by James Ellroy
Sexual crimes are lust and jealousy crimes. They are impetuously performed and irrational in nature. Sexual crimes are personal-animus crimes. They are directed at one victim only—even when two killers kill.
Wendell Rice.
George Kapek.
Archie Archuleta.
One man was the sole intended victim. He knows this. He knows this because he’s a homosexual. He must solve this gaudy murder case and justify the admission.
69
(LOS ANGELES, 2/12–2/25/42)
Oooga-booga. Hear dem tom-toms? Dat hellhound’s still on his trail.
He’s jungled-up and fucked-up with Buzz Meeks now. Their T.J. swoop was hopped-up and shook-up and altogether nuts. The Huey Cressmeyer snatch was jacked-up and jumped-up and ill-advised. Buzz wants to kiss up and suck up to El Dudster or conversely slay him dead. Buzz wants to clip Tommy Glennon. Maybe Dud will make up with him then.
Maybe. Maybe not. Buzz is scared. He’s scared. What if Huey blabs? It’s katy-bar-the-door then.
They work the Big Case. It’s Crash-Squad Apocalypse and Crash-Squad Abyss. They’ve canvassed from 46th Street to the planet Mars. Jack H. constrains them. He’s sealed pertinent records. He’s nixed further chats with Preacher Mimms. He’s nixed a Newton Station approach. Rice and Kapek bought off the night-watch blues and the fucking Vice Squad en masse. There’s no occurrence sheets extant. There’s no loud-noise reports and D&D lists. Thad Brown’s three lineups dry-humped the whole universe.
Harold John Miciak. That fat-mouthed bugfucker. He monkey-wrenched the whole case. He ran his mouth and glued his mouth shut. Get it? He named no names. He ratted out the looted guns and Wendell Rice with some gold bayonet. He dick-teased the Crash Squad and the whole PD and zipped his trap shut.
Miciak’s pitch could tank the PD. Jack H. and Dud know it. They’ve got to be brainstorming.
Figure this. They’ve formulated kill lists. Kill, kill, kill. Kill some right-wing spics. Kill some jazzhound jigs. Kill some white Nazi shits. Plant some evidence on them and coonvene a new grand jury. Nail postmortem indictments.
It sounds goooooood. It might relieve overall tension. It might remove him and Buzz from the Dudster’s gun sights. It floodlights his own mixed motives. He’d loooooove to file a clean solve. He’d looooove to end all this shuddering shit.
He’d love to gun-sight Jean Staley. Tough luck there. She flew the coop. She’s off for Des Moines. She’s driving sloooooow and sending him postcards. It’s hinky. It gores his gonads. It dings his dick. It torques his tail raw. It’s got him thinking.
Jean was ex-CP. That was back in ’33. The Griffith Park fire occurs. Wayne Frank dies. Jean’s cell catches heat. Call it coincidence. It was the Depression. The Red Beast got plain folks het up. Yeah, there’s that. Then, there’s this:
Wayne Frank was his brother. It could have been arson. He’s supposed to be a detective. Jolting Jean jumped loose of their should-have-been love.
He B and E’d her crib and tossed it. Too much stuff was gone. The walls were all print-wiped. She left behind some lingerie. He sniffed it and went euphoric.
Jean weighs on him. He might call up some Arson Squad paper. Why’d she hink and boogaloo? It was just getting gooooood.
Dud weighs on him. He’s the hellhound. Elmer J. gave the hellhound a hotfoot for kicks and suffered comeuppance. He’s not the hotfoot type. That’s strictly Bill Parker’s MO.
Dud won’t fuck with Whiskey Bill. Parker’s too far up the PD’s ass to mess with. Joan Conville laid some lowdown on Kay Lake. La Kay relaid it to him. Dig: Parker sold the PD out to the Fed grand jury.
He could do something similar. He had the grit to survive and thrive. He could shadowbox Dud the Impaler and Jack H. himself. Elmer V. was no Whiskey Bill. He lacked Parker’s stature and juice. He had some backwoods skills, nonetheless.
He should do the PD a big favor. It would buy him love from Dudley and Jack. It would offset the chance that Dud would clip him and Buzz. The favor should pertain to the klubhaus job or Parker’s Fed-probe play.
He gave it one shot so far. Thad Brown refused to raid the Deutsches Haus. The December raid went bust. So Sergeant E. V. Jackson donned disguise and worked his way back in.
