and Elmer Jackson were the sweethearts. Call-Me-Jack was working the get-the-Japs gestalt.
The Munson Report was stale news now. It saturated the Japanese papers last month. FDR sent Curtis Munson out to the coast. He visited Japanese enclaves and described what he saw. He called the Nisei “pathetically loyal Americans.” The Japan-born Issei: “Devotedly pro-American, given that they had fled Japan.” The Japan-educated Kibei: “Horrified by the onslaught of fascism in their native land.”
Ashida print-brushed. Ashida got two full prints. H
e compared them to the cards and logged them for Aya Watanabe. He dusted a living room window ledge. He got a full print and scanned the cards. He got no matching loops and whorls.
He called it out. “Mr. Pinker, I’ve got one.”
Pinker walked over and eyeballed the ledge. It was an adult-male right-index print. It required a full lift.
“Dudley and Lee Blanchard used handkerchiefs in the house, but I’m not sure about Breuning, Carlisle, Meeks and your pal Jack.”
“We should elimination-print them. We’ll spare ourselves confusion later on.”
Pinker nodded and lugged his kit outside. Ashida walked over and dawdled by the door. Pinker laid print cards flat on a porch rail and inked up the boys.
Avenue 45 was quiet now. The porch reeked of tomato residue.
Pinker rolled Carlisle’s prints. Breuning said, “We got fucking Bill Parker riding herd on us now. He’s a Bolshevik. Elmer Jackson called me a few hours ago. Parker’s got some woman transcribing the Dictograph wires at the Bureau.”
Meeks passed Carlisle a Kleenex. Carlisle wiped his hands. Meeks said, “Elmer will lay it all out to Jack Horrall.”
Breuning said, “He has, but you know Jack. He’ll figure he can ride out whatever Parker’s got planned.”
Pinker rolled Breuning’s prints. Carlisle said, “Parker should watch it. He’s on the wires himself. Dud told me that.”
Breuning wiped his hands on his trousers. “Pearl Harbor’s put a new complexion on things.”
Meeks said, “Yeah, yellow.”
Carlisle smirked. “Why do you think we’re working this shit case? You think it ain’t politics?”
Ashida walked back inside. He sprayed the unknown print with ninhydrin and lifted it with clear tape. Pinker walked in with the new print cards. Ashida ran them under his magnifying glass. He got no matches. That meant one unknown print.
They spread out again. Pinker dusted the closet shelves. Ashida dusted the kitchen cabinets and notched grease-coated smears. He noticed two broom whisks below the bottom drawer. He aimed his flashlight at the floor.
He caught broken glass—a small shard pile.
He scooped it up and examined it. He noted an oily sheen on the shards and sniffed it. It smelled like fish oil.
Red dots on the glass—possibly dried blood. He scooped the shards into an envelope and tagged it: “Watanabe/Highland Park/5:21 p.m., 12/7/41.”
The kitchen reeked of stale egg rolls. Chinese food turned his stomach. He walked upstairs and went through Nancy’s and Johnny’s rooms. Dudley told Ray Pinker that he found the rooms “engaging.”
Ashida tossed the rooms. Ashida got the gist.
Nancy padlocked the connecting door to Johnny’s room. Johnny hoarded smutty magazines and Nazi comic books. Johnny possessed padded jockstraps. They were padded with Japanese flags and Nancy’s underwear.
Ashida ran his face over them. The smell aroused him. He trembled. He put them back in the drawer.
He walked to Ryoshi and Aya’s room. He saw the hate tract on the dresser. He bagged it and tagged it: “Watanabe/Highland Park/5:34 p.m., 12/7/41.”
There—the wall note.
Ashida studied the characters and their placement on the page. Pinker walked in. Ashida translated.
“ ‘The looming apocalypse is not of our doing. We have been good citizens and did not know that it was coming.’ ”
Pinker said, “We’ve got post hoc, ergo propter hoc, right at the gate. We’ve got four dead Japanese the day before Japan attacks a U.S. territory. Is that what the note refers to?”
Ashida shook his head. “The ‘apocalypse’ could mean mass suicide or an inevitable world conflict, with no foreknowledge of this morning’s attack itself. ‘Apocalypse’ could pertain to potential ramifications for individual members of the family or the family as a whole. The note is entirely ambiguous.”
Pinker said, “Exactly. And the real question is whether or not the note was coerced, because the consensus is we’ve got homicide.”
Ashida said, “Exactly. The characters are wobbly, it’s a male script, and Mr. Watanabe would certainly have been under duress if he were planning seppuku. But, the characters are extremely wobbly, even by textbook suicide-note standards.”
“We could call it a variant. It’s the equivalent of the hesitation marks the swords made when they pierced the bodies.”
Ashida studied the paper stock. It was thick and had a cloth content. He tapped dust on his print brush. He ran it over the note and stepped back for more light.
Smears and smudges. One blurred partial. A badly fragmented partial—half-eclipsed by a smooth glove print.
