Perfidia

by James Ellroy

Nothing. No paperwork, no—

  He went fluttery light-headed. He grabbed the bag and ran. His limbs felt disconnected. He bumped bookshelves and toppled Hitler busts. He went back out the door. It was 6:29. The blackout was still on. The world was still dark and flat.

  Cars crawled up 15th Street. Clouds hid the moon. L.A. felt submerged. The a.m. Herald ran a headline—SOUTHLAND BRACES FOR JAP SUB ATTACK!

  His car was a U-boat. The front seat was the cockpit. He took Union to 6th to Grand. Other submarines passed him. The water was too thick. They all maneuvered too slow.

  He still felt disconnected. He checked the dashboard clock: 6:38, 6:39, 6:40. The world would relight at 7:00 p.m.

  Grand to 1st, east to the station.

  The building was underwater. He parked and locked the bag in his evidence kit. He walked in the rear door. The trapped-in light burned his eyes.

  The booking desk was swamped with JAPS and Alien Squad goons. Lee Blanchard held a boy by the neck.

  Ashida walked up to the lab. The lights were off. He hit a wall switch and tripped the ceiling bulbs. The window shades were taped to the glass.

  Ashida locked himself in. Nobody would notice it. He was the night-owl Jap. He had no personal life. He always worked late.

  He cleared table space. He laid out the Lugers and silencers. He opened the storage drawer and retrieved his two photo sets. He placed them by the Deutsches Haus swag.

  Two shots of dye-dipped silencer threads. Shot no. 1: the pharmacy. Shot no. 2: the Watanabe house.

  He scraped threads off the Deutsches Haus silencers. He dipped them in a vat of aniline dye. He pat-dried them and studied them under a full-dialed microscope.

  Confirmed. Yes—the same metallurgic components. Yes—the same minor inconsistencies. Yes—his earlier conclusion, updated.

  Different silencers were deployed at the pharmacy and the house. They were made from the same metal. Deutsches Haus was the source of the silencers used at both locations.

  Horns honked. Whoops went up outside. Ashida checked the wall clock. 7:00 p.m., on the snout.

  He pulled the tape off the window shades. Downtown L.A. was lit up. Building lights, neon lights, car lights. Motorists rode their horns and flashed V for Victory.

  He opened the ammo drawer and grabbed four bullets. He loaded the Deutsches Haus Lugers and screwed on the silencers. He secured the ballistics tunnel and laid out the guns. Ready, aim, fire.

  Four guns, four silencers. Four shots, four muffled thuds. Eyeball confirmation no. 1:

  The silencers shed threads from a single firing. They curled and dropped off like the threads at the pharmacy and the house.

  Ashida studied the pix from the pharmacy and the house. Ashida retrieved and studied the rounds he just fired.

  Confirmation.

  The new rounds deteriorated identically.

  Deutsches Haus, Whalen’s Pharmacy, the Watanabe house. Identically malfunctioning Lugers. Probable firing pin and ejector flaws. Sheared and bifurcated rounds. Brazen armed robbery. A faked ritual slaughter. Deutsches Haus guns fired at both locations.

  I must become indispensable. I must continue to act boldly and unilaterally.

  Ashida thought of Bucky. Ashida held a Nazi gun to his cheek.

  We’re at war.

  The world is dark and flat.

  Cars are submarines.

  7:57 p.m.

  The audience is tense and poised for the moment. We’re at war with a fascist enemy. An American Negro with leftist cachet and snob appeal will soon appear and validate our enlightened good taste. I’m six rows back from the stage, in an aisle seat. I’m the unescorted young woman in the stunning red wool dress. This will not be as much fun as last night’s Bucky Bleichert fight. I am not here with Scotty Bennett. The stripped-to-shorts Bucky will not wave to the crowd and flash his big buck teeth.

  I am here to advance Captain William H. Parker’s presumptuous agenda. The Red Queen and her male consorts are one row in front of me. I know them from the photo-affixed files that Captain Parker gave me this morning. Claire De Haven is quite patrician. Her trembling hands and a wet sheen on her neck denote the drug habit mentioned in her file. She is a tall and handsome woman in her early thirties, a debutante who took a postcollege fall for the Left and astonished the Left by continuing to show up. Flanking her: the homosexual actor Reynolds Loftis and his lover, Chaz Minear. The two men form the nucleus of the Red Queen’s cell. They are prissy, venomous, smug. I am close enough to hear their conversation and close enough to geopolitical reality to be guardedly sympathetic to their goals. The Queen’s “subsidiary members” sit to their right. They are a blur from Captain Parker’s crib sheet—the type of men who rush to agree, fetch drinks and light cigarettes. The Queen hosts grand parties at her home in Beverly Hills. Male guests often wind up in her bed. The subalterns empty ashtrays, carry glasses to the kitchen and lock up the house while their queen ruts.