He bought some two-tone loafer jackets and Tyrolean porkpies. He laced venom into his Carolina drawl and played Klansman adrift. He tossed barbs at the Jews and ballyhooed the L.A. Reich. He drank German beer. He jumped three fat fräuleins. He pulled this out of his hat:
He’s Herr Doktor Vengeance. His brother fried in the Griffith Park fire. He’s out to vaporize the Commie cell that started the blaze. Herr Doktor Vengeance knows some names.
Meyer Gelb. Jean Staley. Dr. Saul Lesnick. Andrea Lesnick. Jorge Villareal-Caiz. Who’s got the scarified skinny? Herr Doktor Vengeance pays cold cash for hot drift.
Die Krautniks went Vass? They were ditzy dilettantes. They were juvenile jerkoffs hooked on hate and the “Horst-Wessel-Lied.” Herr Doktor Vengeance dropped more names.
Wendell Rice. George Kapek. Archie Archuleta. You know these guys? John Harold Miciak. You know him? You dig the Sinarquistas? You like nigger jazz? You been to this hot spot on East 46th?
Nobody bit. Herr Doktor Vengeance hunkered in and observed. He attended a eugenics lecture. A three-hundred-pound porker extolled the master race. He attended a lecture on postwar reconciliation.
The Nazis and Russkis kiss and make up. They’ve got some mysterious gold cache. They hatched a plan in Mexico. Let bygones be bygones. The real foe is democracy.
Herr Doktor yawned through the lecture. His luck fizzled then. Some just-out jailbird busted him.
This Klan fool’s a cop. I saw him last month. He’s on the Alien Squad. I was locked up in Lincoln Heights. He was hauling in Japs.
Deutsches Haus—auf Wiedersehen. Fat fräuleins, adios.
He misses Jean Staley. He sleeps with Brenda and thinks about her. He sleeps with Ellen and thinks about her. He sleeps with Annie Staples and thinks about her.
He thinks about Dudley Smith. He got terped at Ellen’s place and woke up on the floor. A speckled bug started talking to him.
The bug rebuked his promiscuous ways. The bug said shit like “You’re scared—but somebody’s got to take that mick booger down.”
The bug egged him on. He started tapping the piggyback mounts at Brenda’s trick spot. He’s been playing the recordings of Annie S. and Saul Lesnick. He heard gasbag Saul gasbag this:
His analysand Claire De Haven’s been running distraught. She’s miffed at her lover man, Dudley. She thinks he killed a passing fling of hers. The man was a Mexican State Police captain. His name was José Vasquez-Cruz. That name played out pseudonymous. He was really a Commo named Jorge Villareal-Caiz.
Old Saul found this flabbergasting. He said, “I knew Jorge! He was in my CP cell with Meyer Gelb! Remember? I introduced you to Meyer at Otto Klemperer’s party!”
Annie remembered it good. He remembered it good. He planted Annie at that party. He hot-wired her. He heard that introduction as it transpired. He thought nothing of it then.
Old Saul regasbagged. Annie reran her gee-whiz shtick. Old Saul resnitched his analysand.
Claire told him that Dudley beat up Orson Welles. Lover man added insult to injury. Dudley made Orson his informant. Orson told her all of this. He’s now finking leftists on his OIACC tour. Dudley forbids Claire to see Orson. She sees him anyway. Fuck lover man. He’s screwing a red-haired tart in L.A.
Old Saul re-regassbagged. He dropped the kicker then.
“Claire was very agitated. She kvetched throughout the whole session. She said, ‘Kay Lake will surely be at Otto’s next party. I’m going to make up to her and talk to her about Dudley. The girl is a seasoned gossip. I’m sure she knows things about Dudley that I don’t.’ ”
The recording spritzed out. He s
pent three full days restitching this:
Klemperer’s party. In Brentwood. Huey’s Night of the Long Knives party. In Brentwood. “North of Sunset, daaarlings.” Orson Welles was there. “He was pals with the guy who owned the house—some music maestro.”
He let it sit for a week. He rehashed it with Buzz Meeks. They grabbed a reverse directory and looked up Klemperer’s address. Yep—it’s Brentwood, north of Sunset.
They brainstormed their next move. Eyewits didn’t apply here. All the Long Knife party guests wore masks. Huey and Tommy G. saw it. Their “dates,” ditto. Dudley pulls his bayonet and chops the he-she.
Huey and Tommy. Call them hostile eyewits. Huey wouldn’t reblab. Tommy wouldn’t blab at all. Their dates were unknown. It was a perv bash. There’d be no formal guest list.
They checked dead-body reports. West L.A. Division. Winter ’39. Up near Brentwood. North of Sunset Boulevard. Up in that très posh turf.
