This Storm

by James Ellroy

  Constanza looked up and saw him. She smiled, Latin stylish.

  She said, “My alert darling.”

  He said, “I’ll need to read it, of course.”

  * * *

  —

  The process consumed her. He watched her work. The darkroom cast pulsing red light.

  She placed the page flat on a workbench. It was magnification glass–topped. A small arc lamp beamed light from below it. The light was bright-bright.

  She sprayed saline water on the page surface. It brought up collodion and aniline dye. The page glowed purple now.

  Constanza donned magnification-lens goggles. She loaded her camera and placed the lens up against the page. She moved the lens left to right and snapped photos. She shot twenty-four exposures per quadrant. Her photographic field covered the full page.

  She unloaded the film and cut it into ninety-six strips. She placed them in a developing pan. She sprayed on emulsifier. It brought up ninety-six small prints.

  Spanish words appeared. Constanza kept her goggles on and skimmed the out-of-order texts. She took a white grease pencil and numbered the prints from 1 to 96. She clipped them to three clotheslines.

  The prints dried in an hour. Dudley donned the goggles. Constanza turned on a fluorescent arc light. She positioned Dudley beside print #1 and had him read left to right.

  Message #1 was a variant. Hideo described the postcard texts. This was more of that.

  Lists:

  U.S. defense installations. Leftist and rightist plants there employed. Established gold prices now. Gold prices predicted, up to ’44. Jap sub berths upside Baja. Secret airfields. All upside San Joaquin Valley farms.

  Message #1 dittoed postcard information. Message #2 was all new. It revealed this:

  A list labeled “Defense Contacts.” Lists labeled “Farmers,” “Ordnance Makers,” “Airfield Supervisors.” San Joaquin Valley locations, listed below.

  One ellipsis loomed large. There was no closing salute. Plus, no admiring nod to Juan Pimentel. Plus, no admonition: “Do not reveal to JLS & CLS.”

  Dudley tracked the logic. The postcards were sent to Pimentel himself. Elmer Jackson intercepted them and shot them to Hideo Ashida. The postcard dots expressed exclusion. They nixed the two Lazaro-Schmidts. Said dots nailed them as submembers of a factionalized cabal. The postcard sender distrusted the two Lazaro-Schmidts. This dot sender trusted them fine.

  One cabal. Stratified and well buffered. Factions within factions. The intelligent, the resourceful, the superbly self-protective. To wit: Pimentel and the Lazaro-Schmidts. To wit: Meyer Gelb and Kyoho Hanamaka. Allied with the reckless and near insane. To wit: Jim Davis, Saul Lesnick, Lin Chung. To wit: Tommy Glennon and Catbox Cal Lunceford. To wit: dead cops Wendell Rice and George Kapek.

  Dudley removed the goggles. Constanza ran her hands through his hair.

  “You see how many layers there are, and how little most of us in the middle range know.”

  “I knew you and your brother were part of it. You all but told me some weeks ago. You wouldn’t have known what you know about the gold if you were fully on the outside.”

  They stepped out of the darkroom. The normal light burned Dudley’s eyes. Constanza placed her hands over them.

  “I have not betrayed you. I simply omitted what you had already surmised. I assumed that you already suspected Juan Pimentel.”

  Dudley nuzzled her hands. “You forward dot mail sent to you. The various forwarding levels are buffered past comprehension. Pimentel was one step up from you and your brother. Beyond that, you have no idea who’s who.”

  Constanza stroked his cheek. “I have never doubted your ability to assess and extrapolate.”

  Dudley said, “I have a certain matter to discuss with your brother.”

  * * *

  —

  Governor Juan’s office. It was a big-cheese refuge and spot to receive and anoint. Note the pedestal desk and throne chair. Short beaners sit tall here.

  Dudley walked in. Constanza followed him. She shut the door and bolted it. Governor Juan looked up.

  His chair sat on risers. His desk sat waist-high. Goldbug Juan. All these gold figures on shelves.

  His perfect suit. Gray wool with flecked gold highlights. His gold collar pin and burnt-gold necktie.

  Dudley walked up to him. Constanza sat beside the desk. She lit a cigarette. Juan’s desk lighter flamed.

