by James Ellroy
Three hours of report writing followed. I wrote the arresting officer’s summary longhand; Lee typed it up, omitting mention of our break-in at Coleman Maynard’s apartment. Ellis Loew hovered around the cubicle as we worked, muttering, “Great collar” and “I’ll kill them in court with the kid angle.”
We finished our paperwork at 7:00. Lee made a check mark in the air and said, “Chalk another one up for Laurie Blanchard. You hungry, partner?”
I stood up and stretched, food suddenly a great idea. Then I saw Fritz Vogel and Bill Koenig approaching the cubicle. Lee whispered, “Make nice, they’ve got juice with Loew.”
Up close, the two resembled gone-to-seed refugees from the LA Rams’ middle line. Vogel was tall and fat, with a huge flat head that grew straight out of his shirt collar and the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen; Koenig was plain huge, topping my six foot three by a couple of inches, his linebacker’s body just starting to go soft. He had a broad, flattened nose, jug ears, a crooked jaw and tiny chipped teeth. He looked stupid, Vogel looked shrewd, they both looked mean.
Koenig giggled. “He confessed. The kiddie porks and the burglaries. Fritzie says we’re all gonna get commendations.” He stuck out his hand. “Good fight you gave blondie.”
I shook the big fist, noticing fresh blood on Koenig’s right shirt cuff. I said, “Thanks, Sarge,” then extended my hand to Fritz Vogel. He took it for a split second, bored into me with coldly furious eyes and dropped it like it was a hot turd.
Lee slapped my back. “Bucky’s aces. Smarts and cojoñes. You talked to Ellis about the confession?”
Vogel said, “He’s Ellis to lieutenants and up.”
Lee laughed. “I’m a privileged character. Besides, you call him kike and Jewboy behind his back, so what do you care?”
Vogel flushed; Koenig looked around with his mouth open. When he turned, I saw blood spatters on his shirtfront. Vogel said, “Come on Billy” Koenig dutifully followed him back to the squadroom.
“Make nice, huh?”
Lee shrugged. “Shitbirds. If they weren’t cops they’d be in Atascadero. Do as I say, not as I do, partner. They’re afraid of me, and you’re just a rookie here.”
I racked my brain for a snappy reply. Then Harry Sears, looking twice as sloppy as he did in the morning, poked his head in the doorway. “I heard something I thought you should know, Lee.” The words were spoken without a trace of a stutter; I smelled liquor on the man’s breath.
Lee said, “Shoot” Sears said, “I was over at County Parole, and the supervisor told me Bobby De Witt just got an ‘A’ number. He’ll be paroled to LA around the middle of January. Just thought you should know.”
Sears nodded at me and took off. I looked at Lee, who was twitching like he did up in room 803 of the Versailles. I said, “Partner—”
Lee managed a smile. “Let’s get ourselves some chow. Kay’s making pot roast, and she said I should bring you home.”
I tagged along for the woman and was astounded by the pad: a beige Deco-streamline house a quarter mile north of the Sunset Strip. Going in the door, Lee said, “Don’t mention De Witt; it’ll upset Kay.” I nodded and took in a living room straight out of a movie set.
The wainscoting was polished mahogany, the furniture was Danish Modern—gleaming blond wood in a half dozen shades. There were wall prints representing hotshot twentieth-century artists, and carpets embroidered with modernistic designs, mist-hung skyscrapers or tall trees in a forest or the spires of some German Expressionist factory. A dining area adjoined the living room, and the table held fresh flowers and chafing dishes leaking the aroma of good eats. I said, “Not bad on a cop’s pay. You taking a few bribes, partner?”
Lee laughed. “My fight stash. Hey babe, you here?”
Kay Lake walked in from the kitchen, wearing a floral dress that matched the tulips on the table. She took my hand and said, “Hello, Dwight.” I felt like a punk kid crashing the junior prom.
“Hello, Kay.”
With a squeeze she dropped my hand, ending the longest shake in history. “You and Leland partners. It makes you want to believe in fairy tales, doesn’t it?”
I looked around for Lee, and saw that he’d disappeared. “No. I’m the realistic type.”
“I’m not.”
“I can tell.”
“I’ve had enough reality to last me a lifetime.”
