by James Ellroy
“I asked you a question, fucker.”
“Okay, okay, okay. The answer is shakedowns. That’s the Jean and Meyer bailiwick. This time, they’re putting it to these left-wing musicians that got so-called rescued from der Führer’s clutches, to make the so-called rescuers look good when Uncle Sambo wins the war. You sound me, muchacho? Meyer’s setting Jean up to extort them and recruit them as informants.”
One more time. Jean, darling—say it ain’t so.
“How dirty is she?”
“She’s a mud hen from way back, hoss. She goes back to that Kraut hump, Fritz Eckelkamp. Does that name ring a bell? He ex-caped from that gold train that got robbed back when I was still in pigtails. Jean got around and gets around, and she sure plays Jezebel in the process. She was married to a pathetic geek named Ralph D. Barr. Ralphie set fires and yanked his crank when the fire engines showed up. He was a suspect for that big Griffith Park fire, but he was a small-blaze specialist and got absolved. Jean told me he was hung microscopic.”
Elmer looked at Buzz. Buzz looked at Elmer. They both orbed Tommy G.
Buzz said, “ ‘Fifth Column’s Fifth Column.’ We get that. Past that, have you got a specific source for what you been feeding us?”
Tommy made horn-call sounds. Tommy blew a loooooong fanfare.
“Hold your hats, race fans. We’re at Del Mar, and my #1 nag is at the gate. He’s my #1 source for Fifth Column scuttlebutt, and he’s none other than your ex-chief, James Edgar Davis.”
Buzz looked at Elmer. Elmer looked at Buzz. They both orbed Tommy G.
Buzz sighed. “It’s getting late. Tell us something we don’t know.”
Tommy blew a long fanfare. He wet his pants for such shtick.
“All in all, I’ve raped twenty-three women. I killed two bags in Frisco and a thin cooze at a truck stop in Visalia. I killed an old Jew lady in South Beach and did a necrophile job on her. I made like Dracula and drank her blood, and I yanked out all her gold teeth.”
Buzz grabbed a loose seat cushion. He clamped it over Tommy’s head and pulled his belt piece. He pumped a full clip into Tommy’s face. Blood and cushion stuffing exploded. Shots tore out the trunk ledge and ricocheted. A skull chunk hit Elmer’s cheek.
Buzz said, “I got me an old granny who’s one-sixty-fourth Jewish. I don’t condone that sort of grief.”
91
(SANTO TOMAS, 12:00 P.M., 3/9/42)
The Wolf growled and paced. This bluffside spot vexed him. Swooping gulls and salt spray. A dirt parking lot. Tables perched close to a cliff.
Dudley sat outside. The spot induced vertigo. He’d called the meet. Salvy suggested this cantina. They served Baja’s best mariscos.
Mucho carros jammed up the lot. The Mex Army favored El Dumpo. It was their place. They ignored the rats clustered by the kitchen. The cantina was subramshackle. Army staff cars brodied on loose dirt. Dudley ate exhaust fumes.
He sipped lukewarm beer. His table overlooked the lot and a hundred-foot drop. Mex soldiers chortled all around him.
He was furious. He conceded Fear. Bill Parker enlisted Thad Brown and applied a vise squeeze. Parker levied his no-false-solution decree and sandbagged Jack Horrall. He violated the Smith-Parker truce. He slammed Jack H. and offered up an irresistible concession. Parker said he’d erase every bug and tap recording now in Fed custody. This action would spark courtroom acquittals for Jack and his gang. Fletch Bowron, Ray Pinker, the Jamie kid. All the lesser defendants. Poof!—all would go free.
Parker pulled Mike and Dick off the klubhaus job. Pinker stymied Jack H. there. Elmer Jackson put Mike in Queen of Angels. Call-Me-Jack nixed reprisals. Parker has adroitly nullified one Dudley Liam Smith.
Salvy was late. Dudley chain-smoked. He conceded Fear. Parker’s machinations depleted his ranks. They left him with Hideo Ashida, todos.
Hideo was newly war-hired. He was partnered up with lackluster Lee Blanchard. Jackson and Meeks were off to hell and gone. Their partnership spelled chaos. Hideo came through and supplied hope.
Brilliant lad. He turned up an old Arson Squad accelerant swatch. It derived from the Griffith Park fire. He compared it to a klubhaus-blaze swatch and got a match. The match linked two crimes spaced nearly nine years apart.
