by James Ellroy
I kept speaking. No one heard me. The microphone and loudspeakers provided no sound. I had no voice. The crowd’s voice was obscenity.
I kept speaking. Paper debris and water balloons hit the platform. Everyone jumped off. Garbage spattered me.
I held the microphone and kept speaking. My lips moved and made no sound. I spoke with undiminished intent and could not hear my own voice. The crowd was directly below and right in front of me. I heard a thousand Japs and saw a savage beating.
Someone was down. People were kicking him. People were beating those people and forcing them to disperse. I couldn’t see faces. It was all punches and kicks. I held the microphone and kept speaking.
I delivered my indictment. The platform rattled and skewed my line of sight. People ran in front of me. I thought I saw Ed Satterlee. Bill Parker and Scotty Bennett might have run by. They were disheveled. The might-be Parker lost his glasses. The might-be Scotty wore ripped clothes.
I looked to the 5th Street sidewalk and blew a line of text. Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle eased Hideo Ashida into a K-car. Hideo brushed the back window and left blood streaks.
The car pulled out. The lie that race defines human beings. The lie that dissent defines sedition. The car turned north on Hill Street. I watched it disappear. A paper bag full of food scraps hit me. The definitive lie of fearful hatred. Rotten fruit in my hair.
A man hurled a trash can at the platform and cracked a foundation strut. The boards listed to one side; the microphone stand tipped over; I stumbled and fell down with it.
The platform collapsed. I crashed to street level. A man ran up, kicked me and ran back into the crowd. Saul and Andrea Lesnick walked through the rubble. They grabbed my arms and began to hoist me; I felt how frail they were and pushed myself upright.
They were frail. I was jarred and battered. We stumbled to the Hill Street curb and a double-parked Chrysler. Saul got in the driver’s side; I got in beside him. Andrea slipped and fell into the back.
Saul pulled into traffic. Andrea said something about her nerves and Queen of Angels.
We drove north. I brushed apple pulp out of my hair. Traffic was stalled in front of us; I saw the whip antenna on the K-car above the traffic line. Hideo stepped out of the backseat and began walking east. He held a bloody handkerchief to his face.
Saul cut through Bunker Hill and got us to the hospital. He parked by the side entrance; he helped Andrea out and gave me a look. It meant You’ve done enough. They walked in the door together—frail comrades, arm in arm.
Lee’s room was on the third floor. I smoked a cigarette in the car and walked inside to the washroom. I tended to myself and reread Saul’s look. Brittle child, chaos attends you, so impervious to others.
I took the elevator up to Lee’s room. Lee was asleep, with his bed cranked into a sitting-reclining position. He had metal studs and sutures in his jaw. His chewed-off ear had been retrieved and stitched back into place. Criss-crossed stitches secured his nose.
He’d left the house, arm in arm with Scotty. No hard feelings, huh? Jesus, that Kay. It was like the first Louis-Schmeling fight. You stay here, sweetie—this is man’s stuff.
They drove off together. Of course, I stayed behind. Chaos attends but does not subsume me. I don’t stick around to view the cost.
I pulled a chair up to the bed and watched Lee sleep. Leland Charles Blanchard, “The Southland’s Great White Hope.” Ex-contender, policeman, bank robber–killer. I’d known him for three years. This is where we were now.
I watched Lee sleep. He never stirred. A medical chart was hooked to the wall above his bed.
“You were brilliant, Miss Lake.”
He’d let some prairie into his voice. Deadwood and Sioux Falls—that short distance apart.
I turned my chair around to see him. His face was nicked, his jaw was bruised, his eyes were huge without his glasses.
“Did you follow me here?”
“I saw Lesnick drive off with you. I had an instinct as to where you were going.”
“My movie is unprecedented. It will stand as an unbiased document, whatever you do to Claire and me.”
“Don’t cast yourselves as martyrs. It’s not who you are. She’s a traitorous dilettante, and you’re the biggest opportunist since me.”
“I may be that in spirit, but I lack your résumé. You can’t blame me for that. You had Two-Gun Davis for a mentor, but all I have is you.”
“Your résumé is the men you’ve screwed to get what you want. It exceeds my résumé in sheer volume.”
“Who’s the tall red-haired woman? What will you do when you find her and she sees how little you have?”
“What will you do when your ‘unprecedented’ movie is labeled Exhibit A in Federal court?”
