by James Ellroy
Breuning said, “Then how come we’re not dead? We’re sitting ducks here.”
Dudley said, “I’m too valuable to Carlos, lad. He wouldn’t kill me. He’d call me in L.A. and politely tell me to call it off.”
Breuning said, “Well, there’s always Christmas in L.A.”
Carlisle said, “And there’s the nitro. My kid and I could sure have fun with that.”
Dudley walked to the bush. It was exactly twelve paces. He saw the strongbox and grabbed it. It was lead-lined and a foot square. It was a tough one-hand scoop.
Breuning walked over and grabbed it. Carlisle jammed up. They lugged the box back to the car.
Ashida held the same pose. He hugged his briefcase and stared straight ahead.
They locked the shotguns and nitro in the trunk. Dudley got in the backseat. Ashida went So?
Dudley said, “The Staties were tipped. We’ll need to determine if we were informed upon. We got a box full of nitroglycerin for our troubles.”
Ashida said, “We should detonate it before we go back to L.A. It travels poorly. We shouldn’t take the risk of a sudden explosion.”
Dudley winked. Ashida blushed. Breuning and Carlisle piled in. They cut back to the coast road and hauled north.
Sub spotters lined the bluffs. They manned movie spotlights and scanned with binoculars. Breuning drove rápidamente. Dudley saw a cantina up ahead.
No name, tin roof, mismatched chairs out front. He tapped Breuning and pointed over. Breuning pulled up.
Dudley got out and walked in. It was a drunk tank. Borrachos slugged mescal from the bottle and fought over floating worms. The place connoted visions and night sweats.
Dudley braced the gent in the apron. He appeared lucid and in charge.
“Un teléfono y una oficina privada para llamar a Estados Unidos, por favor, señor. Pagaré sesenta dólares norteamericanos por este privilegio.”
The man pointed to a door. Dudley greased him and ambled over. The office was ten by ten. The walls were lined with mescal jugs. Two hundred worms swirled in toxic sludge.
A desk, a chair, a telephone. When in Rome—
Dudley grabbed the phone and roused an operator. His brogue Spanish delighted her. He uncapped a jug and swirled brew. The worm floated up. He bit it in two and ate the top half.
“Los Ángeles, AX-catedral-2921, por favor. Y llamo a cobro revertido. Su nombre es Hubert Cressmeyer. Mi nombre es Dudley Smith.”
The operator sí, sí’d him. The call crackled and went through. A nurse came on the line. Dudley did the collect-call shtick bilingual. The operator signed off.
The nurse seemed flustered. Dudley slugged mescal and nibbled the worm. Get Huey now, darling. His Uncle Dud requires him.
The nurse flustered off. The crackled line held. Dudley swigged mescal and noshed the worm whole. He felt volcano heat. The shit ran 180 proof.
Huey came on the line. He whined and whimpered. Dudley cut him off.
“You fucked up, lad. You let Tojo Tom call Mexico.”
Huey simpered and whimpered. Huey stuttered and stammered. Huey was shit-your-pants scared.
“He didn’t make no phone calls, Uncle Dud. This dorm lezzie snuck in and cut him loose this morning.”
Dudley put the phone down. Huey long-distance boo-hoo’d.
They’ll wait at the border. They’ll put roadblocks up. You should have been warned off and escorted off by—
Blackshirts kicked the door in. They wore jackboots. They had little Hitler toothbrush—
1:49 p.m.
His hand throbbed. It woke him up. Steel ratchets cut into his wrists.
He was cuffed to a chair. The chair was floor-bolted. He made the room.
It was twelve by twelve. It was outré by all sweat-room standards. One table, two chairs. Wall outlets for ball-clamp electrodes. A cutlery rack. Bloodsucking scorpions, caged.
Carlos Madrano stood over him. He wore a Mussolini ensemble with an FDR cape.
Dudley said, “Tojo Tom called you.”
Carlos waved his cigarette holder. It was pure FDR.
“Yes, he did. But his call would have only mandated a warning to you. ‘My dear friend, please do not steal my money and heroin.’ It was the other telephone call that troubled me.”
Dudley flexed his arms. Carlos uncuffed him and fed him a cigarette.
“Tell me about that call. Was it Patchett or Exley? Were they concerned that I was attempting to buy into endeavors that tangentially concern you?”
