This Storm

by James Ellroy

  No wedding ring on Rice’s left-ring finger. An indentation where wedding rings normally sit. Rice was married. Rice removed his ring to hide the fact. Rice was a tomcat.

  Kapek wore a green cardigan and navy dungarees. His footwear seemed anomalous. He wore patent-leather pumps.

  Ashida extrapolated. The Man Camera revealed this:

  They were dancing shoes. The klubhaus adjoined a jazz strip. Officer George B. Kapek was a jitterbug.

  Dr. Nort said, “Our Hideo’s worked himself into a trance.”

  Joan said, “It’s a study technique. I learned it in grad school.”

  Ashida stepped back and aimed off the couch. He framed a coffee table and strafed a glass ashtray. It was filled with spent matches and cigarette stubs.

  Ashida extrapolated. The Man Camera revealed this:

  There are more matches than stubs. The ashtray appears freshly wiped.

  Ashida said, “I’ve spotted an inconsistency. We have a freshly washed-out ashtray, filled with cigarette butts. I’ve counted twenty-four butts and twenty-seven expended matches. That’s three more than we have butts for, and we have three potential homicide victims.”

  Joan examined the ashtray. “I’ll extrapolate. The killer wants to remove incriminating evidence, yet retain what I’ll call ‘forensic normalcy’ here in the klubhaus. He removes the three butts and washes the ashtray. Now, I’ll hazard a guess. Our victims, who might not be victims, but just inadvertent bunglers, smoked liquid terp in hand-rolled cigarettes. It’s the butts themselves that appear anomalous. The killer removed the hand-rolled butts and wiped the ashtray to eliminate all traces of liquid terpin hydrate.”

  Dr. Nort cracked a smile. Ashida balled his fists. Reckless Girl usurped his thesis.

  “There’s a terp still here on the premises. We should determine the molecular makeup of the drug that remains in the feeder vats. Dr. Layman can check it against any terpin hydrate he might find in the victims’ bloodstreams.”

  Dr. Nort whistled. He went Whoa, now.

  “Let’s not jump the gun. We don’t know for sure that they’re victims. And we don’t know that smoked terpin hydrate killed them.”

  Joan approached the couch. She reached down and turned out Wendell Rice’s front pants pockets. They were empty. Imperious Girl. Ashida balled his fists.

  Dr. Nort said, “You’re looking for rolling papers.”

  Joan nodded. She turned out the Mexican’s front pants pockets. They were empty. She turned out George Kapek’s front pants pockets. She pulled out a cigarette-paper deck.

  Dr. Nort went all gaga. Reckless Girl did that to men.

  Ashida rearranged the corpses. He turned out their back pockets and got lint balls and nothing else.

  Joan said, “We confiscated a still from that man Don Matsura’s apartment. Remember, Dr. Ashida? He committed suicide at the Lincoln Heights Jail.”

  Dr. Nort shook his head. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. They could have bought terp at any one of the clubs half a block from here. Let’s have this discussion after my postmortem.”

  Ashida leaned over the couch. He worked three across. He grabbed the dead men by the hair and looked in their wide-open mouths. The room light was just right. He saw inflamed lesions.

  Dr. Nort leaned down. He adjusted his headband light. He close-up lit the mouth cavities. He stepped back and stretched.

  “Precancerous lesions. All three men. Similar levels of inflammation, of a type common to habitual terp smokers.”

  Thad Brown and Buzz Meeks walked over. They’d huddled up to watch.

  Meeks said, “What about maryjane? They spray the crops with chemicals down in Mexico, then the grasshoppers up here got to contend with all kinds of medical grief.”

  Brown said, “Toss the place, Buzz. Look for maryjane, and tag any contraband you find.”

  Meeks clumped upstairs. Brown poked around. He had well-known eagle eyes.

  He scoped a pile of hate tracts and the Hitler wall pix. He touched the sax and trombone on the chair. He went through phonograph records. He ran his hands under the couch and pulled out a matchbook.

  Ashida stepped close. Brown opened the matchbook. Half the matches were gone. They’d been removed left to right.

  Brown held the matchbook out. Joan stepped close. Ditto Dr. Nort.

  Brown said, “Southpaw. It’s something or it’s nothing, but it’s not a bad elimination lead.”

  Ashida aimed his Man Camera. He framed the dead men. He close-up shot their hands. He caught your standard size discrepancy.

  “They were all right-handed. Their right hands are larger and more muscularly developed.”