  I have been supplied with a primer on their dissolution. Narcotics, promiscuity, dry-out cures at a Malibu health farm run by a dubious plastic surgeon. Brilliant Captain William H. Parker. He read the subversive file on me, assessed my part in the Boulevard-Citizens case and perceived the outré nature of my relationship with Lee Blanchard. He understood that I am of these people and thus so appalled that I will entrap them, betray them and destroy them. We are of the Dakota prairie, Captain Parker and I. We see profligacy in ourselves and indulge and recoil from it in erratic measure. Captain Parker took a moral leap with me. He assumed that I would go at the Queen from a sense of self-vindication. He is entirely correct.

  They are speaking with raised voices now; there’s aggression in their tone. Conversations are buzzing all around me. It’s predictable precurtain chatter. When will FDR initiate the massive wartime draft? What will be the numbers and who will be exempt? The Japanese have overrun the Philippines, the Hawaiian death toll mounts. The Queen and her consorts disdain the talk aswirl. Their talk is more elitist. It pertains to the “illegal mass imprisonment” of “innocent Japanese.” It’s gadfly chat in the middle of a war-bond rally. It’s starkly illustrative of who they are—because I know it to be true.

  I drove through Little Tokyo this afternoon. Lee is an Alien Squad cop, so I had to see. I saw arrests, confiscations, shackle chains of compliant Japanese. Lee walked up 2nd Street, twirling a billy club. I saw the Japanese man I noted at the Bucky Bleichert fight, observing the scene from his car just as I was. He was a thousand times more potently intent than the fussbudgets seated one row in front of me.

  The houselights began to fade; it felt like the blackout, reprised. I was driving away from Little Tokyo when the 5:00 siren blew. Natural dusk and darkness by law spawned a contained chaos. I saw two auto wrecks in a minute’s time; I witnessed a skirmish in Pershing Square. The dearth of light prompted the altercation—I’m sure of it. Placard-waving rightist factions fought. It was Catholic Coughlinites versus Gerald L. K. Smith’s Protestant-Nationalist goons. They swung signboards and fists until they couldn’t see whom they were hitting.

  The houselights went all the way off. Stage lights replaced them. The curtain rose. A pale woman carried a massive stringed instrument over to a chair. She acknowledged mild applause. Paul Robeson walked onstage, bowed and stood under a spotlight. Frantic applause burst out. Claire De Haven cued her slaves to stand. The bulk of the audience took it as their consent to rise.

  I remained in my seat. The moment was inimical to subversion. Robeson bowed and raised his hands: I’m honored, now sit. The Queen and her slaves complied first. The rest of the audience sat and fell quiet. The accompanist strummed an introduction. Robeson launched “Ol’ Man River.”

  The tall Negro with the huge basso. The Broadway showstopper-cum-slaves’ lament. The dilettante leftists. The wayward girl from Sioux Falls. The unhinged police captain and his anti-Red pogrom.

  I giggled.

  It just happened. It popped through all my calculation. The people around me hea
rd it. I sensed scowls in the dark.

  Robeson wrung the song dry and brought it to crescendo. The workers’ troubadour and Princeton alum goes showbiz! White swells and Fifth Column hacks go wild!

  I giggled. It registered above all the cheers. A man went “Ssssshhhhh.” I giggled louder. I was nine years old and cutting up in church, the Sunday after the stock market crash.

  The audience cranked out bravos and slowly simmered down. Robeson made with the dutiful bows. A dowager glared at me. I rebuffed her with a little wave. Robeson segued to the labor ditty “Joe Hill.”

  I got antsy. I was to make contact with the Reds, and no more. It felt insufficient. A Princeton-educated Negro extolled class revolt; a frail woman with runs in her stockings strummed an oversize lute. I laughed and covered my mouth. The dowager whispered, “Be still, child.”