They snagged a dumped-body decomp. It was up in Mandeville Canyon. It was out in some woodsy preserve. A male stiff got chomped by coyotes. The critters ate his feet and his dick. The dump site was half a mile from Klemperer’s crib.
The DB report was dated 3/5/39. The stiff was roughly two weeks DOA. The cops ID’d him. The coroner tagged cause of death. The hump died from stab-wound trauma.
He’s Cedric Francis Inge. Age twenty-seven. White male/6'3"/135. Sixteen sodomy beefs. Drag-revue performer. “Gene the Queen” Harlow to his-her friends.
So far, so goooood. Here’s the next angle. Dudley Smith’s got his nuts in a vise. Who would he call? Who else? He’d call Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle.
Buzz and him checked old duty rosters. Breuning and Carlisle worked the Bunco night watch then. There it is—2/19/39.
Breuning and Carlisle clock out. It’s “personal business.” They vamoose at 11:20 p.m.
Buzz and him hashed it out gooooood. He said, “Do you really want to blackmail Dudley Smith?”
Buzz gulped and popped sweat. Buzz said, “Not right yet, I don’t.”
They let it sit for a week. He called Annie Staples then. She met him at Scrivner’s Drive-in on 6th and Vermont. They slurped pineapple malts and discussed Annie’s crush on Orson Welles.
He said, “I foresee a date at Brenda’s trick spot. I’ll be in the camera hole. Notable woof-woof may well ensue.”
Annie said, “Orson needs to lose weight.”
He said, “I’ll slide you a grand.”
Annie said, “Let me guess. You want me to pump him for certain information.”
He said, “Winter ’39. A party at Otto Klemperer’s place, and a movie he screened. Put the spurs to him. I want to see how he reacts.”
70
(LOS ANGELES AND BAJA, 2/12–2/25/42)
The Wolf licked the blood off his gold bayonet. It consecrated his conversion.
He’s a reborn apostate. He mimed History and reprised the Night of the Long Knives. It erased his wretched moment at Herr Klemperer’s house. He’s a fascist now. He’s more specifically a Sinarquista.
The Wolf decreed a commemorative rampage. He enlisted Salvy and Juan Pimentel and issued the Wolf’s directive. They staged a raid and stole Cruz-Caiz’s heroin stash. He killed El Communisto’s key henchmen. Sinarquista Greenshirts cut up the bodies and buried the offal. He kept Hideo out of it. Hideo would have had qualms.
The rampage continued. Salvy had kill-listed eight former Redshirts. They were torturers and nun-rapers of the Calles regime. They lived in seclusion throughout Baja. El Dudster and Plucky Salvador slaughtered them. Stout Juan fed their guts and limbs to greedy ocean sharks.
Traitors and rapists, all. Thirteen deaths in all. He filed thirteen notches on his bayonet. The Wolf drank thirteen drafts of blood.
Reprise and revision. Munich, ’34. Brentwood, ’39. The lakeside spa and Herr Klemperer’s house. The Brentwood bash spawned chaos. Mike and Dick salvaged him. Tommy Glennon forced him to relive the nightmare. San Quentin, last November. Tommy’s smirky blackmail pass. He’ll find Tommy and kill him. He’ll nullify all impediments. He’ll kill Buzz Meeks and Elmer Jackson as whim dictates.
He told Salvy about the gold. He omitted nothing. He pledged 15% of all gold profits to the Sinarquista cause. Salvy joined the gold-questing band. He’ll tell Hideo and Joan in due time.
Said band is egalitarian. There’s an Irishman, a Japanese, a woman. A Mexican lawyer and rightist firebrand now join them. Está la nueva familia and cause to exult.
Hideo and Joan talk long-distance. Their one topic is gold. They remain his L.A. family. They supplant the wife and daughters he never sees. Favored daughter Beth Short lives up near San Francisco. She promises visits but repeatedly renegs. Beth is boy crazy. She may be spreading herself thin.
His Mexican family sports fractures. Young Joan Klein first detected the schism. She’d tailed Claire to liaisons with El Puto Cruz-Caiz. It explains Claire’s recent sobbing fits and bedroom retreat. Young Joan remains secretive and obstreperous. It befits a fifteen-year-old girl born on Halloween. She speaks in riddles and hints at her “package from the East.” He deadpans these salvos. The girl has a fantastical penchant for left-wing intrigue.
His own intrigues consume him. The klubhaus job remains in acute disarray. Jack Horrall has granted him sanction. He’s free to plumb more immediate paths to a solve.
He schmoozed up Sid Hudgens. He told him to plant three pithy items in the Herald.
