Perfidia

by James Ellroy

  He hung up. He hurled his telephone. It hit an auto-wreck wall map and shattered.

  The muster room was chalkboard-walled and covered with masking paper. He came in at 5:00 a.m. and chalked up his pitch. He’d spiel officialese, verbatim. They’d be impressed.

  He walked in. They beat him there. Call-Me-Jack smoked a morning stogie. Gene Biscailuz wore two six-guns. Fletch Bowron reeked of perfume. Bill McPherson snoozed.

  Parker circled the walls and pulled off the paper. Six chalkboards glowed.

  Jack said, “Bill was up early.”

  Biscailuz said, “Bill never sleeps.”

  Bowron said, “Bill’s forgotten what his wife looks like.”

  Jack said, “Bill forgot that the day Adam fucked Eve.”

  Biscailuz laughed. Parker tapped chalkboard no. 1.

  “We’re at war, gentlemen. No one can say that the city of Los Angeles isn’t taking it seriously. And if I look tired, I’m not the only one.”

  Biscailuz said, “I’m hungry. We should get Ace Kwan to send up some egg foo young.”

  Jack said, “I got blotto at Kwan’s last night. Ace sent me home in a cab.”

  Bowron slapped his knees. “Go ahead, Bill. Strut yo stuff.”

  Parker grabbed a pointer and walked board to board. His block print was perfectly aligned. He filled in the abbreviations and expanded the officialese.

  “Governor Olson has called for the immediate internment of all Jap nationals and suspected sympathizers. Attorney General Warren expects industrial sabotage. State guardsmen are now patrolling power lines and aqueducts statewide. New York City Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia has been appointed director of the U.S. Office of Civilian Defense. He will fly to Los Angeles today, accompanied by Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. They’ll be briefed by state guard officials.”

  One chalkboard down. One city bigwig dozing. Three city bigwigs alert.

  “Four hundred Japs on the ‘A’ list are in custody. Forty-two Federal agents are interrogating them. The Japs are being held at the Terminal Island pen, the Fort MacArthur stockade, the Hall of Justice jail, the Lincoln Heights jail, and the jails at six of the Los Angeles Police Department’s geographical divisions. Suspicious Jap fishing boats in San Pedro Harbor are being boarded, searched and towed to port. Navy PT-boat patrols are being deployed from Santa Barbara on the north to the Mexican border on the south.

  There is a high probability that Jap submarines are patrolling these waters.” Three chalkboards down. Parker deployed a monotone and excised his prairie drawl.

  “Coastal defense batteries are being manned twenty-four hours. Coastal highways have been closed to all nonmilitary traffic. The Board of Supervisors has declared a state of wartime emergency.”

  Four chalkboards down. No hiccups or speaker’s gaffes.

  “Los Angeles is on a full-time blackout alert. Yesterday’s a.m. and p.m. test blackouts were successful. There was no significant rise in the local crime rate, and traffic accidents increased by a mere 6%. There will be a citywide test blackout Wednesday night. The dusk-to-dawn time span will supply civic officials with valuable statistics.”

  Five boards down. There’s the finish line.

  “Per the Watanabe case. I met with Sergeant Dudley Smith yesterday. Sergeant Smith submitted a comprehensive first summary report. Sergeant Smith and three other detectives are working the case, full-time. I will approach Mirror-News scribe Sid Hudgens myself and will exhort him to portray the investigation in a laudatory light. The Watanabe case may prove to be a significant propaganda tool, should the PD’s Alien Squad or the Sheriff’s deputies working the roundups attract accusations of brutal treatment, or if the roundups and property seizures themselves come to be morally questioned.”

  Parker caught his breath. Fletch Bowron applauded.

  Biscailuz said, “Get Bill a White Man of the Week Award.”

  Jack said, “Shit, get him a double highball at Mike Lyman’s.”

  Bowron said, “Eleanor Roosevelt’s coming. She’ll probably want a parade.”

  Biscailuz said, “I heard she’s a lezbo. My deputy Dot Rothstein told me. Dot’s on the lezbo grapevine. She’s the one who told me that Barbara Stanwyck licks snatch.”

  Bowron said, “I’m taking the bull by the horns on this Jap deal. Get this. I’m going to can all the Japs on the city payroll. They’re all Fifth Column, and cream puffs don’t win wars.”

  Parker said, “I don’t think that’s a sound idea, Mr. Mayor.”