“I know.”
“Who told you?”
“The LA Herald Express”
Kay laughed. “Then you did read my press clippings. Come to any conclusions?”
“Yeah. Fairy tales don’t woik out.”
Kay winked like Lee; I got the feeling that she was the one who taught him. “That’s why you have to turn them into reality. Leland! Dinnertime!”
Lee reappeared, and we sat down to eat; Kay cracked a bottle of champagne and poured. When our glasses were full, she said, “To fairy tales.” We drank, Kay refilled, Lee said, “To Bond Issue B.” The second dose of bubbly tickled my nose and made me laugh; I proposed, “To the Bleichert-Blanchard rematch at the Polo Grounds, a bigger gate than Louis and Schmeling.”
Lee said, “To the second Blanchard victory” Kay said, “To a draw and no gore.” We drank, and killed the bottle, and Kay retrieved another from the kitchen, popping the cork and hitting Lee in the chest. When our goblets were full, I caught my first blast of the juice and blurted, “To us.” Lee and Kay looked at me in something like slow motion, and I saw that our free hands were all resting a few inches apart on the tabletop. Kay noticed me notice and winked; Lee said, “That’s where I learned how.” Our hands moved together into a sort of triad, and we toasted “To us” in unison.
Opponents, then partners, then friends. And with the friendship came Kay, never getting between us, but always filling in our lives outside the job with style and grace.
That fall of ‘46, we went everywhere together. When we went to the movies, Kay took the middle seat and grabbed both our hands during the scary parts; when we spent big band Friday evenings at the Malibu Rendezvous, she alternated dances with the two of us and always tossed a coin to see who got the last slow number. Lee never expressed an ounce of jealously, and Kay’s come-on subsided into a low simmer. It was there every time our shoulders brushed, every time a radio jingle or a funny billboard or a word from Lee hit us the same way and our eyes met instantaneously. The quieter it got, the more available I knew Kay was—and the more I wanted her. But I let it all ride, not because it would have destroyed my partnership with Lee, but because it would have upset the perfection of the three of us.
After tours of duty, Lee and I would go to the house and find Kay reading, underlining passages in books with a yellow crayon. She’d cook dinner for the three of us, and sometimes Lee would take off to run Mulholland on his motorcycle. Then we talked.
We always spoke around Lee, as if discussing the brute center of the three of us without him present was a cheat. Kay talked about the six years of college and two master’s degrees that Lee had bankrolled with his fight stash and how her work as a substitute teacher was perfect for the “overeducated dilettante” she’d become; I talked about growing up Kraut in Lincoln Heights. We never spoke of my snitching for the Alien Squad or her life with Bobby De Witt. We both sensed the other’s general story, but neither of us wanted details. I had the upper hand there: the Ashida brothers and Sam Murakami were long gone and dead, but Bobby De Witt was a month away from LA parole—and I could tell Kay was afraid of his return.
If Lee was frightened, he never showed it past that moment when Harry Sears gave him the word, and it never hindered him during our best hours together—the ones spent working Warrants. That fall I learned what police work really was, and Lee was my teacher.
From mid-November through the New Year we captured a total of eleven hard felons, eighteen traffic warrantees and three parole and probation absconders. Our rousts of suspicious loiterers got us an additional half dozen arrests, all of them for narcotics vi
olations. We worked from Ellis Loew’s direct orders, the felony sheet and squadroom scuttlebutt, filtered through Lee’s instincts. His techniques were sometimes cautious and roundabout and sometimes brutal, but he was always gentle with children, and when he went strong-arm to get information, it was because it was the only way to grab results.
So we became a “good guy-bad guy” interrogation team; Mr. Fire the black hat, Mr. Ice the white. Our boxing reputations gave us an added edge of respect on the street, and when Lee rabbit-punched for information and I interceded on the punchee’s behalf, it got us what we wanted.
The partnership wasn’t perfect. When we worked twenty-four-hour tours, Lee would shake down hopheads for Benzedrine tablets and swallow handfuls to stay alert; then every Negro roustee became “Sambo,” every white man “Shit-bird,” every Mexican “Pancho.” All his rawness came out, destroying his considerable finesse, and twice I had to hold him back for real when he got carried away with his black-hat role.