  Poor Joe Hill. He was railroaded and snuffed by the powers that be. Fear not—his message lives on. I held my hand over my mouth. Robeson soaked up adulation and segued to Verdi’s Otello. He was the tormented Moor now. He went from Trotskyite recitalist to Milanese hambone. I clamped my mouth. I felt Claire De Haven’s pissy gaze.

  I shut my eyes so I wouldn’t roar outright. Pictures clicked through my internal nickelodeon. I worked up the dialogue. I predicted the outcome and knew I was right.

  Robeson laid on the torment. I thought of the Japanese man at the Bucky Bleichert fight and rose to my feet.

  “No human being deserves to be entertained with a world at war and a city engaged in repressive actions directed against innocent people, simply because of the barbarism performed by their native countrymen.”

  It was spoken as a polemic; it was issued just short of a shout. The Moor sang through it. The accompanist dropped her lute. People rustled, hissed, whispered, ssshhhh’ed, booed. House lights snapped on. I became aware of individual movement. A speck appeared in my vision—but I did not react. The Red Queen was the first to stand and Look at Me.

  “No human being deserves to be entertained while policemen and Federal agents harass and illegally detain innocent Japanese-Americans in the spirit of racial hysteria and overreaction to a fascistic display of aggression, and—”

  In one instant:

  The mad Moor shut up and Looked at Me.

  All the houselights went on.

  All the Queen’s consorts stood and stared.

  Boos, shouts, garbled admonitions—building to a roar.

  “Goddamn Bolshevik!” “Goddamn fascist!” “Get out of here, you whore!”

  I yelled a response; the roar smothered it; an usher grabbed my arm. I balled a fist and hit him in the face. I caught the tip of his nose and felt it crack. Blood burst into his eyes.

  Everyone stood. The usher weaved and made hurt sounds. Everyone looked at me. Their shouted censure filled the hall. I looked straight at Claire De Haven as a group of men charged me. Men in silly uniforms—grabbing me, clutching me, picking me up as I thrashed.

  Men carried me. I enjoyed it as it occurred. I stayed in character and squirmed in resistance. We went up an aisle and out to the lobby. I jerked and hit my head on a door frame. I saw a wall clock that read 8:19.

  8:20 p.m.

  The Biltmore clock read 8:20. I opened my eyes in the backseat of a prowl car. I had a topsy-turvy view. Pershing Square, the Biltmore, Philharmonic Hall. A whoosh as the prowl car pulled out.

  I didn’t recognize the two cops; they’d cuffed me during my unconscious moments and ignored me now. The driver went north on Hill Street. Central Station was a minute away; Lee worked out of it; I was a noted police girlfriend. My performance got me this. I had hoped for a firm scoot to the lobby and a tête-à-tête with the Red Queen. I didn’t think I’d be arrested and run the risk of alerting Lee.

  A call hit the two-way radio; the cops grumbled about a B & E on Bunker Hill. Central Station was on the way; the passenger cop checked his watch and told the driver to gun it.

  They continued to ignore me; we got to the station in less than a minute. The driver idled outside the jail door. The passenger cop led me inside and locked me into a cell on the women’s row.

  It was the middle cell on a five-cell tier; I had single lodging. The other cells held Japanese women. They were squeezed in four to a cell, each equipped with two bunks and exposed toilets. They looked away from one another. They gave no indication of acquaintance outside of this jail. There were young women, old women, women somewhere in between. There was no conversation. There was no camaraderie or commiseration. They registered the white girl in the bright red dress and felt the shame that she didn’t feel for herself.

  I turned away from them. I sat on the bottom bunk and lowered my eyes. I got it then.

  They were a collective. They assumed one façade in solidarity. They were as sure-minded and composed as the Red Queen’s collective was fretful and shrill.

  The Mirror-News was partially wedged under my mattress. I read the front section.

  The Pacific war. The Russian front. The Japs on an island-hopping rampage. A Sid Hudgens piece on Bucky Bleichert on page eight.

  The banner was BUCKY BOY IN BLUE? A snide two columns followed.

  Sid recapped Bucky’s farewell fight and stressed his pending appointment to the Los Angeles Police. But is said appointment “pryingly predicated” on his supplying Federal agents with “insidious info” on “jungled-up Japs” aligned with that “heathen hellion Hirohito”? The piece described Bucky’s Belmont High athletic career and friendship with fellow green-and-blacksters in the “slant-eyed community.” Sid’s trademark kicker: Isn’t Bucky the son of German immigrants, and thus potentially suspect of Fifth Column leanings himself? “Whither goest thou, Herr Bleichert?”