  Blurt. Speaker’s gaffe. Hear that pin drop?

  Parker suppressed fidgets. Ward Littell opened the door.

  “Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen. Captain, we’re about to start with Mr. Bleichert.”

  Call-Me-Jack went Shoo.

  Bowron said, “Comrade Bill. Saved by the bell.”

  Parker about-faced and followed Littell. They walked to the detectives’ squad bay. Mirror-front sweat rooms lined the back wall.

  Kay Lake stood outside no. 1. She could look in. The men inside couldn’t look out.

  Parker and Littell joined her. She ignored them and stared through the glass. Littell said, “These are gutter tactics. They’re like Stalin’s show trials.”

  The room was small and tight-packed. Ed Satterlee, Dick Hood. Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert. A table-and-chairs tableau.

  Parker flipped a wall switch. Speaker static crackled. Sound merged with sight.

  Bleichert rode his chair backward. Hood and Satterlee paced. Kay Lake wore her up-all-night look. Her dress was rumpled. Her hair was mussed.

  Satterlee said, “Here’s what interests me. When you shave in the morning, do you see a German or an American in the mirror?” Bleichert grinned. “You mean, like the mirror on that wall over there? The one with two sides to it?”

  Hood said, “You can’t score a knockout here, son. We’re on the points system. You’ve got to say the right things and win by decision.”

  Bleichert pointed to the mirror. “Who’s on the other side, J. Edgar Hoover? Does he really care if I get on the L.A. Police?”

  Hood said, “Answer the question, please.”

  Satterlee said, “German or American? Pick a country, pick a loyalty.”

  Bleichert said, “My parents were born in Germany. I was born here. I was born in 1917, which gives me an alibi for the Great War.”

  Kay Lake smiled. Parker smelled her stale perfume.

  Hood smiled. “I see your point, but our job is to investigate people with German and Italian bloodlines who might find their loyalties strained.”

  Bleichert said, “You’re reaching, Mr. Hood. And I don’t know about ‘bloodlines.’ You can’t tell a Kraut or a dago just by looking at him.”

  Hood and Satterlee swapped signals. Satterlee snapped his suspenders. Hood said, “Yeah, I know. It’s not like they’re Japs.”

  Bleichert drummed the table. “German bloodlines are diffuse. It’s not like Germans are Japs.”

  Parker studied Bleichert. Kay Lake hugged the wall. She stuck her hand in his pocket and grabbed his cigarettes. Her hand was warm. His leg fluttered. She lit up and blew high smoke rings.

  Satterlee said, “Do you like Japs?”

  Bleichert said, “I don’t give a shit one way or the other.”

  Hood said, “You went to Belmont High.”

  Bleichert shrugged. “Class of ’35. The Sentinels, green-and-black forever. What’s all this have to do with me getting on the Los Angeles PD?”

  Hood said, “We started compiling intelligence three years ago. We learned that the Jap kids from Little Tokyo went to Belmont. We checked the registration rolls and discovered that this fight phenom was a Belmont alum, and that he sure had a lot of Jap friends. We thought, If this goddamn war comes, our bright boy Bucky would be a good one to talk to, because he just might have the lowdown on some Jap Fifth Columnists.”

  Satterlee crowded the table. “Then we learned that our bright boy applied to the PD here. I won’t mince words, son. If you give us so
me names, you get on. If you refuse, your application is marked ‘null and void.’ ”

  Bleichert wetted up. It was sweat, tears or both. Kay Lake pressed the mirror.

  Bleichert said, “I know two brothers named Ashida. Akira runs the family farm, and Hideo’s a chemist with the PD. Their father’s dead, and their mother’s named Mariko. She’s a drunk, and she’s crazy about the Emperor and that Tojo guy. She’s got a Jap flag in her living room closet, for all that’s worth.”

  Kay Lake shut her eyes and laid her head on the mirror. Parker white-knuckled his gun belt.

  Littell said, “Mariko’s harmless, and Hideo’s a brilliant kid. I’ll tell Hood that.”

  Kay Lake said, “Men are so goddamned weak.”

  10:29 a.m.

  Opium.

  The world was his channel. His pallet was a lifeboat. The pipe was his guide.

  He flicked across lovely postcards. He welcomed fellow travelers. Bette Davis joined him. They’re lovers in London. They’re straphangers in the Tube.

  Opium.

  The pallet, the pipe. Ace Kwan’s basement. He’s here one moment, gone the next.

