by James Ellroy
He caught something.
His photo device. He’d been oiling the parts. It was placed just so on his desk. He left the lab for twenty minutes. The device was set off-kilter now.
Mr. Pinker. He handled it. The device confounded and thrilled him. Japanese inventors can’t secure patents. Mr. Pinker wants to front the device. He wants half the money. This war spawns opportunities. Fair-minded men turn unfair.
A ruckus bubbled up, streetside. Ashida heard shouts and shrieks. He checked the window. Two cops wrestled Fujio Shudo into a van.
The Werewolf wore a straitjacket and jail khakis. A sanity hearing beckons. His gas-chamber trek begins. He’s a ready-made Jap. He’s been handpicked for prosecution. Dudley Smith, inquisitor. Hideo Ashida, forged-document man.
The chemists walked out. Ashida locked himself in. Gossip spritzed through a wall vent. The lab shared vents with the Alien Squad. Lee Blanchard and Cal Lunceford groused. The fucking phone-tap probe. What a crock of shit.
Ashida walked to his desk. Joan Conville had compiled reports. She supplied study stacks. They were squared off and pencil-marked.
Missing-persons bulletins. A tight geographic spread. Southern California, all police agencies. L.A. County, Orange County, San Diego County. Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. San Bernardino, Riverside.
A tight date spread. Late summer ’33 to early winter ’34. Tall men only. Heavyset men only. A tight age spread. Mid-thirties to mid-forties.
Plus CCC survivor lists. Grist for their thesis. Box Man died concurrent with the Griffith Park fire.
Miss Conville oversupplied paper. He didn’t need the dead-and-identified lists. He read through them anyway. He saw a morgue pic. It displayed Wayne Frank Jackson’s charred corpse.
Ashida scanned lists. He looked for matched names and compatible descriptions. He sifted reports. He eyeball-clicked. He got zero, zero, zero, and this:
A CCC living survivor. Karl Frederick Tullock/6'4"/235. Born 6/14/93. Forty in October ’33. A Santa Barbara County missing person.
An ex-cop. On the S.B. County Sheriff’s Department. Wife reports Tullock missing—1/12/34.
It fits circumstantially. It’s a hot one. It’s a possible match.
Zealous Miss Conville. She oversupplies paper and supplies a possible match. And—she’s stuffed a box under his desk.
Ashida went through it. He saw off-the-corpse clothing patches. He studied them. He noted quicklime saturation and seed husks.
He saw a white cotton swatch. He identified collar points. The swatch tweaked him. It was hand-stitched Egyptian cotton. He placed the swatch under his fluoroscope and brought up a blurred laundry mark.
He got goose bumps. Box Man’s a CCC wage slave. Wage slaves don’t wear high-quality shirts. They don’t send them out to be laundered.
Ashida went through the box. He sifted cloth fragments. He pulled pieces. He grabbed a folded-over trouser cuff. It felt weighted down.
He dug into the fold. He pulled this out:
A small piece of gold. One-inch by one-inch. Small but hefty. Irregular-shaped.
It felt substantial. It felt pure-gold dense. It was mid-range nugget-sized.
It was bored through. A metal chain and key were attached. The key was stamped “648.” It looked like a locker stamp.
Ashida got goose bumps and flushed hot and cold. He rigged a microscope. He hook-clamped the gold chunk and dialed his lens close. He saw faint markings. “U.S.” and “023” stood out.
Mint marks. They had to be that. He was locked-in, dialed-in sure.
21
(LOS ANGELES, 11:45 A.M., 1/5/42)
Oooga-booga. Vile voodoo ascends. Eddie Leng goes out in style.
Pit dogs pulled Eddie’s casket. They wore tong kerchiefs and spiked breastplates. The casket was tiger-striped and rolled on tricycle wheels.
Spectators lined North Broadway. Car traffic was verboten. Boocoo Chinks trailed the casket. They waved REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR! and KILL THE JAPS! signs.
Elmer stood at Alpine and Broadway. Street vendors hawked ptomaine tacos and egg foo young. Elmer reeled. It was all of it—plus this shit:
Deep-fried Eddie Leng. These suffocation dreams. It’s really Wayne Frank and him in that charred box.
All that shit. Plus his fool stunt with Ace Kwan.
Said stunt got him cogitating. Ace blathered that night. He said Lin Chung and Don Matsura crossed hate lines and hobknobbed. They sold pharmacy dope. Matsura was tonged up. He peddled terp to winos and dope fiends. He knew Tommy Glennon. Lin Chung knew Tommy, likewise.
