Perfidia

by James Ellroy

  Parker studied the easel map. It depicted the Valley’s east edge. Circles denoted farmland. Check marks denoted farm structures. They were Jap properties. It went with Preston’s internment plan. It suggested that rumor per the Watanabe case.

  Hoover said, “The floor is yours, Mr. Exley.”

  Preston walked up to the easel. “In essence, what I am proposing is a separate cog within the larger cog of the Federal government’s wartime internment planning, which mandates the housing of hundreds of thousands of suspect Japanese in massive centers throughout California and Arizona, and as far north as Wyoming and Montana. My proposal allows us to cull inmates selectively, house them locally and see to it that the accretion of revenue remains local, so that it might boost the specific wartime and postwartime economy of Los Angeles. When I say ‘selective,’ I am implying a judicious application of eugenics, or racial science. The Japanese are a gifted people, an industrious people, and a compliant people. We would be well served to keep a number of them here, close at hand. Keep in mind that they themselves will benefit from a postwar economic boom, once they’ve been released from custody.”

  Jack said, “I get it. The Japs have got green thumbs, so we put them to work on their own farms and their neighbors’ farms, to work along those lines you’ve already described. I don’t like the word kickback, but it applies here. There’s potential profits for all those concerned. We take a sizable number of Japs off the Federal government’s hands, which benefits Mr. Hoover’s people. We police our own Japs, so we see the lion’s share of the wealth.”

  Fletch said, “Where’s the ‘racial science’ part, Preston? What do you mean by ‘selectively’?”

  Hoover said, “Since Mr. Exley and I have already discussed it, I’d like to answer that question. My agents have been the driving force behind the roundups of Japanese subversives over the past twelve days. As such, they have observed a great many Japanese, and have compiled individual dossiers on them. I see this as a controlled experiment in both penology and eugenics. Japan has remained a feudal culture, running parallel to ours, but hamstrung by atavistic social codes, up through the Industrial Revolution, as free societies have come to flourish in the West. Now—despite or because of their native atavism—they have mobilized and nationalized their resources almost on a par with our own white country’s. The Japanese threaten the worldwide Western hegemony at this moment—but we will, of course, crush them in the end. Why not exploit their native cunning and brainpower as we destroy them militarily, in the hope that our experiment casts light on a race both inferior and oddly superior to ours, most tellingly differentiated by their mad drive for power? Why not ply them with intelligence and mental and physical aptitude tests, and select our potential Los Angeles–based prisoners on that basis? Why not study these people while we imprison and productively employ them?”

  Davis said, “Mr. Hoover don’t speak with forked tongue. I’m a race man from way back. This angle of the plan has got me licking my chops.”

  Preston said, “Don’t stop licking there, any of you. I’m thinking we can run those tests and come up with a select few within the select few, give them high-security clearances and allow them to work at those defense plants out in Santa Monica. You’ve got Lockheed, Boeing, Douglas and Hughes out there in one tight stretch, and Jim’s running the Douglas police force already. We could expand Jim’s jurisdiction to all the plants and deputize a special group of men to police our worker Japs exclusively.”

  Prescient. Lucrative. Usurious past moral reason. Blood libel. Slavery reestablished on American soil.

  Parker stared at his hands. Don’t look up, they’ll read your mind—

  Preston said, “The draft will saddle us with a citywide shortage in menial employment. I propose that we create a guest worker program with the Mexican State Police. They will supply us with peons to fill the shortages, we house them in Chavez Ravine, Shore Patrolmen from the Chavez Ravine Naval Base can do the policing there. Again, the entire operation remains localized and fully indigenous to L.A.”

  Hoover sniffed his carnation. “I need a touch of fresh air. I would like to observe some arrests in Little Tokyo, and I would like to do so now.”

  Call-Me-Jack said, “I’ve got two cars waiting.”

  Davis said, “Some Reds are shooting a movie. Dick Hood’s getting ready to put the quietus to it.”

  The boys jumped on cue. Parker got up and followed them. They took the mayor’s private lift down.

  Two Fed sedans idled in the basement. Ed Satterlee and Ward Littell drove. Parker got in beside Ward. They swapped looks. Call-Me-Jack and Jim Davis piled in the back.

  The other boys hitched with Satterlee. The cars pulled out, snout-to-tail. Parker shut his eyes and squeezed his holy cross.