Hot item!!! PD stalwarts pursue Fifth Column suspects!!! Klubhaus solve at hand?
Hot item!!! PD stalwarts pursue Mexican suspects!!! Klubhaus solve at hand?
Hot item!!! PD stalwarts pursue Negro suspects!!! Klubhaus solve at hand?
Martin Luther Mimms will supply suitable suspects. Call-Me-Jack is convinced of that. Preacher Mimms is out of town now. He’s recruiting for his back-to-Africa shuck. Herr Mimms gleefully bilks his own people. A Smith-Mimms summit must be penciled in. They’ll eat soul food and drink corn liquor. They’ll trip the dark fantastic.
The klubhaus job is all taxing tangents. Huey Cressmeyer escaped from Juan Pimentel and remained at large for three days. Huey revealed that two cornpone cops snatched him. The crazed crackers roughhoused Huey. He rebuffed their hurt. Huey said he snitched Tommy G. and Wendell Rice, los dos. He stuck to this tale.
Thad Brown said Redneck Elmer worked a Deutsches Haus incursion and learned less than zilch. Cretin Elmer and Cagey Buzz may be harboring leads. He should kill them both. Now might be good. Why wait for Armistice Day?
Taxing tangents. Jackson and Meeks. Likewise, James Edgar Davis.
He’s cultivated Two-Gun. He’s coddled and cajoled him. He’s endured a slew of boozy dinners at Kwan’s. Jim will not submit to pentothal. “I spilled my guts on the Watanabe job, Dud. You and Bill Parker know, you sure as shit told Jack Horrall, and Bill must have told the latest college girl he’s perved on. That’s status quo for me, and I’m sticking to it.”
Two-Gun Jim remains balky. He radiates intransigence. His sclerotic face pulses and beams Fuck You. This may necessitate force.
Like his Orson Welles approach. Fat Boy in blood-soaked lounge garb. That was a crackerjack play.
Orson passed through Ensenada. El Porko was on his goodwill tour. They enjoyed a beachside dinner. Orson waxed acquiescent. He exemplified the if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em school of cowed informants. He tattled numerous tinseltown Reds.
As in his own psychiatrist. There’s a red reptile. Saul Lesnick, M.D.
He was Claire’s headshrink. The gold-quest gang knew all about him. Lesnick snitched Reds to Ed Satterlee. Lesnick tooled for Meyer Gelb. Orson met Gelb at Otto Klemperer’s place. Orson showed up at the ’39 Walpurgisnacht. They crossed paths in costumes and masks and never knew it. Orson screened his Long Knives smut film. He dressed as a Red Guardsman and rolled film. Leni Rief
enstahl mocked him and tossed a drink in his face.
Psychic recurrence. Confounding convergence. Chez Klemperer as star-crossed place. The cosmos sends a message. Hark—the gold is yours.
The cosmos speaks to the Wolf. The Wolf drinks the blood of his master’s victims and licks the gold bayonet clean. The Wolf sniffs out strategic imperative and reports back to him. Governor Juan Lazaro-Schmidt appeared at the Hotel del Norte. His sister Constanza played with a middling string quartet. They performed a recital at the del Norte. Beethoven and Hindemith. The Wolf scared up a ticket and arranged a chance meet with Governor Juan.
The Führer and Herr Goebbels detest Hindemith. They are hidebound in that regard. The sonata was lovely. It was properly dissonant and no more. The Wolf hopped onstage and curled up at Constanza Lazaro-Schmidt’s feet. She played achingly well. She paused to let the violins and cello ascend. She stroked the Wolf then.
Stunning creature. Dark hair and eyes. Long legs and almost too broad shoulders. She bit her lips as she played. Her white gown bunched at the hips. She kicked off her shoes for the “Grosse Fugue” and dug in barefoot.
The Wolf approved of Constanza. Her scene enticed. The Wolf escorted him to the lobby at intermission. Hark—there’s the governor. The Wolf introduced them and trotted off.
He was a slight man. He was elegant and smaller than his sister. They wore identical lapel pins. The pin clasps faced outward. The gold swastikas were tucked out of sight.
They chatted up the war and made nice-nice. He brought up the U.S. crop-worker conundrum and requested a chance to discuss it. They made plans to meet in a fortnight.
The recital concluded. Beethoven 131 went out in a rush. The Wolf led him back to the artists’ dressing rooms. He saw Constanza unhook her gown and adjust her brassiere. The fabric was sheer. She had lovely dark nipples.
J. Lazaro-Schmidt and sister. Salvy distrusted their relationship. Salvy urged him to hold that thought.