  Dr. Nort said, “Kapek and Rice wore their belt guns on the left. That connotes a right-hander’s cross-draw.”

  Brown checked out the matchbook. Club Zamboanga/yellow-and-black type/a snarling panther motif.

  “Blanchard’s out canvassing. He’s supposed to meet up with Elmer. They’ll check the Zamboanga, for sure.”

  Meeks banged on the upstairs floorboards. He sent up a racket. His voice boomed down.

  “No maryjane! Nothing but a whole shitload of disarray!”

  Ashida pointed to the ashtray. “I’m positing a fourth man. I understand that it’s precipitous, but please indulge me. I’m thinking that he fashioned hand-rolled cigarettes but did not partake.”

  Dr. Nort shrugged. “All right, I’ll play. Maybe it’s terp, maybe it’s not. It could have been a toxic level of some other inebriant that I’ll determine at autopsy.”

  Joan braced the couch. She leaned close and circled it. She worked three across.

  She clamped heads, three across. She studied them. She came up behind the couch. She reverse-angled the process and said, “There’s something here.”

  Ashida leaned in. Dr. Nort and Thad Brown watched. Joan pointed to this:

  A blood dot below George Kapek’s left ear.

  Ashida look-see’d. It was less than a puncture/more than a pinprick.

  Joan slid man to man. Showy Girl struts and poses. She pointed below Wendell Rice’s left ear. The Mexican, likewise. She nailed identical dots. They were less than punctures/more than pinpricks.

  Thad Brown said, “Mother dog.”

  Dr. Nort said, “If he came at them from behind, he had to have been left-handed.”

  Joan said, “These are in no way killing wounds. They barely penetrate the skin, and they don’t correspond to visible veins at all.”

  Ashida pointed three across. “It could be a coerced ingestion of a lethal substance. The killer persuaded them by the means of a sharp instrument at their necks.”

  Brown wiped his glasses on his necktie. He put them back on and peered extra close.

  “Here’s a guess. They were partially debilitated already. That’s the only way I can see one man taking out three. And there’s no dust on that matchbook, smack in the middle of this shitty little dust hole. That means it was shoved under the chair recently.”

  Dr. Nort shrugged. “Maybe the killer had accomplices. Maybe we should concede that all of this is suppositional and may have no bearing on the matter at hand.”

  Joan smiled. “Dr. Nort’s being a killjoy, so I’ll add that those dots look like icepick markings I’ve seen in Crim One texts.”

  Ashida got bristles and chills. Watch this, colleagues. Brilliant Boy shows off.

  He pulled down George Kapek’s shirt collar. Ditto for the Mexican and Wendell Rice. He laid their necks bare. It revealed this:

  Single hand-span bruises. All right-handed/all applied from behind. Thumb marks on the left side of their necks. Finger-grab marks on the right.

  “I don’t know how they died, but he held them steady with his right hand and held the ice pick with his left. A left-hander would favor that hand for such a task.”

>   Joan said, “Single-hand strangulations are very rare. It might have been two men applying force from both the front and the back.”

  Dr. Nort said, “All right, I concede. Call the Chief, Thad. It’s homicide.”

  45

  (LOS ANGELES, 11:00 P.M., 1/29/42)

  Local jazzcats made him. They sniffed grief and gave him dat wiiiii­iiiii­iiide berth. He magnetized resentment. He percolated fear and hate.

  Elmer walked the strip. He felt underdressed. His squarejohn suit clashed with all the full-drape zoots. Lots of cats and kittens, lots of saucy dash. Coloreds, beaners, whites. The Dark Continent jumps tonite!!!

  Peace, my dusky brethren. I’m as hopped up as you are. It started New Year’s Eve—but it be exploding HERE.

  The Sinarquista flag at the klubhaus. The Sinarquista stencil in Tommy G.’s room. The Sinarquista tattoo on Eddie Leng. The terp still in the klubhaus. The terp still in Don Matsura’s apartment. Matsura’s jail “suicide.” Matsura’s KA’d up with Eddie Leng and Lin Chung. Two Alien Squad hard-ons. Said hard-ons now muerto. Don’t dis shit read Fifth Column to you?

  Elmer loitered at 47th and Central. Kool kats and kittens skunk-eyed him. He caught blare-blasted music. He smelled whorehouse perfume and spattered grease.

  Lee Blanchard was due. They had late-nite canvass duty. Elmer loitered and brain-broiled His Big Case.