  Juan sensed intent. He slid his chair back. It bumped a window ledge. Dudley picked him up and threw him. He crashed into a bookshelf and fell to the floor. Gold-etched volumes fell on his head.

  Dudley kicked him. The books scattered. Dudley kicked his face and split his nose. Dudley sliced a new harelip. Juan bit his coat sleeve and muzzled shrieks.

  “I read a dot letter that Constanza received. It convinced me that I should issue a stern warning. There will be no sabotage on U.S. soil. Your cabal or clique or junta may not kill Americans.”

  Juan whimpered. Dudley kicked his balls and kicked his legs. He pulled his Arkansas toad-stabber. It brought back ’28. He shot a 459 man and took a souvenir.

  Juan whimpered. Dudley leaned over him. He grabbed his hair and carved a Jew star on his forehead.

  Juan screamed. Constanza crossed her legs and blew smoke rings.

  * * *

  —

  The Wolf watched them sniff cocaine and make love. They steamed up Constanza’s bedroom. Dudley held a hand out. The Wolf licked white powder off his fingertips.

  They lay three abed. The Wolf purred and dozed. Constanza stroked him.

  “The scar will never heal. You’ve marked him for life. He’ll look in the mirror and know that I’ve told you everything. He’ll recall that he raped me on my tenth birthday, and he’ll never touch me or tell me who to sleep with again.”

  Dudley burrowed into her. He felt schizy. His heart raced. He fought chills. He saw three of everything. Constanza, the Wolf, the bed.

  Constanza stroked the Wolf. Constanza stroked him. His pulse ratcheted down some. She gave him her breasts.

  “We can use him, my darling. We can use him as he has used me. We can find the gold by ourselves, and keep all of it. These rumored comrades would not dare to trifle with a fearsome man such as you.”

  The Wolf warmed him. Constanza warmed him. She threw a leg over them both.

  “You must know something, my love. I consider it definitive. I will never be able to fully give myself to a man as long as my brother draws breath.”

  * * *

  —

  He caught a midnight flight back. He still felt schizy. His pulse still raced. He ran too hot or too cold.

  He smelled Constanza all over him. He held his hands out and shared her scent with the Wolf. He cabbed home to the del Norte. He unlocked the door and turned on the lights.

  The Wolf hopped on his favorite chair and dozed off. Dudley smelled something familiar. Perfumed stationery. The envelope on the floor. He knew that—

  The L.A. postmark, her handwriting, her now-banal scent.

  He opened the letter. It ran six full pages. Claire cut loose on him.

  His Irish pomp and bonhomie. People laugh behind his back. Her dope cure and how it purges his fowl touch and stink. His infantile brag. His groveling need for women. His puerile rule over weak men. His shanty mick cultivation of all things high-class. His jejune grandiosity. His vile regard for God’s law. The precise moments that Beth Short and Joan Klein saw through him. His rage cloaked in pitiful terror. His shallowness. His abject neediness. His idiot criminal schemes that all run aground. His sheer fraudulence. His effete eye for callow young men. His remorseless cruelty. His repugnant selfishness. His trifling life passed unmourned and casually unremembered.

  He dropped the letter and weaved into the bedroom. His heart raced. He saw three of ever
ything. He saw three nightstands on Claire’s side of the bed. He pulled open the top drawer. He saw three syringes and dope spikes and vials of morphine sulfate.

  He grew three arms. He ripped off his coat and fashioned a sleeve tourniquet. His three hands shook. He saw three syringes, three spikes, three vials. He rigged the kit and punctured the stopper. It took three tries. His third try hit the vein. He went slack and fell back on the bed.

  108

  KAY LAKE’S DIARY

  (LOS ANGELES, 8:00 P.M., 3/27/42)

  The PD kept a suite at the Ambassador Hotel. It was used to stash important witnesses and entertain politicos that Jack Horrall sought to impress. The Cocoanut Grove was three floors below; the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra was headlining tonight. “Song of India” drifted upstairs. It made me want to jump out of bed, grab Bill, and dance.

  But we were naked, Bill wasn’t the dancing type, and he was occupied with my typed draft of Claire’s handwritten letter to Dudley. We were both anxious and apprehensive. Dudley should have received the letter by now.