Pinker pointed to it. “There. The glove print indicates that someone was guiding the note writer’s hand. There’s your coercion, right on the page.”
Ashida saw a notepad on the dresser. He walked over and studied the top page. It was a grocery list. The characters resembled the characters on the wall note. It was adult-male script. There were no fluctuations, indicating duress.
Pinker came over. “Identical. It has to be Ryoshi.”
They walked up to the wall note. A breeze hit the room. Print powder puffed in the air.
Ashida said, “Let’s call it coercion. If that’s the case, and the killer wasn’t Japanese, he ran the risk of Mr. Watanabe writing a note to the police that the killer himself couldn’t read.”
Pinker smiled. “I know what you’re saying, but you should be the one to say it.”
Ashida said, “I would surmise that the killer is Japanese.”
Pinker bowed, mock-solemn. Ashida smiled and bowed back.
That phonograph kicked on outside. Father Coughlin launched a hate harangue, backed by Gaelic lutes. Pinker rolled his eyes and walked downstairs. Ashida stepped into the hallway.
Do the textbook exercise. Let your thoughts disperse and accrue. Let your eyes drift and see.
Stand there. It’s a Buddhist practice, 2000 B.C. Your vile countrymen ignore such traditions. You are of them. You were born to the Samurai class and forged by the Reformation. Japanese customs formed you. Lutheran zealots schooled you. You are equal parts rigid view and the mind untethered. Let this horror house speak to you.
Ashida stood there. He thought of Bucky’s fight tonight. He saw Bucky in the Belmont showers. His old trip-wire gizmo snapped secret nudes. His new gizmo snapped pix at 6th and Spring. That man outside the drugstore. A Bucky manqué. Handsome, but not lovely and—
Ashida blinked. A trip-wire bulb popped.
He noticed a hallway shelf. It was lined with jade knickknacks. A small bottle was wedged behind a small jade temple. Note that frayed label.
Ashida snatched the bottle. A label strip read “Morphine Paregoric.” There was no discernible pharmacy name.
Whalen’s Drugstore yesterday. The bandit rifles bottles on one shelf. Said bottles: morphine paregoric.
Two crimes the same day. Matching details accrued.
Ashida retrieved his evidence kit and dusted the bottle. The smears meant no more details accrued.
He stood in the hallway. He heard Dudley’s boys bullshitting outside. His eyes traveled. He saw dust motes and a bug on the wall.
The walls, the ceiling. Chipped paint, cobwebs, wait—
Anomaly. Inconsistency. Red-alert flaw.
Note the ceiling-wood strips, laid in lengthwise. Note the parallel seams. The seams disrupt the wood-grain flow. They are crosshatched and barely detectable. They form a two-foot square.
Ashida jumped and aimed his hands. He hit the middle of the square. The square flew back, off an inside hinge. A set of collapsible stairs dropped to the floor.
Metal stairs with rubber foot grips. Soundless, well oiled.
Ashida climbed up them. A slight tug made them retract. The square slid down flat in that movement. The apparatus operated off gears and air-filled cylinders.
A room. Less than an attic. More than a crawl space.
He stood at his full height
. He pulled out his penlight and ran the beam. No windows. Lacquered plywood walls. One table, one chair.
On the table: a shortwave radio and ledger. The radio was hooked up to a tape-recording device.
The room was cold. His breath fogged. It was a somewhat cool evening. His breath should not condense. The room was probably soundproofed. Insulation panels trapped cold air.
He turned on the radio. The needle-and-tuning display lit up green. The dial numbers made no sense. He jiggled the volume knob—be careful now.
A man shrieked in Japanese. He defamed the United States. It was the “Land of the White Centipedes.” He lauded the Emperor’s divine triumph in Hawaii this morning.
The tape spools spun. Ashida studied the hookup. It was highly sophisticated. Yes, surely—radio voices activated the tape rig’s starter gears. Magnets and radio signals—stunning mechanics.
Ashida pushed a button recessed below the spools. A new Japanese voice fomented. He stated the time and date: 2:00 p.m. yesterday. Chronology: the Watanabes died ninety minutes later.
The man howled. It was rabid-dog propaganda. He spoke native Japanese. Ashida spoke an American hybrid. Phrases slipped by him. The gist was plain. The man described preparations for the attack.
Ashida listened in Japanese. Ashida lost words on a brain spool to English.
He sweated up his clothes. His pulse soared. His breath came out hot and turned to cold steam. The man defamed the United States. It was “a mongrel nation who will die under the hooves of Imperial Japan.”
The rant devolved into animal sounds. Ashida turned off the radio. The display light faded to pinpoints. He pushed tape-rig buttons. The spools turned back and forth and repeated the lunatic’s words. Yes—yesterday’s broadcast was the only recording extant.
He turned off the tape rig. He caught his breath and recited the “Gloria Patria.” Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to—
He forgot the English words. He finished in Japanese. His heart rate settled. He caught his breath and examined the ledger.
Thirty pages. Japanese characters. Dated entries going back three months. Surely this: shortwave radio broadcasts, transcribed.