Perfidia

by James Ellroy

  He passed Santa Barbara. Dawn was two hours off. The Goleta Inlet was close.

  The Sheriff’s man said they’d sealed it “on-site.” That meant an evidence shed off the water. The attack occurred at dawn yesterday. Expect cops and Army Intelligence. Expect catastrophe display boards. Expect cadavers and debris.

  Expect rancor. Expect suspicion. Explain yourself. You’re a brilliant forensic chemist. It’s an early-wartime ambush scene. You had to see.

  But, it’s a JAP sneak attack. But, you’re here unsanctioned. But, you’re a JAP.

  It wouldn’t work. He’d risk detention. Parker, Pinker, Smith—name drops wouldn’t work. He had tenuous patrons back in L.A. He was a low-down JAP here.

  He started to turn back. He saw beachfront lights ahead. He pulled up on a landside bluff and grabbed his binoculars.

  He looked down. The site was eighty yards off. Arc lights framed an open-front shed.

  He saw body tubs. Odd limbs extended. Dry-ice fumes blew out. He saw severed legs in a washtub.

  He saw forensics pix clipped to clotheslines.

  He saw trash bins full of charred wood.

  The shed was lit bright-bright. One detail was off. Cops and Army brass should be hovering. Cars and jeeps should cover the beachfront and blacktop.

  He saw one jeep only. He saw legs crossed at the ankle, sticking out.

  One guard on duty. Goldbrick, predawn snoozer. There’s nobody else around.

  Risk it, Mr. Moto. He might be asleep. Try it, Mr. Moto. If he’s awake, you’re fucked.

  Those bright-bright lights. You don’t need flashbulbs.

  Ashida grabbed his camera. He had sixteen exposures. He pinned his ID card to his jacket and crossed over to the blacktop.

  He smelled charred wood and flesh. Salt spray merged with it. He walked straight to the jeep. He heard snores, straight off.

  He looked in the cab. Sweet deal, Mr. Moto. The soldier wore earplugs.

  The shed was decked out haphazardly. The attack was unexpected. Torpedoes hit the beach. It’s a fishing village. It’s “Collaborationist”—JAPS and Chinks allied.

  Torpedoes hit. Explosive fire follows. It explains the charred wood in the tubs.

  Cops and soldiers swarmed the scene and built this shed. They culled evidence haphazardly. They stuck around all day and got bored.

  Think fast, Mr. Moto. You’ve got five minutes.

  Ashida paced the shed. He paced quadrant-to-quadrant in strict crime lab–style. He photographed debris and the evidential photographs. He reconstructed the attack.

  Torpedoes hit. The dock and fisherman’s huts blow up and fall down. Fishing boats burn into wave-scattered bits. Waves crash, waves recede. Severed arms and legs bob on the crests.

  Men stumble out of rubble piles. They’re on fire. They scream and thrash. They fall down dead at the water-sand line.

  Five dead men. Forensic photo–captured/​body tub–confirmed. A stray foot on the sand. Note the photo. Note said foot right here in a tub.

  Ashida studied the foot.

  He examined it. He photographed it. He got in close and smelled it. He caught early decomposition. He caught a fish-oil scent. He revised his ID to shrimp oil.

  It was anomalous. It was familiar.

  Nort Layman’s autopsy brief. Shrimp oil on the soles of the Watanabes’ feet. Blood-dotted glass shards at the house. Said shards reeked of FISH.

  His trip to the Nisei farms. That worker he spoke to. He smelled FISH on him.

  Five dead men here. In wet sand yesterday. In body tubs today.

  Collaborationists. Note the pix and snap your own shots. Say what, Mr. Moto? Two men look Japanese. Three men look Chinese. Racial distinction runs close. You could be right, you could be wrong.

  Ashida paced the shed. Ashida snapped pix of pix and pix of dead men right here.

  Dead men on dry ice. Two men badly flame-charred.

  He rolled them onto their backs. He brushed off black skin. One man was scorched down to his rib cage. One man was marked by a faded stab wound.

  It was old and knife-inflicted. The scar was symmetrical. The knife had to be multibladed. The scar resembled a starburst. Note the single deep puncture.

  Ashida paced the shed. Ashida reloaded his camera. He heard a wave crash. He heard the soldier snore five yards away. He heard his own heart beat on overdrive.