Dudley chain-smoked. He conceded Fear. The Wolf bodyguarded him. Constanza returned to La Paz. He missed her. His union with Claire had imploded. Beth was poised in retreat. The promotion-party incident unhinged her. Claire was up in L.A. She was prowling for new lovers there. He knew that.
Salvy was late. More Mex soldaten arrived. They drove custom-fitted U.S. confiscations. Special tailpipes. Hood-mounted BARs. Bleeding-saint and snarling-panther paint jobs.
They stomped three abreast. They entered the cantina and commandeered outside tables. They pinched waitresses and demanded fast service. “Neutral” Mexico. Soon to be Allied-allied. Axis in temperament and aesthetic.
Salvy showed. A car appeared, he appeared, el carro peeled off. Salvy employed Greenshirt flunkies. They chauffeured him and groomed him. He appeared more than arrived.
Dudley stood up. They exchanged abrazos. Hail-fellows-well-met. Men’s men, por vida. Two damn good backslappers.
“My dear comrade.”
“Mi mayor. Will you be content to stop there, or do you wish to rise to four-star general?”
Dudley laughed. “I’m a police sergeant in my heart and soul, lad. I was one when this war started, and I’ll be one when this war ends.”
Salvy laughed. “You are an entrepreneur, a strategist, and a treasure seeker. I am humbled and gratified by your generous pledge to our shared cause.”
Dudley poured two beers. They clicked tankards and sat down at the table. The Wolf trembled. That cliffside drop loomed.
Dudley lit a cigarette. “I bear discomfiting news from Los Angeles. My errant police colleagues are determined to round up a large number of young Mexican men, who they believe may have frequented that damnable klubhaus. I’m afraid that quite a few stout Sinarquista lads may fall into this melee. My colleagues are looking for guns, sold out of the klubhaus. You had assured me our East L.A. lads were not klubhaus affiliates, but I need you to convincingly reassure me now.”
Salvy lit a cigarette. “Yes, of course. I am grateful to have been informed of this, and you have my most sincere reassurance.”
Dudley sipped beer. It was warm. The Wolf prowled adjacent tables. He sniffed raucous Mex soldiers and growled.
“I require another assurance, as well. I proffer this request couched in my utmost respect for you as a comrade and a man. I have become involved with Constanza Lazaro-Schmidt, and I have been informed that you are her occasional lover. I request that you terminate this relationship, and that you sever all contact with Constanza immediately.”
Salvy blinked once. Dudley blinked once. Salvy stubbed out his cigarette. His veins pulsed.
“You have my assurance, but I will issue a warning along with it. Constanza and her brother are shamefully as one, and they are more utilitarian than ideologically fascist. I have given you my pledge and additional caveat, and we need not mention this matter again. I commend you for not threatening me and blowing this trivial request out of proportion.”
The Wolf growled. He smelled Salvy’s rage. He saw his pulsing veins and incipient tremors. Salvy checked his wristwatch. He went uno, dos, tres—and winked.
The cantina exploded. It went up, just like that. It’s a fireball. There’s blasted-out glass and wood shrapnel. There’s smoke, flames, and palm trees ignited. Detonation equals earthquake.
The outside soldaten ran for their cars. They trampled civilians and kicked over tables and chairs. They tumbled into their taco wagons and slammed bumpers, en masse. It was straight from the Keystone Kops.
The inside soldaten ran outside. They stumbled over scorched timber and screamed. Twelve men, todos. They pitched cr
azy-spastic, in flames.
Salvy said, “Priest-killers and nun-rapers. Redshirts of the Calles regime.”
A car pulled off the coast road and skidded into the lot. Four Greenshirts piled out. They held sawed-off shotguns. They dodged flying debris and ran up to the burning men.
They pumped buckshot into them. They severed limbs on fire. A burning man staggered and knocked over tables. Dudley pulled his piece and fumbled it. The burning man got close. Salvy pulled his piece and shot him dead.
92
KAY LAKE’S DIARY
(LOS ANGELES, 2:00 P.M., 3/9/42)
Annie Staples arrived in her work clothes. That meant tartan skirt, crewneck sweater, and saddle shoes. She was Elmer and Brenda’s college girl, and pitched her charms to men thrice her age. Brenda set up the lunch and urged Annie to be forthcoming. We met at Jack’s Drive-in on the Strip.