But it was a small price to pay for what I was learning. Under Lee’s tutelage I got good fast, and I wasn’t the only one who knew it. Even though he’d dropped half a grand on the fight, Ellis Loew warmed to me when Lee and I brought in a string of felons he was drooling to prosecute, and Fritz Vogel, who hated me for snatching Warrants from his son, reluctantly admitted to him that I was an ace cop.
And, surprisingly, my local celebrity lingered long enough to do me some extra good. Lee was a favored repo man with H.J. Caruso, the auto dealer with the famous radio ads, and when the job was slow we prowled for delinquent cars in Watts and Compton. When we found one, Lee would kick in the driver’s side window and hot-wire the sled, and I would stand guard. Then we’d run a two-car convoy to Caruso’s lot on Figueroa, and H.J. would slip us a double sawbuck apiece. We gabbed cops and robbers and fight stuff with him, and ‘ afterward he kicked back a good bottle of bourbon, that Lee always kicked back to Harry Sears to keep us greased up with good tips from Homicide.
Sometimes we joined H.J. for the Wednesday night fights at the Olympic. He had a specially constructed ringside booth that kept us protected when the Mexicans in the top tier tossed coins and beer cups full of piss down at the ring, and Jimmy Lennon introduced us during the prefight ceremonies. Benny Siegel stopped by the booth occasionally, and he and Lee would go off to talk. Lee always came back looking slightly scared. The man he’d once defied was the most powerful gangster on the West Coast, known to be vindictive, with a hair-trigger temper. But Lee usually got track tips—and the horses Siegel gave him usually won.
So that fall went. The old man got a pass from the rest home at Christmas, and I brought him to dinner at the house. He had recovered pretty well from his stroke, but he still had no memory of English, and rambled on in German. Kay fed him turkey and goose and Lee listened to his Kraut monologues all night, interjecting, “You tell ’em, pop” and “Crazy, man” whenever he paused for breath. When I dropped him back at the home, he gave me the fungoo sign and managed to walk in under his own steam.
On New Year’s Eve, we drove down to Balboa Island to catch Stan Kenton’s band. We danced in 1947, high on champagne, and Kay flipped coins to see who got last dance and first kiss when midnight hit. Lee won the dance, and I watched them swirl across the floor to “Perfidia,” feeling awe for the way they had changed my life. Then it was midnight, the band fired up, and I didn’t know how to play it.
Kay took the problem away, kissing me softly on the lips, whispering, “I love you, Dwight.” A fat woman grabbed me and blew a noisemaker in my face before I could return the words.
We drove home on Pacific Coast Highway, part of a long stream of horn-honking revelers. When we got to the house, my car wouldn’t start, so I made myself a bed on the couch and promptly passed out from too much booze. Sometime toward dawn, I woke up to strange sounds muffling through the walls. I perked my ears to identify them, picking out sobs followed. by Kay’s voice, softer and lower than I had ever heard it. The sobbing got worse—trailing into whimpers. I pulled the pillow over my head and forced myself back to sleep.
Six
I dozed through most of the lackluster January 10 felony summary, coming awake when Captain Jack barked, “That’s it. Lieutenant Millard, Sergeant Sears, Sergeant Blanchard and Officer Bleichert, go to Mr. Loew’s office immediately. Dismissed!”
I walked down the corridor to Ellis Loew’s inner sanctum. Lee, Russ Millard and Harry Sears were already there, milling around Loew’s desk, examining a stack of morning Heralds.
Lee winked and handed me a copy, folded over to the local section. I saw a piece titled, “Criminal Division DA to Try for Boss’s Job in ‘48 Republican Primary?” read three paragraphs lauding Ellis Loew and his concern for the citizens of Los Angeles and tossed the paper on the desk before I threw up. Lee said, “Here comes the man now. Hey Ellis, you going into politics? Say ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’ Let’s see how you sound.”
Lee’s FDR imitation got a laugh all around; even Loew chuckled as he handed out rap sheet carbons with mug shot strips attached. “Here’s the gentleman we all have to fear. Read those and find out why.”