  He touched all the dead men. He noted their physiques. He matched their missing limbs to the limbs in the severed-limb tub. He said Shinto and Christian prayers for them.

  Four minutes down. Go, Mr. Moto.

  He hit the last quadrant. He photographed photographs.

  Small cans in a rubble heap. The labels read “Chopped Shrimp.” Charred paper. Kanji-script notations. Money tallies. A Japanese-yen-to-U.S.-dollar play.

  Thirty seconds, Mr. Moto. That dozing soldier might wake up.

  Ashida braced the last limb tub. He knelt and aimed his camera. He shot a sheared penis arrayed on dry ice.

  7:23 a.m.

  I brought my sketch pad and pencils to the restaurant. Captain Parker called at dawn and requested a meeting. I hadn’t slept, couldn’t sleep, and assumed the same for him. I was going from public place to public place, to meet police chemists and policemen I hadn’t known the week before.

  My table overlooked La Cienega, just south of Wilshire. Dick Webster’s smelled of lemon pies and war-alert tension. I went home after Claire’s party, then left for my truncated klatch with Hideo Ashida. Hideo left abruptly; I went back home to ponder the vicissitudes of entrapment. Captain Parker was now twenty-three minutes late; I filled up sketch-pad paper.

  My pencils moved near randomly. I drew the woman behind the counter and segued to passing cars on La Cienega. I moved to Scotty Bennett in police blues, to Hideo Ashida, naked, with Bucky Bleichert’s body. Then I was back in Claire’s bedroom with Renée Falconetti.

  I saw the Joan of Arc film as a high school frosh; a fey teacher took a group of students to the only foreign-movie theater in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The Silver Shirts got the theater closed down the next week. Sioux Falls was a nativist hotbed; the theater served up moral turpitude imported from Catholic countries. Religious ecstasy akin to coitus and a short-haired woman burned alive. Falconetti’s depiction of a woman consumed by cause and a supplicant’s desire for transcendence.

  I drew Falconetti as Joan and Claire as Joan; I incorporated their features in a seamless Claire-Joan. A truck drove by and made the window glass rumble. A man and a tall red-haired woman got out of a car and began walking toward Wilshire. Bill Parker pulled his black-and-white up behind them. He stepped out and started following the couple. The woman swiveled to adjust her skirt and looked straight at him. Captain Parker appeared to be stricken. I read the look on his face.

  She wasn’t Her, whoever She was. She wasn’t among those Navy women I saw him staring at yesterday.

  He entered the restaurant. I slipped out of my trench coat. He purchased my dress and should see me in it.

  A waitress swooped by and refilled my coffee; I pointed to the other cup on the table and had her fill it. Captain Parker sat down; I noticed the pilled lint on his uniform. I knew that lint-on-cop-blue stamp very well. Captain Parker had slept in the Bureau cot room.

  He warmed his hands on the coffee cup. He said, “Good morning, Miss Lake.”

  I closed my sketch pad and placed it under the table. I said, “Sunday afternoon. Outside the Federal Building. You saw me with a very large young man.”

  “Yes, and I saw him leave your house Monday morning. His name is Robert Bennett, the Department just signed him on, and he has all the earmarks of Dudley Smith’s latest pet thug. I’m sure you find him alluring, which speaks more to your susceptibility than your judgment.”

  Touché.

  I said, “I was being disingenuous. I thought you might know things about Officer Bennett that I don’t.”

  “I witnessed his oath of service last night. I would venture that
you know him somewhat more intimately.”

  Touché. Et pour la robe en cachemire noir?

  “I had a splendid time at Claire De Haven’s party. She invited me to a second party next Monday night.”

  “Please continue.”

  “I sneaked into her bedroom, rifled the drawers and saw a hypodermic syringe and several vials of what I assumed was morphine. I stole a political tract, but I haven’t read it yet.”

  “I’ll get you a concealable camera. I want photographic evidence of illegal narcotics and paraphernalia.”

  “Terry Lux was at the party. He was watching Claire very closely. I’m assuming that she dries out periodically at his ranch, when the PD isn’t using it for softball games and picnics.”

  “So, it’s ‘Claire’ now? Have you established a bar of friendship?”

  “All betrayals start with friendship, don’t they? Isn’t there always a filial basis for entrapment?”

