This Storm

by James Ellroy

  Elmer blew smoke rings. They came out all dispersed.

  “Did you fink? You got disillusioned, it was the Depression, you realized the Party was all full of crap. I’m just thinking aloud now. Finking was a way out for most of you Commo types.”

  Jean crushed her cigarette. “There were five of us in the cell. I finked the guy I liked the least, and the one I figured would do the most harm in the long run.”

  “Who was the guy? Come on. His name’s on six dozen lists somewhere.”

  Jean said, “Saul Lesnick. I finked him because he talked too much, and got people to convert to the Party just by wearing them down with the yak-yak. He was a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, if you can figure that.”

  Blackout sirens whooped. Elmer and Jean froze. The all-clear signal blew. They unfroze quick.

  “Who else was in the cell?”

  “A man named Meyer Gelb. He was the leader, and another big fatmouth. We had a brief wingding, which shows you how susceptible I was in those days. There was Dr. Saul’s nutty daughter, Andrea, and a Mexican named Jorge Villareal-Caiz. He went back to Mexico and hooked up with his brother, Victor. They got embroiled in the plot to clip Leon Trotsky, then I heard they went fasco. If you want my opinion, the Party was no longer au courant, so in the end everybody just picked up their toys and went home.”

  Jungle Jean rats Old Saul. That was prime drift. Beyond that—c’est la guerre.

  Jean said, “You look parched.”

  “Does it show that bad?”

  “I’ll whip us up mai tais. I used to barmaid at the Wan-Q.”

  “A mai tai and some peanuts. It sounds like supper to me.”

  Jean smiled. “Atlanta, Georgia?”

  “Wisharts, North Carolina. Like Beaumont for you. It’s this place you leave from.”

  “Leave for where?”

  “The Marine Corps and Nicaragua. Then L.A., on a bet.”

  “That’s your lifetime itinerary?”

  “That’s right. And it’s all been prelude up to you.”

  Jean rolled her eyes and cut to the kitchen. Elmer heard drawers scrape and slam. He scoped the front room. The crib played bohemian. The weird blankets induced eyestrain.

  The Jeanstress returned. She dipped and posed, carhop-style. Elmer snatched a drink off her tray.

  “Everybody’s got an itinerary. I’d sure like to hear yours.”

  Jean sipped her drink and plopped her feet on a hassock. She said, “My name’s in six dozen files you’ve read. You’ve got it down pat.”

  Elmer sipped his drink. “I’m just prolonging the interview. You’ll say, ‘What’s this all about?’ pretty damn soon, which will damn near break my heart.”

  Jean futzed with her tumbler. Ice cubes click-clicked.

  “I’m dead bored, and you’re not the only one prolonging. If you intended grief, you’d have dropped the punch line by now. It’s Thursday night, and I’ve got tomorrow off. I’ve got nobody to stay up late with, and this is a swell diversion.”

  Elmer stretched his legs and plopped his feet on the hassock. Jean’s feet bounced a half inch away.

  “I’ve got a part-time girlfriend named Ellen Drew. She goes back to the ’30’s, at Paramount. Did you see If I Were King?”

  “I knew Ellen. We used to schmooze at Lucy’s El Adobe. She’s still at Paramount, and she’s on her second part-time husband. I also heard she turns tricks for Brenda Allen.”

  “Brenda’s my other part-time girlfriend. I run that call service with her.”

  Jean lit a cigarette. “Your face just dropped down to your lap. Does running girls chagrin you?”

  Elmer relit his cigar. The whore biz double-chagrined him. Jean had good sonar.

  “Did you know a Paramount geek named Ralph D. Barr? He was some sort of stagehand or carpenter.”

  Jean said, “I knew Ralphie, but Meyer knew him better. Meyer had a cameraman gig at the studio, and he used to recruit for the Party there. He was running a one-man book on the side. He had his Commo aspect and his money-grubber aspect, and never the twain shall meet.”

  Ralph D. Barr. Arsonist and whipout man. Detained and released, 10/33.

  “Barr was a firebug, wasn’t he?”

  “Coy doesn’t suit you. You know from Ralphie. He set fires and pulled his pud until the fire engines came.”

  Elmer played somber. “My brother died in the Griffith Park fire. Remember? October ’33?”

  Jean played no-shit footsie. Her foot tapped his foot. She tapped with expertise.