Cut to the Matsura roust. It’s him, Rice, and Kapek. There’s the terp still in Matsura’s dump. There’s the Leng’s Kowloon menu.
It got him cogitating. So, he did this:
He read Chinktown intel files at the Bureau. Thus, he learned this:
Lin Chung peddled opiate compounds. He supplied “O” dens in the San Gabriel Valley. He pushed pharmacy hop to herb quacks.
And, he saw this:
Fed routing stamps on Chung’s file. That was provocative. That meant this:
The Feds had Chung pegged as hinky and suspect. Thus, he did this:
He staked out Chung’s house. He saw Ed Satterlee staked likewise. He tailed Ed the Fed to the phone-probe stake spot by the Herald. The hot-box phone outside: listed in Tommy G.’s address book.
The hot-box was a bookie-call phone. Sid Hudgens purportedly used it. Sid scribed at the Herald. It all felt popcorn-fart tight.
Elmer watched the parade. He pondered a ptomaine-taco lunch. The casket rolled out of sight.
He felt something behind him. Some lurking beast. His fellow spectators veered, lurched, and scrammed.
Something/someone grabbed him. He got all smothered up. It was an octopus snatch. Six arms clamped him tight.
He squirmed and orbed the octopus. Tentacles became arms. It was Jim Davis and two Hop Sing shits. Our ex–police chief and two heathen slants.
They snatched him and scissor-walked him. Sidewalk geeks gawked. Yellow folks went White men claaaaazy! They gassed on the show. Jim Davis tossed them Chink bon mots.
They scissor-walked down Broadway. They hit Kwan’s and scissored through the dining room. Shit—it’s packed.
White stiffs quaffed mai tais and slurped pork fried rice. Shit—there’s Fletch Bowron, there’s Wallace Jamie, there’s fucked-up Father Coughlin.
They scissor-walked downstairs. They hit the basement. They pushed through the “O” den and Chinks reposed on Cloud 9. They hit a small office. Bam!—the tong shits depart.
Davis unwrapped him and plopped him down in a chair. The fat cocksucker was red-faced and all sweated up.
Elmer dredged savoir faire. “You don’t look too good, Chief. You look like a man in need of medical care.”
Davis caught his breath. “You’re still a pup to me. You’re still this lance corporal I befriended.”
Elmer said, “That was ’35, and this here’s ’42. And I’m recalling that I shot this loopy beaner trying to kill you.”
The office was smother-cramped. Desk, chairs, claaaazy wall art. Velour-flocked pictures. Fire-spitting dragons roasting Jap dragoons.
Elmer stood up. He smoothed out his coat and tie and redredged savoir faire. Davis said, “You’re still a pup. And pups require a rap on the snout when they misbehave.”
“It’s starting to dawn on me, Chief.”
“Okay, then you listen close. Jack Horrall’s pissed because the Dudster’s pissed, because you muscled Ace. You’ve got to desist on whatever it is that’s goring you and got you acting dumb. That means the Leng snuff, Tommy Glennon, and Donald Matsura—who just happened to hang himself in his cell last night. ¿Tú comprende, muchacho? The Chinks police the Chinks, and that’s straight from Jack H. Ace makes Matsura for the Leng job, and that’
s the way it stands. Tommy G.’s long gone, and nobody cares.”
Uncle Ace walked in. He wore that steam-pops-out-the-ears look. He resembled the aggrieved Donald Duck.
Elmer said, “Hey, pappy.”
Davis said, “Jack Horrall wants you to apologize.”
Elmer said, “I apologize, Ace.”
Uncle Ace shrieked curses. Elmer feigned deep remorse. Ace whipped out his dick and pissed on his shoes.
* * *
—
Stakeout.
11th and Broadway. Upside the Herald building. Upside that hot-box phone.
Elmer sprawled in his prowl sled. He felt revivified. He went by the Biltmore first. He got a double-fine shoe shine and quaffed two Rob Roys. He lunched on salted peanuts and bought a one-dollar cigar.
Stakeout.
Elmer lit the cigar and eyeballed due south. Ed Satterlee sat in a Fed sled and eyeballed the hot-box. Elmer scratched his balls and kicked the seat back.
He eyeball-clicked. Click to the phone booth. Click to the Fed sled. Click to the Herald’s front door.