  “I’m going to fit you with an undetectable microphone. You’re going to get Miss De Haven to advocate the violent overthrow of the United States Government, and we’re going to have an audial record.”

  “Will you get me another snazzy frock while you’re at it? This one turned some heads.”

  “I want photographs of every pill vial in her medicine cabinet. I want photographs of all her recent phone bills and photographs of every page in her personal address book.”

  “We’re going to make a documentary movie exposing the Japanese roundups. I proposed the idea, and Claire went for it. I’ll make sure it’s less outlandish than Storm Over Leningrad, so the jury won’t bust a gut and laugh it out of court.”

  “Juries do not appreciate subtlety, Miss Lake. If you create a filmed document, it must be bluntly and vilely seditious and unequivocally state Miss De Haven’s ideological designs.”

  “Is ideology unequivocally anything? Doesn’t she have to blow up an aircraft plant first? Should I encourage her to do it, and should I bring along a noted cinematographer?”

  “Treason is ideology and free speech perverted. Seditious thought and its reckless public expression is a grave criminal offense that fully sanctions me in this action that you allege to be precipitous, presumptuous and subversive in and of itself, so help me fucking God, I know it to be true.”

  I was dizzy. He looked dizzy. My cigarettes were on the table. He helped himself and tossed me the pack. We lit each other up.

  I said, “Who is she, Captain Parker?”

  He said, “Who is who, Miss Lake?”

  I said, “The tall red-haired woman you keep looking for.”

  He stood up and banged the table. The silverware jumped a foot. William H. Parker looked schoolboy hurt and old-man haggard. He’d lost ten pounds in the five days I’d known him. His gun belt pulled his trousers halfway down his hips.

  He ran away from me. I looked out the window and watched. He got into his car and swerved into traffic. Motorists honked their horns. Captain William H. Parker stuck his arm out the window and held his middle finger up.

  In uniform. In his police black-and-white.

  I laughed. The prowl car peeled out; I saw middle fingers salute him back and heard horn honks peak and fade. It made me laugh and left me exhausted. Just sitting at the table hurt.

  Restaurant sounds subsided to a hum. I shut my eyes for one second and opened them just as quick. A wall clock told me I’d been asleep a full hour.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked out the window. The tall red-haired woman stood out at the curb.

  I reached for my sketch pad to draw her. I put the pad down just as abruptly and did something I’d never done before.

  I prayed for the woman’s safe passage through this war.

  9:14 a.m.

  Parker paced his den. It was men’s club–furnished. Framed certificates honored him.

  His law school degree. His state Bar plaque. His Phi Beta Kappa key. Thirty-four police commendations.

  The certificates covered three walls. The fourth wall was masking-papered. Inked headings denoted this:

  Blackouts/​Traffic Statistics.

  Alien Squad/​Subversive Roundups.

  Watanabe Case/​Details-Chronology.

  Lake/​De Haven.

  Parker paced. He was doomsday exhausted. His glasses slid down his nose.

  He was stretched Mass-wafer thin. He threw a fit in full uniform. He was afraid that he was missing things. That meant write them all down.

  Blackouts/​Traffic Statistics. Jot graph notes.

  Last night’s blackout spawned a Negro riot. Five people died in car wrecks. A soldier shot a society dame at a checkpoint. She did not hear his “Halt!” warning. He drilled her dead.

  Alien Squad/​Subversive Roundups. Jot graph notes.

  “Feds go to ‘B’ subversive list. Details to come.”

  “Hold squad briefing. Urge officers to curtail strongarm methods.”

  He’d seen War Department Teletypes. FDR had full-scale internment plans. Army teams were scouting sites throughout the Southwest. The local jails were Japped to the tits. A mass evacuation boded. Hold for the Jap diaspora.

  Watanabe Case/​Details-Chronology. Jot graph notes.

  “White man/​purple sweater. Black car outside house, 12/6/41, near time of death.”

  “H. Ashida to do tire molds/​most likely futile.”

  “Watanabe calls to Santa Monica pay phones.”

  Lake/​De Haven. Jot graph notes.

  He raised his pen. The world dipped off its axis. He was that fucking tired.

  Lake/​De Haven. It’s all in his head. There’s nothing to jot on the graph.