“What will you do when the world steps aside and you don’t get what you want? What will you do when Russia remains our ally after we win this war? What will you do when the world decides that you’re not worth the trouble and throws in with some other man less furious and more presentable than you?”
Lee coughed. I turned away and looked at him. He twitched in a dream; his eyes fluttered; he rolled onto his side.
I shifted my chair back around. He was gone—and the room was too bright and quiet without him. I opened a window and saw Scotty down on the sidewalk. He was disheveled and reading the Holy Bible.
I’ll make love with him again.
I horrify myself.
Only William H. Parker knows my heart.
10:19 a.m.
Occupied territory.
Miss Lake would know the term. It dovetailed with “blood libel” and made dialectic sense. Cops and Japs ran equal here. The cops had increased. The Japs had decreased.
It vibrated in plain view. Door-to-door rousts. Street frisks. Gun confiscation.
Parker pulled to the curb. The warehouse was off 1st and San Pedro. That Coast Guard lieutenant supplied the address. He called from City Hall and got no answer. He opted for a 459 then.
The canning plant. The shrimp boats dumped their catches here. This three-story warehouse. This bolted-padlock door.
He had a tire iron and flashlight. He had one full day sober. He slept in the Bureau cot room last night and woke up tremor-free. He smashed his glasses in Kwan’s Pagoda. He lost them in Pershing Square. It was 459 with a squint.
He walked over and snapped the lock. It was his first solo 459. Hideo Ashida partnered him on the Larkin-bungalow raids. Ashida vanished from Pershing Square. He’s beaten-on one moment, gone the next.
Parker stepped inside and slid the door shut. He ran his flashlight over the floor and walls. One floor/four walls—all smooth cement. It was dead empty. Call it dead certain. The place had been cleaned out.
It was damp. It was musty. He caught a subscent. He couldn’t place it.
He walked along the walls. He held his flashlight close. He saw floor-to-ceiling streaks and made the source.
Washcloth marks. The walls had been wiped. The practice erased fingerprints.
Parker touched a streak mark. He felt slight condensation.
The place was print-wiped yesterday. After that botched harbor raid. Word got back to the owners or renters.
He walked to the second-floor landing. He saw floor-to-ceiling wipe marks. He caught that subscent again.
He nailed it. It was shrimp oil.
He saw charred paper on the floor. It was charred like the tracts and money on the shrimp boat. See that? Japanese characters.
Now extrapolate.
The warehouse was pre-1900. The buying and selling went Jap-to-Jap. That wartime paper backlog. His rogue police status. It impeded records checks.
He walked to the third-floor landing. He saw more wipe marks and caught more subscent. He saw an empty can on the floor. It was unlabeled. Note the shrimp oil and glass specks.
Now extrapolate.
Last Saturday. His talk with Nort Layman. The glass in the canned shrimp up in Lancaster. Sheriff Gene investigates. He
thinks it’s Fifth Column work.
Nort eschews that conclusion. Nort extrapolates.
Four dead Watanabes. Glass particles flecked with shrimp oil on all their feet.
Heavily callused feet—“Japs tend to walk around barefoot.”
“What did surprise me was the even distribution of the particles. It was as if they were walking on the glass deliberately.”
Parker walked back to his prowl car. He left the warehouse door ajar. It was a fuck-you/I’m-a-rogue-cop-now move.
He unhooked his two-way and roused the morgue, direct. Nort picked up.
“Dr. Layman. Who’s this?”
“Bill Parker, Nort.”
Nort said, “I’m not surprised, and I bet you’ve got questions.”
“I do, and it’s a parlay. Glass particles and shrimp oil. Is there efficacy here? What would that combination do?”
Nort cleared his throat. “I’d been wondering about that myself, so I did some research. I came up with one thing, which hits me as a non sequitur. The oxide componentry of the glass, in concert with shrimp oil, would create a level of toxicity that would prove deleterious to urban topsoil and many forms of foliage and grass.”
Huh?
“That’s it, Bill. I know it’s a head scratcher, but so’s the goddamn case. It’s a head scratcher and a dead-ender, and I’m running out of tests I can run.”
Parker said, “Thanks, Nort.”
Nort said, “You know where to find me.”
The connection fritzed and died. Parker hooked up the radio and notched his seat back.