Stiffs fed the phone nickels. Nobody aroused suspicion. They made brief phone calls and scrammed.
Elmer savored the cigar. It was El Supremo Cuban. He watched the booth, the Fed car, the door.
He stuck at it two hours. Sid Hudgens walked out at 3:32.
He strolled to the hot-box. He waved to Ed Satterlee. He consulted a racing form and fed the coin slot. A four-minute confab ensued.
Sid hung up and waltzed. Elmer vacated his sled and hoofed back around to the alley. He popped a storm door and hit the lobby. He caught Sid at the elevator. They indulged some unfunny shtick.
Sid went I surrender. Elmer went Kid, you’re a sketch. Sid went ¿Qué pasa? Elmer flashed his hip flask and fed him two twenties. Sid walked to a mop closet and went After you.
Elmer stepped in. Sid joined him. The fit was tight. Sid cracked the door for air.
“Elmer the J. It’s been too long, bubi.”
Elmer passed the flask. “Let’s start with Eddie Leng. I’ve been reading your columns.”
Sid yodeled Old Crow. “All right, and here’s what’s unfit to print. Mike Breuning braced me, and said the Dudster would appreciate it if I killed the Leng series, which I summarily did.”
Elmer took a pop. “Don’t stop there.”
“Dud’s up to something, which don’t surprise me, and shouldn’t surprise you—but I don’t know what it is.”
Elmer went Give—don’t dick-tease me here.
Sid said, “About a week back, Mike and Dick Carlisle told me that Dud wanted his ex-snitch Tommy Glennon clipped, allegedly because he’s a rape-o, which don’t sit right with Dud and Jack Horrall. You were supposed to be part of that—but you, Mike, and Dick blew that stakeout New Year’s Eve. So, Eddie Leng gets clipped that same night, and Eddie was tight with Tommy. Conventional wisdom would have it that Tommy clipped Eddie for some farkakte reason, after he escaped your dubious clutches—but I heard that Eddie was low-rent Fifth Column, and tangled up with some unholy mélange of right-wing Chinks and Japs. I also heard that Ace the K. clipped this Jap fucker Donald Matsura, who allegedly killed himself at Lincoln Heights. And that’s as far as I can think it through.”
Elmer sucked on the flask. “Leng was a Jap-hater. It feels like a race job to me.”
Sid said, “Nix. I heard that Leng and Matsura were tight, and that Matsura manufactured terp, and Leng and Four Families peddled it to the Chinks, along with drugstore hop.”
“A doctor named Lin Chung. Ring any bells?”
Sid yocked. “Yeah. He’s a plastic surgeon, and he peddles nose jobs to all the Jew girls trying to pass for goyishe. Lin, the snout doctor. Strictly cut-rate.”
Elmer switched gears. “Leng had a tattoo on his right hand. A little ‘SQ’ with snakes curled around it. Tommy G. had stencils for that selfsame tattoo in his hotel room.”
Sid fingered his Jew star. “The ‘SQ’ means Sinarquista. It’s some kind of batshit Catholic, pro-Nazi movement in Mexico. Like Father Coughlin, only worse. I’m a hebe, so I don’t feature that shit.”
“I saw you wave to Ed Satterlee. What’s with that?”
“Open secret, bubi. Fey Edgar Hoover concocted this phone-tap schmear before the Japs tapped Pearl and put our great country in a tizzy, so now he’s obliged to see it through, but he don’t wet his pink lace undies for it. Some good-sized fish will get indicted, but only a few minnows will burn. This Wallace Jamie kid’s tight with some hotshot Republicans who want to run him for office, and his dad’s close pals with Fletch Bowron. The inside pitch is that Fletch, Jack Horrall, the Jamie putz, Ray Pinker, and a few DAs will get indicted and acquitted. Jamie will be revealed to be a secret Fed informer. He’ll turn State’s on some Hollywood Reds that Fey Edgar wants to fuck with, and goose his own career.”
Elmer went Oh, my cabeza. Sid yock-yocked.
“Why would Tommy Glennon have this hot-box number?”
“Why wouldn’t he? Everybody’s got this number. It’s a former bookie-drop call-in phone that used to take slugs, and for all I know, it still does.”
Elmer cogitated. “Why would Tommy G. have the numbers of fourteen Baja pay phones in his address book?”