  He felt the ride over. Every bump jarred him. The two-way radio squawked. The Anti-Axis Committee—one minute to go.

  We’ve got Hearst Rifle boys up on rooftops. There’s four Feds already there.

  Street bumps, left turns, right turns. We’re inside Little Tokyo. One minute to go.

  Parker counted right turns. Ward braked and pulled over. Parker opened his eyes. Satterlee’s car idled flush in front of them.

  The Hearst fucks manned neighboring rooftops. They packed scope-mounted Mausers.

  More Hearst fucks hogged the sidewalk. A photo man, Sid Hudgens, Jack Webb. The target storefront blazed red, white and blue.

  Ward squeezed Parker’s arm and stepped from the car. Satterlee got out. Four Feds jumped from a surveillance van.

  They pulled sidearms. They walked to the doorway. It was wide open. They went in, guns first.

  Parker got out. The Hearst geeks blocked his view of the door. The storefront was sotto voce. No protests, no slogans, no shouts.

  Parker waited. He strained to hear her. He heard handcuff ratchets click.

  She walked out ahead of the others. He left her standing in the rain. She wore a brown ensemble then. Now she wore bright red.

  10:19 a.m.

  Meeks sat down. Halitosis fogged the booth. He decided to kill him in 1946.

  The war would be pffft. He’d be rich. Meeks would rot in Ace Kwan’s lime pit.

  Vince & Paul’s was dead. They sat by the exit. A waiter brought coffee and vanished.

  Meeks said, “I turned up some racy scoop on Pierce Patchett. You owe me five hundred.”

  Dudley dropped five yards on the table. Meeks snatched it up.

  “I’d say he’s about forty. He’s a big, impressive-looking guy who’s good at jujitsu, for what that’s worth. He’s an ‘Orientalist,’ which means he goes for shit that emanates from that godforsaken part of the world. He’s a land developer, and he’s turned significant coin with deals here and there. He’s also a chemist by trade, some kind of closet fascist, and a budding sugar pimp. He’s got a plan that involves plastic surgery, which sounds like outer space to me. He wants to cut girls to look like movie stars, which’ll probably tickle your funny bone, given the true-life stuff you’re getting. The scoop is that he wants to run a telephone-service operation, like our chums Brenda and Elmer.”

  Dudley sifted it. “Continue, please.”

  Meeks drummed the table. “I see circle jerk and cluster fuck all over this guy, and a whole flotilla of other guys he knows. I ran Patchett’s house and office phone records. There’s lots of calls to our old pal Preston Exley’s house and office, and calls to your beaner pal Carlos Madrano, down in Ensenada. Patchett’s office is in the same building as a doctor named Saul Lesnick, who just happens to be treating Preston for migraine headaches. More fucking over, I learned that Lesnick is a Fed informant, and that he’s infiltrated some kind of Red cell. More fucking over on that, I went to the cop you always go to to get the dirt on Fifth Column types.”

  Dudley sifted it. “Continue, please.”

  Meeks said, “I cracked union heads under Carl Hull, so I know how to read him. As soon as I say ‘Lesnick,’ he starts dropping his drawers. Okay, I
know that you braced him. Okay, I know that Bill Parker’s running Lee Blanchard’s girlfriend in that cell that Lesnick’s in. I know that you’re always keeping tabs on Parker, and that you told Hull that you’d let Parker’s deal with the Lake twist go forward. ‘Circle jerk,’ Dud. The Lake cooze is fucking Scotty Bennett and might be fucking Hideo Ashida. ‘Cluster fuck.’ Exley, Patchett and Madrano aren’t hooked up on that anti-Red thing, but they’re hooked up on something bigger and better.”

  Dudley resifted it. “Continue, please.”

  Meeks hunkered in. Note his gold watch. He killed three shines in a blastout at Slauson and Broadway. He stole that watch off a dead coon.

  “You smell money in the Watanabe job. I’ve known it since I spilled that scoop on those farm and house buyouts at the briefing last week. Now, you’ve got Exley, Patchett, and Madrano. You’ve got the Mex Staties strawbossing the wets at those Jap farms out in the Valley. You’ve got these allegedly ‘unknown’ white stiffs buying and trying to buy farm and house properties from the Japs, secretly recorded sales, and Exley’s plan for internment sites on confiscated Jap land, which is all over every inter-Bureau memo floating around the PD and the mayor’s office. It’s a circle jerk and a cluster fuck, and you smell money, and my bet is that you haven’t figured out all the angles, and that Ace Kwan is in this with you, and you’re waiting until Shudo is indicted and off your plate, and then you’ll kick your schemes into high gear, and you wouldn’t mind knowing that Whiskey Bill won’t get some anti-Red or anti–Dudley Smith wild hair up his ass to complicate your already too-complicated life.”