  “Here’s something else that you know damn well, and I damn well remember. The cops rousted our cell. Because of that fire, because Meyer was making speeches, predicting fires and tidal waves and all sorts of CP hoo-ha, because capitalism was producing spontaneous combustion, so get ready for some god-awful thunderstorms and conflagrations. He was preaching that crap before the fire, so the cops came around, and then it all went blooey.”

  Blooey. That said it. Gasbag Gelb. Gasbag Lesnick. He gasbags to Annie Staples.

  Jean said, “Meyer knew this fruity English poet. W. H. Auden, his name was. W.H. wrote a poem for one of his numerous boyfriends, and it had the words ‘This Storm’ in it. Meyer read the poem at his rallies, to work up the rubes. You know how this works. You provoke the rubes, and the cops come nosing around.”

  Elmer tapped Jean’s foot. “Like yours truly.”

  Jean went Yep. Elmer said, “You and your comrades got leaned on, but it was just routine.”

  Jean went Yep. Elmer said, “What about the old gang? Do you still stay in touch?”

  “Not much. Meyer loops through my life every so often. I saw him at a party a week or so back. Otto Klemperer’s place. You know—that hotshot maestro who had the brain tumor. The Lesnicks were there, so we all said hi and bemoaned the Hitler-Stalin pact. It was typical CP horseshit.”

  Elmer heh-heh’d. Annie Staples was there. He’d hot-wired her.

  Jean sighed. She’d had enough. ¿Qué es this jive, muchacho?

  Elmer came clean. “Your name turned up in a hoodlum’s address book. Tommy Glennon. It all pertains to a case I’m on. The fire stuff is incidental. My brother died that day, and it’s always mauled me.”

  Jean drained her drink. “My kid brother Bobby goes for boys. To each his own, okay? Bobby met Tommy at some kind of Catholic youth event, because that’s where those type of boys go to find chicken. Okay, they got something percolating. Bobby was staying with me then, and Tommy was calling him here. Bobby was crushed when Tommy got sent to San Quentin.”

  Elmer tapped Jean’s foot. Jean tapped his foot back.

  “Did Bobby know that Tommy raped women? That the evil little shit worshipped Hitler?”

  Jean sighed. “Love is blind. Don’t they say that?”

  “I say we’re both stir-crazy. I’ve got a fat roll yelling ‘Spend me,’ and I want to spend it on you.”

  * * *

  —

  Jean dressed up nice. She put on a floral-print dress and new glasses. A fox throw topped her off. For-real fox heads and fox paws stuck out. Elmer goo-goo’d the foxes. It coaxed Jean to laugh.

  They played southern rubes on a date. They talked up Wisharts and Beaumont and all points between. He told Jean he hated the Klan. She loved that. She told him she hated the Reds now. He double-loved it.

  They drove up to the Strip. It hopped sans marquee lights. The blackout created this ghost-town effect. Elmer played the big kahuna out to paint the town red.

  He overtipped lavish. Waiters and barmen genuflected. They hit the Troc and the Mocambo. They danced fast and slow and worked up an appetite. Elmer waved to Charlie Barnet and Lena Horne. He made like he knew them. Jean knew it was a shuck.

  Dave’s Blue Room was straight across Sunset. Brenda and him owned 10%. They made a big entrance. K
ay Lake and Joan Conville waved from the bar. The standard Elmer Jackson hubbub ensued.

  He’s that bagman cop. He runs girls with Brenda A. Who’s that cooze with the glasses? That fox throw’s from hunger.

  They noshed steak sandwiches and slurped Dave’s renowned gin fizzes. They hashed out queer kid brothers and Klanned-up brothers roasted alive. A tipster cruised their table. He ratted a coon 211 gang. Elmer whipped a yard on him. The tipster salaamed. Jean said, “He was yanking your chain.” Elmer said, “I’m out to spread the love tonight.”

  They ditched the Strip and levitated to browntown. Hear dem tom-toms? Let’s get tantalizized.

  They cruised the Club Alabam. Elmer knew the hostesses and bar crew. He’d canvassed them on the klubhaus job and treated them white. They treated him white right back.

  High-yellow girls circled their table. They served illegal corn-liquor shots, on the house. Elmer and Jean downed three shots and toured the solar system. Elmer dispensed C-note tips. You gots to lay down dat love.