Sid shrugged. “Why wouldn’t he? He’s a perv. Baja’s the Perv Capital of North America. Tommy’s pals with the Dudster’s snitch, Huey Cressmeyer, who ranks with Leopold and Loeb in the Perv Hall of Fame. Don’t be naïve, bubelah. Tommy pokes boys in the keester and rapes women. That spells P, E, R, V in my book.”
Elmer recogitated. “Can pay phones be tapped?”
“Supposedly, yes—at least the incoming calls. Some Mexican cop supposedly devised a plan.”
The closet shot heat waves. Warm, hot, too hot. Elmer wiped his forehead.
“There’s Fed routing stamps on Lin Chung’s DB file. Recent, with your boy Satterlee as the agent requesting.”
“Well, it don’t sound phone probe, so maybe the snout doctor runs Fifth Column.”
Elmer cracked the door wide. Cool air vitalized him. Lobby noise whooshed in.
“I don’t get where all this is going.”
“What’s not to get? God’s telling you not to fuck with Dudley Smith.”
22
(BAJA, 4:15 P.M., 1/5/42)
Chez Hanamaka. It’s a magnetizing force. It mandates a second visit.
Drudge work ate up yesterday. Paper piles and phone calls deluged him. The bloodstained wall summoned him today.
Dudley studied the wall. He quadrant-scanned it. He made two eyeball circuits. Something felt wrong.
He saw three bullet holes. He pegged the tight spread and upper-right-side wall placement. He pulled his pocketknife and dug out the spents.
He studied them. He saw dried blood and dark-hair fragments on all three. The bullets were embedded per a left-to-right trajectory.
But:
The full wall was bloodstained. That was wrong. Only the upper-right quadrant should be spattered.
Late sun hit the living room. Picture windows threw glare. It enhanced magnification. That wall gleamed—bright, bright, bright.
Dudley brainstormed. Dudley got it. It had to be this:
There’s Mr. X. It’s probably Kyoho Hanamaka. He needs to paint a picture. It’s an urgent need. This wall provides a canvas and picture frame.
Mr. X gulps. The job entails self-mutilation. It puts him in a squeamish state. He must create a slaughter scene.
Mr. X holds his left arm up and out. He’s angled toward the right side of the wall. He holds the gun in his right hand. He employs an upward-right trajectory. He aims very closely and fires three flesh-grazing shots.
Thus:
The dark hair on the spents.
Thus:
The upper-right-w
all slug placement.
But:
The entire wall was bloodstained. That surely resulted from this:
Mr. X squeezed blood from his superficial flesh wounds and flung it randomly. Thus, the wide spatters. Why did he do this? Here’s a theory:
Mr. X fakes his own death. He’s a Jap Navy man prone to Fifth Column mischief. He wants to vanish. His blood type is police-filed. He knows the estúpido Staties will peruse this wall and scrape samples. They will compare them to their file. They will thus conclude:
Hanamaka was killed here. His body was removed and most likely dumped in the sea.
No suspects present themselves. Case closed, finito.
Where’s Kyoho Hanamaka? Hector Obregon-Hodaka saw him here. That was December 18. It’s now January 5. The Staties have not been here. There’s no evidence tags or signs of a toss.
Think. Expand your theory. Layer in Hepcat Hector. He plays in here.
This hilltop home connotes hideaway. Hanamaka probably lives in Ensenada. His resident-alien file might list the address. The Staties would look for Hanamaka there first.
He’s scared. He’s afraid he’ll be interned soon. His friendship with Governor Lazaro-Schmidt will be rudely breached. He needs to vanish. He has Fifth Column duties. He needs this hideaway to be discovered inadvertently.
Enter Hector Obregon-Hodaka.
He’s a cat’s paw. Hanamaka brought him up here. He knew that Hector would be interned. Hector would suck up to his Statie captors and reveal that this place exists.
Hector was a patsy. Hanamaka rigged the faked-death scene all by himself. Hector got lucky. Captain D. L. Smith set him free.
It’s virgin turf. No tags, no tape seals. It’s a fresh toss.
Dudley checked the kitchen. He found a toilet plunger and plunged the two commodes. He brought up gauze strips and adhesive-bandage snips. The gauze showed water-bleached bloodstains. It confirmed his wall-tableau theory.
He emptied cupboards. He opened canned foodstuffs and dumped the contents. He dumped drawers and examined innocuous glut. He unscrewed sink drains and plunged standing water. He ripped apart stuffed furniture. He unscrewed light fixtures. The net yield was zilch.