  Dudley clapped. Meeks, with halitosis. Meeks, with his gold watch. Meeks killed two spics in a blastout at Wabash and Soto. Meeks stole God knows what off of them.

  “It’s a brilliant, lucidly reasoned and accurate précis, lad. It prompts the question ‘How much do you want?’ ”

  Meeks unwrapped a cigar. “5% of whatever you and Ace might be cooking up on any kind of land deal you’re looking at, and whatever else you might have going on the internment end.”

  Dudley said, “Done.”

  Meeks said, “It must gall you to know that you can’t kill me.”

  “Yes. I’ll concede the point.”

  Meeks stood up. “Take care of yourself. You blew your cork with The Wolf, and I know you’re stretched thin. You’re the horse I’ve got my money on, and I need you fit for the race.”

  11:36 a.m.

  Meeks waddled out. The 5% deal goosed his date of death. The shit would go in 1942.

  Dudley doodled up cocktail napkins. He crumbled a bennie and goosed his coffee.

  The war caught up with him yesterday. Today announced a new campaign. He thought of Bette. She bridged both days as his sorceress.

  He conjured her. He bore the mad grit of the Irish dispossessed. He summoned her. She did not know it yet.

  The bennies tickled his brain. Memo: call Huey and prepare to brace Tojo Tom Chasco. Memo: send Ellis Loew a grand bottle. Apologize for the Werewolf dustup. Welcome him to the Hearst-hurrahed Watanabe Case.

  Dudley doodled. He sifted Meeks’ spiel and shorthand-transcribed it. Circle jerk, cluster fuck. Collusive connections revealed. No real murder leads. The house/​farm buyouts take shape.

  Shorthand. Equals signs and excised parts of speech. Quotation marks, question marks, boldfaced proper nouns. See how the names repeat?

  “E.’s internment-housing plan.” “W. house directly off Arroyo Seco Parkway.” “Parkway blt. by E. Construction.” Take this conjectured leap:

  “Presumed buildup of L.A. after war.”

  Cocktail napkins. Detectives’ hieroglyphs.

  Meeks lays out Pierce Patchett. He wants to run cut whores. Who’s the King of the Cut Men? Terence Lux, M.D.

  Dudley drew Jap faces and Jap faces cut to look Chink. He saw no eugenic difference. He drew Terry Lux with a scalpel. He drew Claire De Haven. He drew Claire De Haven nude in Terry’s steam room.

  He drew Hideo Ashida. Hideo’s watching Terry cut that Jap wino. He finds the cut scheme dubious, but enjoys eugenics.

  Hideo’s gizmo play troubled him. It felt recklessly unconscious. His “corroborating-witness” pitch was far-afield contrived.

  He drew question marks and a map. The map denoted proximity.

  The Arroyo Seco Parkway. Downtown L.A. to Pasadena. An Exley Construction contract. Lincoln Heights to the east. Highland Park to the west. South Pasadena at the north terminus.

  He drew the twisty blacktop. He X-marked on- and off-ramps. He fanned his pencil to indicate hillsides and undeveloped land.

  He caught a bennie surge. He got up and left the restaurant. He shagged his K-car and drove to the parkway.

  Chavez Ravine marked the south edge. Lincoln Heights stood due east. The Heights was all scrub hills and shack rows. There’s a drainage creek running parallel north.

  There’s Highland Park, to the west. There’s fewer hillsides and on- and off-ramps. Undeveloped land abuts the west side. There’s no meddlesome creek.

  There’s barren land on the west flank. There’s meddlesome houses interspersed. They abut the parkway safety fence.

  Dudley got off at Avenue 64 and looped south. He noted topography and counted vacant lots. He drove to Avenue 45 and The House.

  He parked in Their Driveway. He strolled to Their Backyard.

  It overlooked undeveloped land and ran straight to the parkway. The distance was one-quarter mile.