Shitwork bodes. There’s Call-Me-Jack’s report stack. “Assess this shit, Bill. You know it’s not my style.”
He thumbed the top folder. It detailed Preston Exley’s Jap-housing plan.
Predictive statistics. Potential internee-employment sites. A Mirror piece on Exley Construction and the Arroyo Seco Parkway. Notes on proposed Highland Park on-ramps. Hoo-ha on Preston’s cop career.
Boring shitwork. Assess what?
Parker lit a cigarette. He thought about the shrimp-boat slaughter. Mass suicide, scorched paper. Links, links, links. Dead Japs and one maybe-Chinaman.
He thought about Pershing Square. He fought beside Scotty Bennett. They rescued a fickle Jap.
He prayed off a jolt of The Thirst. He thought of Miss Lake.
Her lovely dress. Garbage-spattered and trashed. He should buy her a new dress just like it.
11:37 a.m.
Dudley walked through Mike Lyman’s. Cops and local bigwigs tossed the shit. Dire shit—that Santa Monica sniper.
It was late-breaking shit. The fiend sniped Army sentries on the Palisades. The fiend fatal-sniped a Jap a mile from the beach. Maybe it’s Fifth Column. It’s a fucked-up fiend, sure as shit.
Sniper talk now outrevved war talk. The fiend sniped soldiers and Japs. The cops got it. Chaos is king. It perplexed the bigwigs.
Dudley hit the back room. Mike B. and Dick C. oozed eager. Scotty B. snapped to. He wore that unfetching nose splint. Buzz Meeks smirked—ever shifty and porcine.
They sprawled up the furniture. Carlisle worked the buffet. He served coffee and ham sandwiches.
Dudley said, “Report, please.”
Carlisle said, “We’ve been at it since Tuesday morning, and we’ve turned up nine fools who’ll stand as eyeball wits. They’ve all got parole-violation sheets and bench warrants we can squeeze them with. They live inside a tight radius of the Watanabe house, and they’ll ID any suspect we tell them to.”
Breuning said, “Six white men, a beaner and two Japs. We snagged the Japs out of South Pasadena, but they were at a block party on Avenue 44 that day. We tried, but we couldn’t dig up any women.”
Dudley said, “It will be a closed grand jury proceeding, which means that our witnesses’ criminal records will be sealed. Thankfully, saints are not required for this part of our endeavor. If Vogel, Koenig and Waldner provide us with a properly loathsome and unhinged suspect, he’ll be deemed unfit to stand trial, sentenced to death in a negotiated manner and held incommunicado until such time that a suitably pliable psychiatrist declares him competent. The Feds have a Jew doctor named Saul Lesnick in their pocket. He would be a grand one to pronounce our lad sane and fit for the gas chamber. What we must avoid is a well-publicized trial, where our unruly eyeball wits might be discredited.”
Meeks unwrapped his sandwich. “I got us a Jap kiddie-raper. He’s got no alibi for December 6 and 7, and he’s about as low as human beings get. We could pack him off to the green room and not lose any sleep over it.”
Dudley sipped coffee. “I’ll keep that under advisement, lad. I want Vogel, Koenig and Waldner to report their findings first.”
Scotty raised his hand. “Listen, I’m new to this. We brief the eyewitnesses? Is that it? We lead them through their depositions?”
Breuning and Carlisle laughed. Dudley winked at Scotty.
“I dictate their depositions, lad. I layer in discrepancies to impart verisimilitude.”
Breuning and Carlisle re-laughed. Scotty grinned. Vogel, Koenig and Waldner showed. Carlisle dispensed lunch.
It was SRO now. The new lads slouched by the door.
Dudley said, “Report, please.”
Vogel lit a cigarette. “Bill and I dug up four Jap sex creeps, all at large and all with stat-rape sheets. If you want my opinion, it goes like this. Our guy knocked up Nancy Watanabe and snuffed the whole family to hush it. He got Nancy a scrape down in T.J., but it all went blooey in his head anyway. Doc Layman said the daddy had AB-negative blood. I checked jail records on all four of our guys, and one guy’s AB neg.”
Dudley raised a hand. Be still, please. Waldner opened his yap. Carlisle shushed him.
He talked to Huey Cressmeyer. It was eight days back. Huey snitched the Griffith Park cell. Huey said this:
The guy who made Nancy preg was a Jap-Mex half-breed with bad acne cysts on his back.