  A bouncer played escort and dropped them at the Club Zombie. Elmer slid him two yards and sent him off loved. They entered the dark dinge dive. Elmer saw the tall jig he muscled with Lee Blanchard.

  He soothed his tall ass. He genuflected his own self. He coaxed numerous smiles off of him. The tall jig poured two Baron Samedi cocktails. “One sip leaves you zombified.”

  Dat’s no muthafuckin’ shit, Daddy-O.

  Four sips dive-bombed them. They side-draped themselves and weaved back to Elmer’s sled. Elmer close-cleaved the middle lane and slow-crawled them up Central.

  Per blackout regs. Under the speed limit. With cellophane taped to the headlights.

  God got them to Lyman’s, undead. The joint jumped with nite-owl cops and their consorts. A waiter read their zombified state and brought them coffee. Elmer crumbled bennies into their cups. The brew took hold faaaaaast. They went zombified to electrified.

  They talked a lot. They drew stares. Elmer quick-sketched the barside gang. Buzz Meeks, Two-Gun Davis. Kay and Big Joan, reprised. Their talk drifted over. They spritzed heady concepts and big words.

  Elmer talked. Jean talked. Elmer said he saved Two-Gun’s life and got on the PD. Jean said she saw a colored man lynched in Beaumont. Elmer said him and Buzz were fucking with one very bad hombre.

  It got late-late/early-early. The sky lit up gray-gray. They walked to Elmer’s car in the rain.

  Their electric charge waned. They both started yawning. Jean said, “Not right now, okay? I’m too bushed to be much use to either one of us.”

  Elmer said, “Okay.”

  The rain accelerated. Thunder boomed them up to Hollywood and Beachwood Canyon. Elmer parked outside Jean’s place. They huddled up and ran inside. Jean’s fox throw got soaked.

  They kissed some. Elmer went dizzy. Joan ran her coil heater. They kicked off their shoes and fell asleep on the couch with their clothes on.

  58

  (LOS ANGELES, 10:00 A.M., 2/6/42)

  The whiz kid. Fletch Bowron’s shoofly. His swell apartment as fix-it shack.

  The Bryson. Wilshire and Rampart. A swell spot with a high-window view. Blocked by workbenches. Crammed with disassembled radios and test tubes.

  Wallace Jamie was portly and twenty-four years old. He lived to snoop and snitch. He’d keestered crooked cops in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Fletch hired him to rebuff the Feds and watchdog the PD. The move backfired. Indictments loomed.

  They stood by the benches. Jamie issued halitosis and fondled dead tubes.

  “This grand jury deal’s a stifferoo. Everybody made suspect phone calls. You can’t indict the whole world.”

  Dudley said, “I’m sure you’re right, sir. This is strictly a routine inquiry, and I’ll be out of your way in a very few minutes.”

  “I don’t get this. You’re an Army captain and a sergeant on the PD.”

  “Yes, and I have questions about a punk criminal named Tommy Glennon, whose dubious endeavors have aroused my interest in both of my professional guises. Your name appeared in his address book, you see.”

  Jamie shrugged. “Well, I’d like to help you out, but I don’t know any Tommy Glennon. I’ve got a listed phone number, so maybe this chump got my name and address there.”

  Dudley said, “Yes, and you’ve been in the news lately.”

  Jamie smirked. “I get fan letters, sometimes. My uncle’s Eliot Ness, and he’s a well-known hotshot. I haven’t gotten letters from any Tommy Glennon, though.”

  He evinced no hink whatsoever. He beamed forthcoming youth.

  “I had a few technical questions, if you’d be so kind. You’ve convincingly cleared yourself in the matter of Tommy Glennon, and I’d like to move on.”

  “Well…sure.”

  “Let’s take the hot-box phone outside the L.A. Herald as our exemplar. It’s a bookie-drop phone, which in no way concerns me. What does concern me are the implementations of Los Angeles-to-Baja pay-phone calls of a Fifth Column nature. Coded calls—pay phone to pay phone.”

  Jamie went bulb bright. His eyes popped. He almost drooled.

  “Okay, this is what you might call intermediate spycraft. You’d have to have a dot-dot substitution code worked out in advance, and agreed upon by both the sending and receiving parties. It would have to be wire-recorded, and the sender would have to hold the device up to the pay-phone receiver. Code calls from regular phones to pay phones wouldn’t work, because of the U.S.-to-Mexico relay systems involved.”