  Dirt and scrub. A few trees and low hills. This undeveloped stretch ran due north and south. The topography ran more problematic further up and down. This House and This Land plumb-lined perfect parkway egress.

  Dudley vaulted the fence and went walking. The ground was all rough dirt and twigs. He walked straight to the parkway fence and straight back.

  It might be city-county property. It might be Watanabe property. It might be property secretly purchased by the Exley-Patchett combine.

  He grabbed a handful of soil and sniffed it. He caught a vague shrimp subscent. He quick-walked to the backyard fence and jumped it.

  He got his car and hooked down to Figueroa. He donned a construction king’s thinking cap.

  The sin of undeveloped land. No parkway-flush commercial strips between downtown and Pasadena. A perfect spot, to the west.

  Parkway-flush Highland Park. No meddlesome drainage creek. No high hills to block car traffic. Egress off the safety fence and the Watanabes’ backyard.

  He stopped at a pay phone and called Nort Layman. Nort was eager to chat. Shrimp residue and topsoil. Have you an opinion to share?

  Yes. He’s made studies. It’s per the Watanabe case.

  Shrimp oil solidifies urban dirt and contaminates it for crop planting. Shrimp oil could be used to undercoat topsoil. It might provide a baseline for poured cement.

  Dudley thanked Nort. Dudley hung up. Dudley mind-screened a film vignette.

  It stars the Watanabes. They’re cinematically alive. They coat their feet with shrimp oil and trek through their backyard. They journey to the parkway fence. Someone bid them to do it. Useless crop soil facilitates the pouring of cement.

  Dudley drove to City Hall. He popped two bennies. He screened visions of postwar L.A.

  He’d seen that German movie Metropolis. It was dystopically shrill. He combined that vision with his vision.

  Shop-and-dine terraces with grand parkway views. No jigaboos in sight. Spaceship cars skitting north and south.

  He parked and went up to the Bureau. Mike Breuning lassoed him.

  “I still don’t believe it. I just jawed on the phone with Bette Davis. She said you should call her.”

  Dudley roared. He did a jigaboo two-step and cartwheeled up to his desk. He saw an envelope on the blotter.

  A letter from Tommy Gilfoyle. That erratic block print. Blind Tommy never learned to type or write cursive.

  Dudley slit the envelope. The letter ran two pages. He knew Tommy’s print technique. Words devolved into alphab
et stew.

  “I know Beth wrote you about that ‘horrible thing’ last year, but she didn’t tell you what it was.”

  Dudley got scalp bumps. Tommy’s words broke up. Look—wet ink and dried tears.

  Beth was raped, in Boston. It was November ’40. Two thugs assaulted her. Boston PD ID’d them. Beth broke down at the show-up and blew her identification. The men were released.

  She went to a doctor. He examined her and said she wasn’t pregnant. He found benign cysts and told her she was barren. She would never be able to conceive.

  Beth was devastated. She wanted children dearly. Tommy kept in touch with Boston PD. A cop told him that the rape-o’s had joined the Marine Corps. They were stationed at Camp Pendleton, near San Diego.

  PFC John Arcineaux, Private Robert Ettig.

  “We’ll be arriving in Los Angeles on Monday, December 22, and staying through Christmas. I wanted you to know this before we came, but please don’t tell Beth that you know. I think she has spells where it doesn’t weigh on her, and I want our Christmas with you to be one of them.”

  The pages turned wet. He didn’t know why. He picked up a chair and started to hurl it. He sobbed and put the chair down.

  The sob strangled him. He couldn’t breathe. He opened his mouth and made animal sounds. Werewolf, Werewolf. He bit his arm to kill the sounds. He bit himself down to the skin.

  1:19 p.m.

  Werewolf Shudo was sin-sational. He was a Jap werewolf. The radio harped on that.

  Ashida tuned in the news. He worked the lab solo. KFI ran an all-Jap scroll.

  A denuded synopsis of the Watanabe job. “No Leads in Jap Phone Booth Slaying!” “No Leads on Jap Slain at Beach!” “Jap Jail Suiciders: Fifth Column All!”

  He’d tuned in for word on the Anti-Axis raid. Mariko called and described what she saw. The Feds swooped down on the office. They grabbed a white girl in a red dress.

  The Feds would grab the film. Claire and the others might name him. His Kay Lake kisses would be Fed-scrutinized.