Carlos tipped ash on the table. Mike Breuning screamed next door.
“Sam Rummel called. He said Bill Parker pulled something, and that he sensed you in the margins. It had to do with my farmworker endeavors and your Watanabe case. He said he had never seen Parker so fixated, and now I see that you’ve succumbed to quite the unprofessional lapse.”
Dudley rubbed his wrists. His hands throbbed. His head throbbed. 180-proof booze and toxic worms.
“State the terms of my release and the release of my men.”
“You will be released under any and all terms. You will see to it that your Army Intelligence posting is stamped ‘Mexico,’ and you will work with me to thwart Axis sabotage, despite our Axis sympathies. A large sum of money will secure the release of your men. You may not call Ace Kwan for a quick handout. I am determined to keep word of your mission contained.”
The sweat room featured side windows. Dudley got up and peeped them. He saw Mike Breuning to the left, Hideo to the right.
Two spics worked over Mike. They rubber-hosed him and electrode-clamped his ears. Hideo sat uncuffed. Scorpions crawled near his chair. Hideo sat prim-still.
He glanced up at the window. He saw Dudley. He smiled and drew a dollar sign in the air.
Dudley said, “Carlos, I would advise you to talk to Dr. Ashida. I think he may have something to tell you.”
2:16 p.m.
He dozed in his chair. They left him his penicillin and fed him arroz con pollo and beer. His hand throbbed. His head throbbed. He was dead-man shot-to-shit.
He dozed and stirred. He counted the days since Pearl Harbor and the days to New Year’s. He counted Claire’s freckles. He dozed/stirred, dozed/stirred.
He checked Mike B.’s window. Mike was gone. He checked Hideo’s window. Hideo was gone. The floor was smeared with scorpion pulp. The fuckers had been stomped to bug juice.
His hand quit throbbing. He pissed in a hole in the floor.
He dozed. He woke up and smoked cigarettes. He saw a note slip on the floor.
He got up and read it. He recognized Hideo’s print.
“I tried something. It has to do with that sub I mentioned to you. Captain Madrano is in so far.”
Dudley smiled. Dudley counted Claire’s freckles. Dudley dozed in his bolted-down chair.
9:29 a.m.
The door lock clanged. Dudley went for his gun and got no gun. Hideo walked in. Insect pulp covered his shoes.
“I convinced Madrano to post a dozen men at the Colonet Inlet. It paid off. They snared a submarine.”
“And how did you divine this mooring?”
“I saw a crazy map in Pierce Patchett’s office. It was doodled with submarines covered in dollar signs. It reminded me of your graph.”
Dudley smiled. He heard rain outside. Four fascistas stood behind Hideo.
“And your current assignment, lad?”
“We toss the sub. I interrogate the crew.”
Dudley grabbed his suit coat. The Blackshirts hustled them outside. Two Caddy sedans idled by the barracks. They were tourist confiscations. Spic cops loved Jew canoes.
The sleds featured suicide doors and double backseats. The Blackshirts shoved them in. Breuning and Carlisle sat in the back.
They were sallow. They’d been tortured. Their necks were clamp-burned.
The sleds pulled out. Dudley made the slit-throat sign and mouthed “Madrano.”
Mike and Dick grinned. The Caddy hit the coast road, north. The rain was
bad. The Statie sleds crawled sloooooow.
Black clouds hung low. The sun was off in deep nowhere. Dudley saw arc-light burn—up ahead/10:00 high.
A beach-bluff encampment. A search scene. Blackshirts and captured Japs. Pup tents to thwart the rain.
The sleds pulled onto a bluff. Ten arc lights were up. Twenty Staties loitered. They wore black slickers over their black shirts.
Dudley got out first. He pushed through the Staties and entered the near tent. Captain Carlos sat in a deck chair. Six Japs were shackle-chained, facedown in the dirt.
They wore water-soaked uniforms. They’d been manhandled and kicked to shit. Their mouths were taped shut.
Carlos said, “Dr. Ashida has promised me money. I hope he’s right. His tips have proven credible so far.”
10:51 a.m.
The sub was moored on hard sand up against rocks. Carlos ceded the toss to Dudley and Hideo. They boarded the fucking thing and ducked belowdecks. Five Staties stood outside the hatch.
It was toss and find or toss and die. It hedged on Patchett’s nutty hieroglyphics.