Annie was blond. She was tall, leggy, and busty, and hailed from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. We dined in my car. Monarch burgers and pineapple malts. I understood Annie’s allure. She was all college girl. Bill Parker would flip for her.
We made small talk during our lunch; Annie guilelessly dished on her tricks and told me she once spent a cozy weekend with the allegedly straitlaced Thad Brown. She tricked with Wendell Willkie during the ’40 campaign, and said he was a sweetheart. Our carhop skated by and removed our trays; we lit cigarettes and settled down to business.
I said, “Brenda saw you with Sid Hudgens at Tom Breneman’s. I sense a story there.”
Annie blew smoke rings. “Well, I’d call it a complicated story.”
“Those are my favorite kind.”
“Brenda told me you know some of it already, because you know about her trick spots, and you’re such good friends with Elmer Jackson. She said you know Sid, and you’ve met Ed Satterlee, and they’re part of the story, too.”
I said, “L.A.’s a small town for a big town, and I’ve been ensnared with the PD for a good three years. You tend to run into men like that, in the course of things.”
Annie thought that was a hoot. She doused her cigarette in her coffee cup and chuckled a bit. She had changeling’s eyes. One veered blue, one veered green.
“You tend to run into men like that, and I tend to sleep with them. You could say I ran a parlay with Elmer, Sid, and Ed, and Ed was the one who put me to good use, beyond the old you know what.”
Elmer and I gabbed at Hideo Ashida’s swearing-in party. He spilled the beans. I told Annie that I was up to speed on her shakedown gig with Ed the Fed. The mark was Dr. Saul Lesnick. Elmer filled in for Ed behind the camera one night. He caught wind of Annie pumping Dr. Saul. It got him thinking—and Elmer thinks impulsively, at best.
Annie said, “Well, sister, you’ve got most of it.”
“Ed was interested in sexual and political dirt, wasn’t he? Mr. Hoover gets his jollies that way, and you never know when dirt like that can be useful.”
“Yep. That’s the gist of it.”
“Confirm this, will you? That first night Elmer ran the camera. Dr. Saul was discussing his patient Claire De Haven.”
“That’s right. Claire, the rich-girl Communist. Her and her cop lover, down in Mexico. Claire said you tried to kill the lover, but old Saul didn’t believe it. The upshot is that Elmer heard all this, and he offered me money to wear a microphone and go to Otto Klemperer’s parties, and ratchet up my pump job on old Saul.”
I said, “Because Elmer wanted to keep tabs on Dr. Saul, and Claire always attended those parties, and Elmer was curious about what she might say regarding Dudley Smith.”
Annie smiled. She was truly big-girl lovely. Call her Ingrid Bergman, with ten thousand chromosomes askew.
“Elmer was very curious about Mr. Smith, and I think he’s got some kind of vendetta going against him. I told Elmer a little tale that old Saul told me, where Mr. Smith beat up Orson Welles, because he had a sort-of deal going with Claire. Elmer said he’d like to wire me up to pump Mr. Welles, which I’d do for free, if Mr. Welles lost some weight.”
Brenda called Elmer “shakedown happy.” This jibed with something I knew about him. He was a canny judge of character and voyeuristically inclined.
Annie ordered a second malt. Brenda thought she looked best on the sturdy-milkmaid side. I asked her how Sid Hudgens played into all this. She told me Sid was shakedown happy, all on his own, apart from Elmer and Ed. Join the crowd, Sid. Annie Staples knows from shakedowns.
Sid wanted dirt on film folk and politicians. He was putting out a sub-rosa scandal sheet and wanted dirt too hot for the Herald. He tried to recruit Annie as his very own Venus flytrap. She was still considering his pitch.
Annie’s second malt arrived; she dunked her straw and siphoned the goo in a wink. Annie played a cameo role in Joan Conville’s diary. Joan observed her futzing with her microphone outside Otto Klemperer’s guesthouse. I teethed on the nexus of the whole three-case megillah. It was Meyer Gelb’s cell and how the four surviving members still hovered in plain sight. The Cell. What old Saul might know and might have written down.
And Annie Staples was sitting right beside me. She’s a one-woman nexus. In the market for a shakedown shill? Annie’s the tops.
She had malted-milk residue on her upper lip. She’s about five-foot-ten and built like a discus queen. I grabbed my napkin and daubed the goo off her lip. Annie likes people to touch her.