  He blew out of the klubhaus. He went AWOL. He got this wild bug up his ass. Let’s detonate this whole fucker. He drove to his place and got to work.

  He called the Vice clerk he braced New Year’s Eve. He told him to keep mum and promised him five yards. He said, “You never ran them phone numbers I troubled you with.” The clerk pledged silencio.

  Oooga-booga. Let’s blow this klubhaus job straight to shit.

  Elmer studied Tommy G.’s address book. He got Tommy’s block-print style down pat. He spiced up the book. He drew swastikas and Sinarquista snakes. He added right-wing thunderbolts. He skimmed phone books and got some choice numbers. PC Bell shot him unlisteds. He forged and spawned chaos then.

  Tommy’s book ran provocative from jump street. It listed St. Vib’s, the Deutsches Haus, Dudster snitch Huey Cressmeyer. You had unknown cooze Jean Staley and homo priest Joe Hayes. You had the hot-box phone by the Herald. You had fourteen Baja pay phones. Now, let’s add this:

  Lin Chung. Low-rent plastic surgeon/dope peddler/Fifth Column shitbird.

  Orson Welles. Hotshot actor-director/quasi-Red flotsam/finked-out patient of Dr. Saul Lesnick.

  Dr. Saul himself. Red tool/Fed snitch/Annie Staples’ fatmouth trick. Headshrink and morph pusher to Claire De Haven.

  Wallace N. Jamie. Nosebleed PI/Fletch Bowron confrere/rumored Fed-probe indictee.

  He spiced up Huey Cressmeyer’s listing. He drew swastikas and coiled snakes beside it. Huey was Tommy’s bun boy at Preston. He wrote “Big Dick!!!!!” and drew Cupid’s heart and arrow. He printed “T.G. & H.C.” inside it. The whole address-book fantasia was some unholy shit.

  He drove back to the klubhaus. The joint was abuzz. Dr. Nort tagged the job Murder One.

  He walked upstairs. He planted Tommy’s address book under a carpet strip. He hoofed out to meet Blanchard. He got the I’m-fucking-with-Dudley Smith chills.

  Elmer loitered. A floor show unfolded upside him. Kolored kats bopped into a hair-process joint. Eight barbers worked the late shift. The kats slipped into chairs and donned hair-suction gizmos. They sat down kinky and stood up straight.

  Blanchard showed. They walked the strip and tossed queries. That backhouse on 46th? Who owns it/who rents it/what’s the secret story here?

  They braced street strollers and ducked into nitespots. They got Huh?/Beats me/Say what? They got rebop per Jew landlords raping the black man. They hit jazz joints and rib cribs. They hit liquor stores and pool halls and Minnie Roberts’ Casbah. They got more, more, and more of the same.

  They witnessed a shiv show at Port Afrique. Two jigs swapped swipes. A he-she whore watched and shrieked. A jazz trio laid down knife-fight riffs. Elmer dug the sax wails that mimicked screams. Blanchard told the barman to call an ambulance.

  They ducked out and ducked into Club Zombie. Note the rhinestone-studded walls. The stones depicted the solar system and rocket ships zooming. They were open-cockpit. Spooks with red lightbulb eyes jockeyed them.

  Small tables fronted a bandstand. Mixed-race lovebirds spooned. High-yellow girls served drinks. They wore tiger-striped leotards.

  Elmer glimpsed Mud-Shark Bill McPherson. The DA hosted two bronze cuties. He saw Elmer and waved. Elmer waved back. Blanchard pulled him up to the bar.

  A tall jig tended it. A jumbo conk put him up at six-ten. A wall sign extolled the Baron Samedi cocktail. “One sip leaves you zombified.”

  Elmer and Blanchard grabbed stools. The jig ambled up. He once-over’d Blanchard and smirked.

  “I saw you fight Andre McCoover. He punked your white ass, but you got the decision. I hope you ain’t here for information on no one near and dear to me.”

  Blanchard grabbed the jig’s conk and jammed his face into the bar. The jig flailed and knocked over ashtrays and drinks. Bar patrons scrammed. Elmer snatched the jig’s left hand and bent his fingers back.

  “There’s a shitty little backhouse on 46th, just east of Central. We want to know who owns it, who rents it, and who owns the vacant house in front. You got two choices here. Give us something we can work with, or get zombified.”