They tossed. It was Hideo’s show. The sub was all screw plates, gauge panels, wall instruments. Hideo knew everything mechanical. Hideo knew the needle-in-a-haystack and wild-goose concepts and the crazy-hieroglyphics gestalt.
They tossed. They went through the crewmen’s quarters first. They tossed their lockers. They found L.A. tourist guidebooks and guidebooks per L.A. Chink culture. They found Chinese-language guides. Dudley teethed on it.
The deal oozed Fifth Column infiltration and sabotage. Hide in plain sight as Chink and deep-six L.A. from within.
They tossed. Hideo worked with socket wrenches and his bare hands. He unscrewed bolts and searched behind panels. He unwired instrument clusters and ran his hands over flush walls. He unscrewed the interior periscope mount and threw a flashlight beam on the gears.
They tossed. Carlos joined them. His kibitz spiel was all football and war. The Chicago Bears. Jew quarterback Sid Luckman. The Japs take Wake Island. Do you feel a racial tug, Dr. Ashida?
Carlos got loosey-goosey. Dudley hit him up for his car keys. His car was back on the bluff. He was out of cigarettes.
Carlos tossed him the keys. Dudley walked to his car, under guard escort. He grabbed his cigarettes. He palmed a vial of nitroglycerin.
He walked back to the sub. He winked at Hideo. Hideo winked back.
They tossed. Dudley lugged steel plates one-handed. His bad hand throbbed. He popped bennies and anti-bug pills. Carlos was no dumb beaner. He knew they might bolt. He kept one hand on his gun.
They tossed. The sub was a claustrophobe hot box. They sweated through their clothes. They sliced up their hands. Dudley ripped a fingernail half off.
They tossed systematically. They went from plated walls to plated catwalks. Everything was built narrow and Jap-size. Dudley kept banging his head.
They tossed. Hideo pulled up a floor plate and smiled.
Pierce Patchett. Crazy-kid hieroglyphics.
Five duffel bags stuffed in a hole. All bulging with Yankee C-notes.
Carlos was pleased. “Fate has decreed that you live. Now, Dr. Ashida must interrogate.”
2:37 p.m.
The rain persisted. They worked in a pup tent. Blackshirts unhooked the Japs and rehooked them to chairs. Hideo pulled the tape off their mouths. Hitler mustaches tore free.
Dudley watched. Breuning and Carlisle watched. They had that fetching Whew we don’t die look. Carlos supplied mescal. Everybody took pops. Hideo exhibited panache and ate the worm.
The Japs jabbered and rattled their cuff chains. They were Fuji Shudoesque. Hideo hectored them. It went on and on. It got boring and vexing. It required no translation. The Japs weren’t giving up shit.
Hideo looked at Dudley.
Dudley looked at Carlos.
Carlos passed Hideo his gloves.
They were palm-weighted and fascist fetishistic. Hideo slipped them on.
The Japs rolled their eyes and giggled. Punk, you ain’t got the guts.
Hideo hit them.
He windmilled lefts and rights. Their heads snapped at near-right angles. Teeth blew out. Severed scalps flew.
They dribbled teeth.
They coughed blood.
Their eyebrows flopped over their eyes.
They made garbled sounds and gave it all up.
It was six-man Jap-on-Jap jabber. Hideo crouched low and picked it all up.
The jabber overlapped and extended. Hideo took it all in.
“It’s Terry Lux and Pierce Patchett, with Preston Exley off to the side. Patchett knows people in the office of Naval Intelligence. He’s been fingering those sub attacks on freighters up the coastline, and he was in shortwave contact with the escaped Japanese. Lux took your plan with Ace Kwan and refined it into a sabotage front. The escaped men were on their way down here to rendezvous with the sub when the posse got them. Lux is going to work with Lin Chung and hide saboteurs in Chinatown. Chung has eugenic plans for them, which sounds draconian. At the very least, he’s going to infiltrate them into the Chinese community and let them perpetrate their sabotage from there.”
Dudley smiled. “Bright, bright penny. How gifted you are.”
A fat Jap squirmed and spit blood at Hideo. He called up some English. He said, “You fairy.”
Hideo grabbed Carlos Madrano’s Luger and drew down on him. The other Japs froze. The whole tent froze.
Dudley watched his gears click. Yes/no, yes/no, yes/no.
Hideo lowered the gun.
Hideo said, “I’m an American.”