  It’s the Blitz. Ireland has stayed neutral. Joe Kennedy is an isolationist. He’s the ambassador to England, but he knows things. The Nazis will win the war. The British beast will fall. Black and Tans killed Dudley Smith’s father and elder brother. It left Maidred Conroy Smith widowed and prone to beat her young son.

  Time evaporates. Blitzkrieg. It’s September 1940. The Germans firebomb London. Dudley and Bette. Uncle Joe gets them a private car in the Tube. Uncle Joe resigns his posting later that fall. The British press dubs him a coward. The Blitz terrifies him. Irish lads drive him to Kerry and nurse him with booze and whores. Dudley and Bette. Uncle Joe got them this private car and ran home with his nuts shriveled up.

  Opium.

  His senses merged. London burned. Furtwängler played Beethoven’s Ninth. He’d meet Bette Friday night. The Shrine Auditorium. The newsboys’ bash. He’ll wear his best tweed suit.

  London becomes Nanking. Ace Kwan told him stories. Jap soldiers behead Chink soldiers. Jap hordes take a monastery and sodomize the priests.

  Bette sees it and sobs. He consoles her. War is the dark grandeur of forfeit, my child. It engages the hellhound within me.

  The Tube car entered a tunnel. Nanking went Poof! He’s back in Kwan’s basement. Yes, please—the pipe.

  He explained it to Bette. Anesthesia, supplication. I am all thought and act. My habitude is connivance. I must halt and renew myself in this maddening rush.

  Opium.

  Joe Kennedy reappears. He repeats words from 1927.

  “Your future is in Los Angeles, son. I can get you on the police force. You can fuck movie stars and create mischief.”

  A projector clicks and sends film through a slide. Uncle Joe shares his smut fixation. Tijuana, ’33. They’re in a whorehouse, watching movies screened on a sheet. Two grand lezzies attend them. Dot Rothstein and Ruth Mildred Cressmeyer are honorary men. Dot’s a Sheriff’s matron and pimp for Gene Biscailuz. Ruth Mildred’s a scrape doctor for Jewboy Harry Cohn. It’s a grand and odd confluence.

  Uncle Joe bankrolls smut films. Uncle Joe has a piece of Carlos Madrano’s wetback-running schemes. Uncle Joe keeps a hand in the rackets. It reminds him of his origins.

  The projector clicks. A Mex girl becomes Bette in The Letter. He got a letter from Beth Short this morning. Yes, she’s coming to L.A. Yes, she’ll bring her blind friend Tommy Gilfoyle. She hints at that “horrible thing” that happened last year. He’ll call Tommy and inquire.

  Uncle Joe says, “Devilish men require families, Dud. They keep you safe while you do what you damn please.”

  Felicitous words. Uncle Joe has his own bastard daughter. She’s the spawn of Joe and Gloria Swanson. Laura Hughes is now fourteen. Joe secretly supports her. She took the name Hughes to ridicule Joe. Howard Hughes fucked Joe on a movie deal, circa ’31. Unbidden children represent unbidden fate.

  Laura lives at the Immaculate Heart Convent. Archbishop Cantwell knows her story. He has a lurid crush on the girl.

  Opium.

  The projector clicks. Wisps become faces.

  Jack Kennedy smiles. He’s a Navy ensign. He’s coming to L.A. He wants to fuck Ellen Drew. He wants to fuck Gloria Swanson better than his dad did.

  Click. There’s that shift within him. His normal state is Thought and Act. His habitude is connivance. The postcard tour has refreshed him. He’s returning to Thought and Act.

  Mike Breuning once worked as a film tech. Ace Kwan has peek rooms within his labyrinth. Harry Cohn loses fortunes in tile games there. Harry owes Ben Siegel more money. Abe Reles is dead. Ben will leave jail soon. Ben loves to carve capital from perverse ventures. Harry Cohn produced a short film eight years ago. It was a suck-up ode to Benito Mussolini. Harry has a bust of Il Duce on his desk. Has he dumped it in Sunday’s aftermath?

  Thought and Act. The war. A realist’s perspective.

  The Japs won’t bomb L.A. They’re island-plundering insects. The Pacific is their ant farm. It’s their habitude.

  They’ll lose the war. They’ll stagnate as Yankee industry outstrips their material might. They fight to die and ascend to slant-eyed Valhalla. That dubious motive condemns them. Hitler is the Western world’s mad lover. Wagner wrote the Führer’s ghastly end.