  The jig squirmed. He blubbered and dug for façade. Blanchard smashed his head on the bartop. Nose bones broke audible. Blood burst and pooled.

  Elmer said, “We’re listening.”

  The jig screeched. Elmer bent his fingers. The jig coughed blood and coughed up this:

  “Jew landlords own most of them cribs….”

  “But not that one.”

  “This preacher, Martin Luther Mimms…”

  “This back-to-Africa con…”

  “Congregation of the Congo—47th, down the strip.”

  * * *

  —

  It’s a storefront church. There’s big plate-glass windows. There’s pews from here to Mozambique. It’s lit bright at 1:30 a.m.

  The door’s wide open. Some dink artist muraled the walls.

  Pygmies spear-hunting lions. Hunchbacked Jews in skullcaps lugging money sacks. L.A. in flames. White folks roasted alive. Colored folks butt-fucking them with hot pokers. A flotilla of back-to-Africa seacraft. The destroyer USS Negro. The battleship Colored Man’s Triumph. PT 69—replete with colored folk engaged in that selfsame act.

  Elmer looked at Blanchard. Blanchard looked at Elmer. They went Holy shit in sync.

  They bopped in and bopped up to the altar. A colored man and white man counted collection-plate cash.

  The colored man was heavyset and cleaved close to fifty. The white man was twenty-three, tops. He was tall and fit. He wore a Navy ensign’s uniform, with flyboy wings. He smoked a corncob pipe.

  Elmer badged them. The screwy duo made nice-nice. They dropped their cash count and laid down handshakes. It settled everyone’s hash.

  The colored man said, “I’m Martin Luther Mimms. You can call me ‘Reverend’ or ‘Rev.’ ”

  The white boy said, “Link Rockwell.”

  Mimms chided him. “George Lincoln Rockwell. Be proud of that. Your namesake freed the slaves.”

  Rockwell pipe-jabbed the Rev. It came off rehearsed. They worked their salt-and-pepper act.

  “A dubious distinction, sir—especially coming from a well-known slave driver like yourself.”

  Mimms took the cue. “Link thinks I’ll reinstate the Dred Scott decision over on African soil. Colored folk as chattel, to do with as I wish. I’ll have them excavating gold from secret mines in Zimbabwe. I’ll be putting the boots to the best-looking yellows
and putting the horns on their men.”

  Blanchard jiggled a cash plate. “Business is good. Huh, Rev?”

  Mimms cued Rockwell. “This is Officer Lee Blanchard. He was once billed as ‘the Southland’s good but not great white hope.’ ”

  Rockwell tapped his pipe on the pulpit. “You should fight Joe Louis, Officer Blanchard. A white man deserves a shot at the crown.”

  Elmer harrumphed. “We had some questions, Rev.”

  Mimms grinned. “I’ll be pleased to answer them, in my sanctum sanctorum. If you’ll follow me.”

  Elmer and Blanchard swapped looks. Link Rockwell resumed his cash count. Mimms played pontiff and strode on ahead. Elmer gassed on his act. He sucker punched the white man and called all the shots.

  Mimms waked to a side door and swung it open. Elmer and Blanchard caught up. The room was knotty pine–paneled. The walls were foto-festooned. The Rev’s desk was eight feet long and all knickknacked. It featured big-dick crocodiles and pygmy-goddess statuettes.

  Mimms said, “My people will be knee-deep in zebra shit by this time next year. The USS Negro will be sailing about then. We’ve got to be watchful, though. Hitler’s U-boats pervade the Atlantic, and are ever alert to torpedo Allied shipping. Let me state for the police record that I’ve got no beef with the Führer, and that I admire his subjugation of the Jews, the colored man’s traditional foe.”

  Blanchard cleared his throat. “We appreciate your hospitality, daddy—but there’s still some questions we’ve got to ask.”

  Elmer orbed the wall pix. Oh, yeah. They explicate some shit.

  There’s the young Mimms. He’s standing with the young Jack Horrall. They’re doughboys. Jack’s a major. Mimms wears captain’s bars.

  There’s colored cops in formation. There’s Mimms with Fletch Bowron. There’s Mimms with our mud-shark DA.

  Blanchard scoped the wall pix. He went Man-O-Manischewitz.

  Mimms said, “As you can see, Jack Horrall and I go back. He commanded a colored battalion, and I was his staff adjutant. I might add that we’ve stayed in touch, and that I get my people on your police department—for prudent remuneration, of course.”