  Dudley said, “Please continue.”

  Jamie said, “It was canny of you to cite that hot-box phone as your exemplar, so I’ll proceed in that vein. That hot-box phone is internally drilled to accept slugs, and you would need that type of drilling to gain access to the applicable Los Angeles-to-Baja relays, all of which have been rigged to feed into bookie rooms in T.J. and Ensenada. Slug calls to outside Baja pay phones would thus reach their terminus point inside those bookie rooms, if a subsidiary dot code were applied. American hoods developed this system in order to relay split-second information on fixed horse races to bookmakers operating in Mexico. That’s the way it works. Your L.A. spy calls are intentionally made to terminate at the phone banks of bookie operations.”

  Such a bright lad. A swift autodidact. Pudgy and erudite.

  “SIS has a tap on one specific Ensenada pay phone. That’s how the coded calls have been picked up and decoded. There have been U.S. air-attack pronouncements, which seem fanciful to me.”

  Jamie said, “And I’m sure that that specific pay phone has been fruitlessly surveilled. Here’s why that’s the case. The code calls are retrieved from their bookie-room terminus. Your in-country spies work at that particular bookmaker’s front.”

  * * *

  —

  He honey-trapped Lin Chung. Uncle Ace stoutly assisted.

  Chung was a surefire traitor. Jim Davis revealed that. Chung bankrolled the first Baja sub deal. Chung deserved a good scare.

  Dudley lounged upstairs at Lyman’s. Ace promised Chung cocaine and white girls. He laced chloral hydrate in Chung’s chop suey. Chung passed out in Kwan’s Chinese Pagoda and woke up cuffed to a floor-bolted chair.

  He rattled his cuff chain. He wiggled his chair. He grasped his I’m-in-the-shit dilemma.

  The storeroom was window-taped and cloaked blackout black. Chung screamed and wet his pants. Dudley caught the telltale piss scent.

  Ace phone-booked Chung. Dudley caught the telltale head thumps.

  Chung screamed. Dudley said, “Why would your name appear in Tommy Glennon’s address book, Doctor?”

  Chung screamed. Ace rethumped him. Chung rescreamed and Chink- babbled. Ace said, “This cocksucker speak English good as me.”

  Dudley roared. Chung rebabbled Chink. Dudley said, “As you wish, Doctor. But please allow my Chinese brother to translate
before you continue.”

  Chung babbled Chink. Short bursts, long bursts, Chink gobbledygook.

  Ace said, “This cocksucker say Tommy don’t have his address. Say he only know Tommy from eugenics study group at Four Families clubhouse.”

  He was credible. His name had been forged. That fact alone cleared him.

  Dudley said, “What do you know about coded pay-phone calls from Los Angeles to Baja?”

  Chung babbled polyglot. Dudley caught Spanish and French. The glot devolved to pure Chink.

  Ace said, “I miss some of it. Gist is this cocksucker don’t know shit.”

  Dudley said, “Two tangentially related events occurred in December, Doctor. A Japanese family was murdered in Highland Park, and a Jap sub came ashore on the coast, south of Ensenada. You were part of a plan to disguise Jap saboteurs as Chinese and hide them in and around Los Angeles. I would like you to admit your complicity, and give me your solemn promise that you will not engage in further sabotage aimed at the United States.”

  Chung babbled Chink. Ace said, “He can’t speak no English back. He now in second childhood. We pour water on his brain.”

  Dudley laughed. “Please translate the Chinese idiom, my brother.”

  Ace said, “This cocksucker admit complicity. He blame crazy cop Bill Parker. Crazy Bill break up cabal and scare white partners away.”

  That was true. Jim Davis revealed that detail.

  Chung babbled. Ace phone-booked him. He swung the fat main directory. He hurled good head-thwapping shots.

  Chung gurgled now. He issued babble, down at a hush.

  Ace said, “This cocksucker offer vow of fealty and eternal brotherhood. He say if you got daughter, he perform free nose job.”

  Dudley laughed and lit a cigarette. The sealed room sealed in heat. He cranked the wall heater off.

  “There was a second sub incursion, early in January. What do you know about that?”

  Chung blathered Chink. He slather-talked now. He oozed discombobulation.

  Ace said, “This cocksucker say he don’t know shit from shinola. It not his bund, ’cause his bund disband. He say one rumor heard. He say second sub fiasco copycat of first plan.”