  Tristan und Isolde. Unresolved harmonies. The world as the strings drop.

  Thought, Act. War as opportunity. Ah, there it is.

  Mass internment bodes. Ride along with it. Imprison local Japs for the war’s duration. Leverage their property and charge them caretaking fees. Bring in wetbacks to fill vacancies in scut-work employment. Recruit Mex Staties to collect work kickbacks and oversee the wets. Jimmy the Jap Namura has been released from T.I. He would make a grand liaison to the Jap community. Empty out Little Tokyo and other Jap enclaves. Move in thousands of jigaboos too addled to pass conscription tests. Create a circumscribed vice zone built from confiscated Jap holdings. Keep the coons close at hand and contain their antics. Punish aggressions against the white race with instant death. Move rich Japs into Ace Kwan’s tunnels and charge them stay-out-of-jail rent. Make the comely ones act in anti-Axis smut films geared for a white clientele.

  Opium.

  The pipe—once more, yes.

  Projector clicks. Thought and Act restored. Memory Lane—New Year’s, ’38.

  The Trocadero. Bette on the dance floor and “Perfidia.” That moment he saw her and caught fire.

  11:44 a.m.

  They won’t report the break-in. They won’t reveal the thefts. They sell illegal weaponry. They peddle fascist filth.

  The lab was a.m. busy. Chemists logged fiber samples and worked microscopes. Ashida rode his desk. He was keyed up and woozy. He got no sleep.

  Ray Pinker walked up. “I’ve got bad news, kid. It was on the radio. Fletch Bowron’s fired all the Japanese on the city payroll. I hate to say it, but that means—”

  Ashida opened his top drawer and grabbed a leather pouch. Pinker said something reassuring. Ashida ran out of the lab. He took the stairs three at a clip. He made the front door and sprinted.

  He cut across 1st Street. Cars swerved around him. City Hall was two blocks down. He ran there in his lab smock.

  He went in the Spring Street door. He took the front stairs four at a clip. The Bureau buzzed. Robbery and Bunco—stuffed with desk-squatting cops. Vice—just Elmer Jackson.

  Elmer grinned. “Hey, I know you. You used to work here.”

  “Captain Parker? I heard he has an office now.”

  Elmer waved his cigar. “Try 614. If the door’s closed, he’s sleeping it off.”

  Ashida walked. It was pushing noon. Homicide emptied out. Bunco and Robbery, likewise. A cop swarm swarmed to the lunchroom.

  They all saw him. They all knew him. None of them greeted him. They hit the elevators and pushed DOWN.

  Homicide was wide open. Twelve cubicles a
nd one office. The main phone line and twelve extensions.

  He shut himself in. He wedged a chair back under the doorknob. He opened the pouch and examined his tools.

  Burglar’s tools. Confiscated evidence. Three small lock picks and a blunt-edged pry.

  The main phone sat by the Teletype. He eyeball-tracked the cord to a wall-mounted fuse box. Beside the box—a smaller box, smeared with wall paint.

  A narrow cord connected the boxes. The phone was Dictograph-tapped.

  Ashida placed his tools on the Teletype. He picked up the phone receiver and heard a dial tone. He took a skinny-head pick and pried off the talk and hear disks. He saw perforated diodes and glued-in microphones.

  He screwed the disks back on. He eyeball-scanned the east squadroom wall. Four cubicles, four phones, four legitimate fuse boxes and piggyback boxes adjacent. Small boxes, painted over. Innocuous. Brazen. Two fuse boxes—who cares?

  Ashida replaced his tools and unhooked the chair. He stepped into the hall. Sid Hudgens idled outside the cot room. The Sidster saw him and hooked a finger. Ashida walked over and looked in.

  Sssshhh—men asleep.

  Twelve cots, five sleepers. Alien Squad boys. Tin hats and gun belts dumped on the floor. Shotguns propped against the wall.

  Hudgens closed the door. “Bund, Silver Shirts, Thunderbolt Legion. Care to comment, Dr. Ashida?”

  Ashida said, “No comment.”

  Hudgens poked his ears with a paper clip. “Call me jaded, but I think the whole deal is fishy. The Feds are freezing assets and closing banks, habeas has been suspended, and now Fletch the B. has pulled all you folks off the city tit. Tojo and his boys took Manila, but that don’t mean you should lose your job.”

  Ashida said, “No comment.”