5:18 p.m.
The cleanup extended. The Blackshirts loosened up. They let the gringos walk free.
Dudley loitered on the bluff. The rain covered him. He spotted Madrano’s car. He wedged the nitro into the left-rear wheel well.
They hog-tied the Japs and dumped them in the sub. The Japs squirmed, squealed and begged. Breuning friction-taped their mouths. Hideo rigged a detonation kit beside them.
Hideo designed the kit. It featured nitroglycerin and shotgun shells.
Rip three pairs of trousers into strips and trail them out the hatch. Gasoline-soak them. Get the sub twenty yards out. Shotgun-blast the hull and manufacture combustion.
Hideo studied the sub’s engine. He read a set of Jap-language guides and got the gist. Breuning and Carlisle ripped up the trousers and knotted the fuse. Dudley gas-soaked it and tucked the explosive end in with the nitro and shells.
They coated the fuse with sulfuric acid and rendered it waterproof. They packed the kit upside the Japs. The fuse tip draped over the hull.
Hideo stoked the engine and slammed the gears into reverse. The sub shimmied and lurched backward.
They jumped off. Rain drummed down and soaked them.
They stood with the Blackshirts and passed around the mescal. The sub caught water traction. The Blackshirts divvied up shotguns loaded with big-bore slugs.
It all felt ceremonial. It all went down in the rain and the dark.
The sub lurched twenty yards out. All right, now—
Uno, dos, tres—
Dudley did the count. They all fired on cuatro.
Twenty-four men fired. Twenty-four slugs pierced the hull. The sub blew to kingdom come.
7:08 p.m.
The sky burned red. Everybody yelled adiós and peeled to their cars. Carlos drove off with four Blackshirt pals.
Waves smothered the flames. Steam hissed off the water. Breuning burned tread. Carlisle waxed elegiac. Dudley and Hideo sat in the backseat.
It was over. The Watanabe case. The Smith-Kwan cartel. It ran twenty days, door-to-door.
Dudley touched Hideo’s arm. “I won’t begrudge you a last go at the Watanabe case. Do what you deem prudent, without mentioning my name. You’ll be interned in late February. I’ll break you out in early May.”
Hideo smiled and winked at him. Dudley roared and slapped his knees.
The dri
ve was a slog. The fucking rain. Fallen debris, abandoned cars, bobbing peons. Carlos lived two hours south of Ensenada. He might get halfway there.
Back to America. No border-crossing grief. A snail trail through San Diego. They rendezvoused at the Davis manse. They had to return and disperse there.
They stopped at the Friar Tuck Drive-In. The carhops wore rain slickers over wench garb. Hideo bounced for dinner. They gorged on cheeseburgers and mescal-spiked milk shakes.
Snail trail. They craaaawled up the coast road to Sunset. It was almost midnight. Dudley perked up. He’d get a last look at the house.
Sunset east. Mandeville Canyon north. Back to her street and her house. All her lights were on.
The gang said adiós on the sidewalk. The abrazos extended. The lads laid tracks home. Dudley walked up and peeped a front window. Tall trees shielded him from the rain.
Bette’s “Late Christmas Dinner.” The papers ballyhooed it.
She played to a group of soldiers. They were winter-uniform spiffed. Bette’s hubby sashayed. The Airedale hopped on Tommy Gilfoyle’s lap.
Bette held court. The revelers drank eggnog. Beth danced into view. A handsome soldier twirled her. She wore her Irish green sweet sixteen dress.
She sailed by the window and disappeared. Dudley held back sobs.
12:04 a.m.
Dudley stood at the window. Ashida saw it. He made a green light and cut east. Dudley disappeared.
The rain subsided. He checked his rearview mirror every few seconds. His face still looked the same.
He toured Mexico with the Dudster. He thought he’d look different.
Kay Lake shivved a woman and looked different now. He thought he’d go the same route.
It was Christmas weekend. It was raining. There was no traffic. Dudley said, “Omit my name. Do whatever you deem prudent.”
He knew most of it. He understood the Fifth Column text. Saul Lesnick had tiny feet. It was not binding proof. He could not name the white man in the purple sweater. Jack Webb described the man. He was “heavyset” and “middle-aged.” Saul Lesnick was old and thin.
The USC Library was open-all-night. Law students were night owls. He was a night owl. He cooked up a scheme on the ride back.