I read the sheet. It detailed the criminal career of Raymond Douglas “Junior” Nash, white male, born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1908. Nash’s convictions went back to 1926, and included Texas State Prison jolts for statutory rape, armed robbery, first degree mayhem and felonious assault. There were five California charges filed against him: three armed robbery warrants from up north in Oakland County and two 1944 LA papers—first degree statch rape and felony contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The rap sheet ended with notations from the San Francisco PD Intelligence Squad, stating that Nash was suspected of a dozen Bay Area stickups and was rumored to be one of the outside men behind the May ‘46 Alcatraz crash-out attempt. Finishing, I checked out the mug shots. Junior Nash looked like a typical inbred Okie shitkicker: long bony head, thin lips, beady eyes and ears that could have belonged to Dumbo.
I glanced at the other men. Loew was reading about himself in the Herald; Millard and Sears were still on the sheets, pokerfaced. Lee said, “Give us the good news, Ellis. He’s in LA and acting uppity, right?”
Loew fiddled with his Phi Beta Kappa key. “Eyewitnesses have made him for two market stickups in Leimert Park over the weekend, which is why he wasn’t in the felony summary. He pistol-whipped an old lady during the second robbery, and she died an hour ago at Good Samaritan.”
Harry Sears stammered, “Kn-kn-known as-s-sociates?”
Loew shook his head. “Captain Tierney talked to the SFPD this morning. They said Nash is a lone wolf type. Apparently he was recruited for his part in the Alcatraz thing, but that’s an exception. What I—”
Russ Millard raised his hand. “Is there a common denominator in Nash’s sex beefs?”
“I was getting to that,” Loew said. “Nash apparently likes Negro girls. Young ones, still in their teens. All of his sex offense complainants have been colored.”
Lee motioned me toward the door. “We’ll hit University Station, read the dick’s report and take it from there. My bet is that Nash is holing up somewhere in Leimert Park. It’s white, but there’s shines from Manchester on south. Lots of places to prowl for poontang.”
Millard and Sears got up to leave. Loew walked up to Lee and said, “Try to avoid killing him, Sergeant. He richly deserves it, but try anyway.”
Lee flashed his patented demon grin. “I’ll try, sir. But you be sure to kill him in court. The voters want boys like Junior fried, makes them feel safe at night.”
Our first stop was University Station. The squadroom boss showed us the Robbery reports and told us not to waste our time canvassing the area near the two markets, that Millard and Sears were doing it, concentrating on getting a better description of Nash’s car, believed to be a postwar white sedan. Captain Jack had called University with word on Nash’s poontang penchant, and three plainclothes Vice officers had been dispatched
to check out southside whorehouses specializing in young colored girls. Newton Street and 77th Street divisions, almost entirely colored, would be sending night-watch radio cars by juke joints and playgrounds where Negro youths congregated, eyeballing for Nash and telling the kids to watch out.
There was nothing we could do but cruise the area on the chance that Nash was still around and put out the word to Lee’s stoolies. We decided on a long Leimert Park tour and took off.
The district’s main drag was Crenshaw Boulevard. Broad, running north all the way to Wilshire and south to Baldwin Hills, it spelled “postwar boom” like a neon sign. Every block from Jefferson to Leimert was lined with dilapidated, once grand houses being torn down, their facades replaced by giant billboards advertising department stores, jumbo shopping centers, kiddie parks and movie theaters. Completion dates ranging from Christmas ‘47 to early ‘49 were promised, and it hit me that by 1950 this part of LA would be unrecognizable. Driving east, we passed vacant lot after vacant lot that would probably soon spawn houses, then block after block of prewar adobe bungalows distinguished only by their color and the condition of their front lawns. Southbound, old wood frame houses took over, getting more and more unkempt.
And no one resembling Junior Nash was on the street; and every late model white sedan we saw was either driven by a woman or squarejohn type.
Nearing Santa Barbara and Vermont, Lee broke our long silence. “This grand tour stuff is the shits. I’m calling in some favors.”
He pulled into a filling station, got out and hit the pay phone; I listened to calls on the two-way. I was at it for ten minutes or so when Lee came back, pale and sweating. “I got a tip. A snitch of mine says Nash is shacking with some poon in a crib near Slauson and Hoover.”
I shut the radio off. “It’s all colored down there. You think—”