“I know that old Saul is a Federal informant, and that he reports to Ed Satterlee. Do you know if his informant duty went back to the early ’30s, when he was in a Communist cell?”
“No, I don’t think so. I think he signed on with Ed more recently than that, because his daughter was in prison for vehicular manslaughter, and Ed used that as a wedge to turn Saul out as his fink.”
I lit a cigarette and thought about Elmer. He’d gone AWOL from Crash Squad briefings; Lee told me this.
Annie said, “Penny for your thoughts.”
I said, “I was thinking about Elmer.”
“What’s there to think about? I’m in love with him, and he’s in love with you.”
I laughed. Elmer and his dead brother, Elmer and his shakedown girl. Early wartime L.A. The pursuit of the big main chance.
Annie jiggled the charms on her charm bracelet. Little dogs, doghouses, arrows piercing hearts.
“But Ed did have a snitch in Saul’s cell back then, and Saul and Andrea didn’t know it. It was this woman named Jean, and she was no kind of Red. Ed dished her to me. He said she’s still in cahoots with this Meyer guy who ran the cell, even though the cell’s dissolved. Jean used to be married to some crazy firebug. This Meyer guy’s going to get her to shake down these exile musicians.”
I said, “I’ll pay you a thousand dollars to make wax impressions of all the keys that Dr. Saul carries.”
Annie detached a little dog charm. She placed it in my hand and gave me a squeeze. She said, “For luck, sweetie. Because where you’re going with all this, you’re sure going to need it.”
“Annie, will you—”
“Sure, sweetie. It’s not like I’ve never caught him with his trousers off.”
93
(LOS ANGELES, 3:00 P.M., 3/10/42)
Army brass. War-hire cop now. His luck holds. He’s serendipitous and fuckstruck.
The Hollenbeck muster room was cluttered and cramped. The reduced Crash Squad was all ears.
The boys straddled chairs and faced Thad Brown. Ashida, Elmer Jackson, Buzz Meeks. Lee Blanchard and Bill Parker. Cigarette and cigar smoke/one big iron lung.
Ashida side-eyed Elmer J. Elmer’s outburst still rankled. Jap, Jap, Jap. Elmer stooped to that.
Thad said, “We’ve got nine male Mexicans on our roust list. We need to determine whether or not Rice and Kapek sold them Japanese-confiscated guns. They filed no gun-confiscation paperwork, so we’ve got no c
omparison sheets to check against any guns we bag tonight. What we do have is the threat of illegal possession of firearms and possibly related armed robberies, to use as a wedge to extract information on our homicides.”
Blanchard said, “Say it, boss. 211 pops will make us look good, if this whole job dips south.”
Elmer said, “Blanchard’s a pessimist.”
Buzz said, “Blanchard’s a Bolshevik.”
Thad rolled his eyes. “We’ve got three squads tonight. There’s Captain Parker and me, Jackson and Meeks, Blanchard and Ashida. On a related topic, that Navy chump Link Rockwell’s in custody down in Florida. A naval district judge should be issuing an extradition ruling soon.”
Elmer said, “Anchors away, whipdick.”
Buzz said, “Link’s tight as ticks with the Reverend Mimms. They’re the world’s foremost salt-and-pepper act.”
Parker said, “We’re going out tonight, and we muster here at 1930 hours. Shotguns, riot gear, and one paddy wagon per squad. Go home and sack out. We’ll be stretching these humps all night.”
Buzz whistled. Blanchard whooped. They dogged Parker and Brown out to the hallway. Elmer kicked the door shut. Ashida gulped. Elmer pulled his chair up close.
“I’m sorry, Hideo. I shouldn’t have said what I said. It was plain wrong of me, and I apologize.”
Ashida stuck his hand out. Elmer bone-crushed it. Ashida mock-winced.
“I understand. You’ve been seething since you met with Kay, and I more than warranted your outburst.”
Elmer displayed an envelope. He waved it and pulled out a sheet of soft-bond paper. Ashida saw faint spots. They resembled pinpricks dipped in soluble oil.
“Where did you get this?”
“At Bev’s Switchboard. You know, that loopy mail drop in West Hollywood. It was in Meyer Gelb’s mail-holding file, and it was addressed to a PO box in La Paz, down in Baja.”
Ashida touched the sheet. It was high-rag content and top-grade absorbent.