  Kay Lake was working both ends of it. She was a swoony unfulfilled artist. She saw her film as a luminous polemic. She wanted to entrap Claire De Haven. She had to win his “fatuous” and “presumptuous” war. Her courtroom testimony settled the Boulevard-Citizens case. He would put her on the witness stand and doom the Red Queen. He would craft her oratory. She would explicate his theocratic resolve.

  She senses his misgivings per the roundups. She thinks she can instill apostasy. Their meetings leave him tense. He thinks of her more than he should.

  Parker laid his head on the graph. His arms and legs were rubberized. The wall held him up.

  The door creaked. Helen walked in. She wore her gardener’s jumpsuit.

  “You’re a wreck, Bill. You should take the day off and sleep.”

  He kept his head down. It hid the Lake/​De Haven graph.

  “I can’t. I have to collate Teletypes, and Horrall wants a briefing on the blackout.”

  “The world can do without you for a day. You didn’t start the war, and I don’t think you’ll be the one to finish it.”

  “Helen, please.”

  “Bill, please. Please rest, please don’t sleep in the cot room at City Hall, please tend to yourself, and please don’t run away from me like you’ve been doing.”

  She looked perky. She always looked perky. She was born perky.

  “I’ll take Sunday morning off. We’ll go to Mass and get breakfast at Lyman’s.”

  Helen laughed. “Where you’ll disappear into the back room and read Teletypes. Where you’ll gab with Thad Brown and joke about ousting Jack Horrall. Where—”

  “Helen, please—”

  “Bill, please stop neglecting your marriage. Bill, please curtail your brusque behavior with my family and friends. Bill, please take the pledge again, because I can’t stand seeing you drunk. Bill, please don’t work so hard and learn to have some simple fun, so you won’t have nightmares and sweat up the bed on the few nights we share it. Bill, please quit praying aloud when you think I can’t hear it, because I don’t want to know what you’re saying to God. Bill, please stop getting crushes on college girls when you have a woman who—”

  Parker ran.

  He made the back porch. He covered his ears. It didn’t kill this:

  Helen stomps through the house. Helen slams doors. Helen gets her car
and guns it. Helen lays rubber down the driveway.

  He kept a jug in the toolshed. He walked over and snatched it. He took three good pops.

  He got the burn and the shudders. He got the bright colors. He got that moment you go somewhere else.

  He stashed the bottle. He got an idea. He went back inside and snatched his desk phone. An operator plugged him through to Chicago.

  Northwestern U. The campus cops. He had cachet there.

  The Chief came on the line. Parker laid it out.

  Joan. A biology major. About twenty-five. Tall and red-haired. He saw her shoot skeet off Lake Michigan. She owned a vent-rib 12-gauge.

  The Chief said he’d jump on an ID. Parker hung up.

  He felt sandbagged. Doomsday, Armageddon. Booze begets instant misconduct and regret. He walked to the couch and fell down.

  Deadwood.

  Yeah, that’s it.

  It’s 1916. Those are brothel windows. Now it’s ’24 L.A. He’s beating up his first wife. They’re at the hospital. She’s bandaged up and spiteful. She’s hitting him back.

  Church processions. He’s shaking a mitre box. Pope Pius XII in Deadwood? no, that can’t be.

  Church bells. No, doom bells. Bloody thorns or his gun belt gouged him awake.

  He opened his eyes. His wristwatch read 8:14.

  Not the Pope—the Archbishop. Jimmy and Dudley—the mad micks.

  He got up and opened the door. They saw him disheveled and roared that mick way. His Eminence favored golf togs outside the rectory. He wore a pink sweater and kelly green slacks.

  Dudley said, “Our future Chief, roused from sleep.”

  J. J. Cantwell said, “We’re three Catholic men relieved of our duties. We’re going to get shit-faced drunk and defame the Prottys and the kikes.”

  Parker ushered them in. His Eminence was sixty-six and rambunctious. Dudley doted on him. They met in Ireland, circa 1919. Dudley killed British soldiers. Cantwell funneled gun money.

  Dudley said, “I smell Helen Schultz Parker’s corned beef and cabbage, warming in the oven.”

  Cantwell said, “Schultz? Bill married a Hun? We might have to intern her, along with all the heathen Japs.”

  Dudley said, “She’s a fine Catholic lass, Your Eminence.”