“The cat bragged that he killed a Mex family down in Culiacán.”
“The cat headed back to Mexico.”
The original cell was four men. He and Ace killed three. The cell was “Collaborationist.” They snuffed two Japs and a half-breed. The Jap-Mex half-breed was a wild card. He was probably still in Mexico. He would not derail their full-Jap plans.
The lads wolfed their sandwiches. The lads kept it zipped.
Dudley said, “I would very much prefer AB-negative blood, but it may not be essential. Any paramour of poor Nancy Watanabe would be subject to intensive personal questioning per the lass herself, and all our coaching might fail to provide him with the answers. I see blood type as corroborative, rather than primary evidence. What we want is a raving lunatic motivated by incomprehensible lust.”
Waldner said, “I’ve got him.”
Dudley smiled. Waldner was an avid thug. Waldner did not indulge whimsy.
“He’s a transient knife sharpener named Fujio ‘Fuji’ Shudo. He did a six-year jolt at Atascadero and got paroled on Wednesday, December 3rd. He was seen going door-to-door with his tool cart in Highland Park on the 4th and 5th. I lost track of his movements then, but I’m betting he’s clear for Doc Layman’s time of death on the 6th. He’s been holed up at a fleabag hotel in Little Tokyo since Pearl Harbor day. The Kyoto Arms, a real dive. He’s afraid to go out—because of the roundups, I’m guessing. I paid Elmer Jackson to keep tabs on him. Elmer’s working the Alien Squad, so he’s in the area a lot. Fuji’s still holed up in his room, belting terpin hydrate.”
Dudley said, “Please continue.”
Waldner said, “I’ve got no blood type, but I like him. He’s a knife man and a nut-farm inmate, and he did that Atascadero bounce for mayhem. His moniker is ‘Bamboo Shoot’ Shudo. He kidnapped some wetbacks in ’34 and stuck bamboo shoots up their keesters.”
Breuning winced.
Carlisle said, “Ouch.”
Vogel said, “That smarts.”
Scotty gulped.
Koenig said, “Be
nd over and touch your toes. I’ll show you where the wild goose goes.”
Meeks said, “Bon voyage, sweetheart. The green room’s coming up.”
Dudley said, “I assume that Mr. Shudo remains in place?”
Waldner said, “Right there, boss. Elmer J.’s his watchdog. If Fuji bolts, Elmer will call me.”
“Have the witnesses at City Hall for a 7:00 p.m. show-up. I’ll brief them before we bring in Mr. Shudo.”
Grins circulated. Woo-woo-woos followed. Breuning and Carlisle twirled their saps.
Dudley opened the door. Sid Hudgens and Jack Webb were close by.
“We’ve identified our suspect, lads. Be at the Kyoto Arms Hotel at 8:00 tonight. Mr. Hearst will get the exclusive.”
12:29 p.m.
The lads filed out. He hit the couch. He was tired. His bones hurt.
He was losing weight. The bennies depleted him. He forgot his wife’s name yesterday. He’s fucking Bette Davis. She instills tremors in him.
She upbraided him last night. He faltered. She made herself soft and tried to rescind the rebuke. She saw weakness in him. He tore off her clothes and went at her to regain his edge.
They have a truce now. He must trump her as he trumps all men. The method eludes him.
Beth Short and Tommy Gilfoyle are due. Bette will meet them. He’s running too many people. He’s thinking at a frantic pace. He flails for consciousness when he needs sleep.
Dudley yawned. Dudley reached for a thought and missed it.
The couchside phone rang. Dudley grabbed the call.
J. C. Kafesjian blathered. Their “H” source got popped in bumfuck Honduras. J.C. harped on his tight bond with Call-Me-Jack Horrall. “It don’t mean shit if there’s no shit to sell to the jigs.”
Dudley baby-talked him. Dudley proffered no solution. He oversaw J.C. He did not procure his dope. Dudley mollified him. J.C. fumed and hung up.
Dudley yawned. Dudley reached for a thought and missed it. The Teletype clacked. He reached for a thought and reeled it in.
He called a downtown florist. He spieled his police credentials and said he’d send a check. He ordered three dozen red roses. He gave them Bette’s name and address. The clerk whistled. Bette Davis, whew! The card? “Sign it ‘Your Secret Irish Admirer.’ ”