  I balled up and tossed the newspaper. I shut my eyes to blot out the cell row and all the Japanese women. They were still standing still, and they still despised me for my folly of self.

  I was hungry. I wanted a big steak dinner and a cigarette. I wanted to watch Scotty Bennett take his shirt off. I wanted to dance with Bucky in his police dress blues.

  A woman one cell over stifled a sob. I kept my eyes shut and prayed for her. I indulge prayer when the world seems incomprehensible and only a plea to the incomprehensible makes sense. The Reformation, the prairie, solidarity. The war and the Jewish star on Herr Bleichert’s trunks.

  The mattress settled under me. My prayer dislodged a piece of the earth and sent me spinning. No dreams, please. No Scottish pastor’s boys, no war, no mad Moors—

  7:38 a.m.

  “You were stunning, Miss Lake. You upstaged Paul Robeson.”

  I tilted my head and opened my eyes. The women were gone.

  “Were they released? They were here when I fell asleep.”

  Captain Parker unlocked my cell. He was in uniform and looked exhausted. He tossed me a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

  “Your bunk mates? They were transferred to the Lincoln Heights jail. The desk sergeant told me you slept through it.”

  I lit up. “Where were you sitting?”

  “Two rows behind you. I knew you’d pull something when you laughed that first time.”

  “Why didn’t you get me out of here sooner?”

  “Because I knew you’d want the experience.”

  “You were right.”

  Parker said, “I think our next—”

  I curtailed him. “I won’t allow you leverage on anything pertaining to Lee Blanchard. You can indict him for the Boulevard-Citizens robbery or for murders he may or may not have committed for Ben Siegel, as you deem fit.”

  He leaned against the wall bars. “What are you telling me?”

  “Not to assume that I’ll fold behind coercion. Not to assume that I’ll do everything that you demand without compensation.”

  Parker patted his knees; I tossed him his cigarettes and lighter. He lit up and blew a smoke ring higher than this girl ever could.

  “What are you telling me?”

  I folded out yesterday’s new
spaper. Page eight was crumpled, but legible. I tapped the middle columns and handed it over.

  Parker read the piece. He crushed his cigarette on a bar hinge and smiled.

  “I’m recalling those sketches I saw at your house. I would guess that you’re quite smitten.”

  “Is the article accurate?”

  “Yes. Apparently, Mr. Bleichert is acquainted with some dubious Japanese. I don’t know who they are, but Federal agents will be interviewing him shortly. The results of the interview will determine the status of his appointment.”

  I tossed my cigarette in the toilet. “I’d like to observe the interview.”

  “I’ll arrange it.”

  “I want Bucky to get on.”

  “Quid pro quo. Call Dr. Lesnick’s office and request a 2:00 appointment this Wednesday. You’ll see the Queen on her way out. I’d say she’ll recall last night and cite serendipity.”

  I laughed. Claire, darling! I’m out to destroy you, but do tell me first. Where did you get that gorgeous dress you wore to the Robeson bash?

  7:49 a.m.

  Parker walked off the tier. Exhaustion rehit him. He’d been up since the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor.

  Not quite.

  He cadged naps in his black-and-white. He got booze sleep in his new office. Jack Horrall gave him a Detective Bureau room. He was now the PD’s “wartime emergency planner.”

  It covered his Traffic duties. It acknowledged his lust for hard work. He was the armed forces liaison. He collated Teletypes on war matters. He oversaw the Alien Squad and kept them leashed. He slack-leashed Dudley Smith and the Watanabe case.

  He should wrangle the case some ink. Sid Hudgens could provide it. Sid owed Call-Me-Jack five yards in card losses. Tractable Sid.

  Parker walked up to the muster room. He had five minutes with Kay Lake. It revived him and wrung him dry. He was alone in their deal now.

  Carl Hull called him last night. He’d joined the Navy. Call-Me-Jack granted him a war-service leave.

  In the meantime:

  “I’m out of this deal of yours, William. It feels imprudent and untimely. We’re in an actual war, and it’s based on a great deal more than ideology. The Reds are our allies, and they’ve been dying in great numbers and bleeding Hitler dry. I subscribe to your prediction of an ideological conflict after we win this war—and, of course, domestic Reds will need to be interdicted. But, presently? Presently, your operation seems like quite a mad crusade. And, frankly, the notion of you and young Miss Lake troubles me.”