  Bill said, “You’re presuming a small kernel of self-knowledge in the man. One that he won’t be able to shake.”

  “Yes, but not conscience,” I said. “I expressed Claire’s sentiments in my own words, and inferred that a great number of people see through him. He’s immune to remorse, and he has no germ of probity to appeal to. He has to be made to question his hold over those he commands and seeks to intimidate.”

  Bill smiled and cleaned his glasses on a pillowcase. We sat with our backs on the headboard and sipped room-service bourbon. We were lovers and hotel cohabiters now; Bill’s marriage cohabited his conscience more than mine. Lee Blanchard didn’t care what I did with men. We were cohabiters in name only. Bill understood the arrangement more than I first thought he would.

  He said, “I’ve got your script memorized, and I’ll be seeing Monsignor Hayes soon. I’ll lay out your version of Dudley and the klubhaus job, and make the monsignor fear for his own safety.”

  “Claire’s recuperating. She’ll go to confession a few days after you. She’ll spear Dudley from oblique angles.”

  Bill kissed me and pulled the sheet below my breasts. Seeing me nude always underlined exactly what this was and that I wasn’t his wife. I knew he’d say something dispiriting next.

  “We cannot maneuver Dudley into criminal indictment without bringing down the PD. We cannot strategically circumvent him to any sure advantage. He’s simply too well situated, and too many powerful men owe him and need him.”

  “He’s inviolate as long as he’s perceived as sane,” I said. “And the best way to unnerve him is through his women.”

  Bill said, “He has to lose his shot at the gold. A three-case solve has to explode in his face. We have to hope that Hideo Ashida values a clean solve more than he values his loyalty to that shitheel.”

  109

  (MANZANAR, 9:00 A.M., 3/28/42)

  The file stacks. Newly compiled and exhaustively comprehensive. A full three-case brief.

  He’d lost his Ensenada set. Post-Pimentel chaos had engulfed him. Dudley had supplied this replacement. It contained all-new paperwork.

  Newspaper clips. Custody files and visitors’ logs. Bertillon charts. Detailed background briefs and summary reports.

  Ashida worked at his desk. His beating-injury pain had subsided. He’d self-treated his wounds. He’d rested. He’d applied alcohol rubs and ice packs. He felt better now.

  He’d scrambler-phoned Elmer and Kay this morning. He’d bug-checked the phone and tagged it pristine. Elmer and Kay updated him. They laid out the faux Claire letter. Faux daughter letters would follow. Plus, faux Claire and Bill Parker confessions to Joe Hayes. They laid out the Jamie and Ness family ownership of Bev’s Switchboard. Plus, the Hayes family-money cut. Plus, the L.A. Sheriff’s protection clause. Plus, Jean Staley as Ed Satterlee’s snitch. Jean drives Fritz Eckelkamp southbound, post–gold heist. Wayne Frank Jackson as Meyer Gelb’s KA.

  Terry Lux and Lin Chung. They plastic-cut Meyer’s hands. Ruth Szigeti. She knew Eckelkamp in Berlin, circa ’20s. Circles constrict and overlap, circles remain in ellipses.

  He updated Elmer and Kay. He laid out the microdot revelations. He pitched the left-right cabal, then to now. He stressed the Dresden Poly convergence. He told them everything Dudley had told him. Elmer and Kay stood up-to-date. They’d repitch Parker and Thad Brown. He stood up-to-date. He was set to push forward, now.

  Ashida stacked the files. He worked chronologically. He jumped back to ’27. He read the Eckelkamp arrest reports and background sheets.

  Alameda. A small East Bay burg. It’s couched between Oakland and Berkeley. Alameda’s the county seat. Their rinky-dink Sheriff’s force roams countywide. Fritz Eckelkamp pulls countywide 211s. County bulls pop him at his eleventh heist. He admits his prior robberies. It’s tacitly confirmed. His confession was coerced.

  It’s old news, so far. The background brief’s got more snap.

  Eckelkamp riffs on Weimar Berlin. The street skirmishes. The Nazi-thug-versus-Marxist-thug riots. Nazi thugs and Marxist thugs allied in blackmail schemes. A Nazi-Sparticist kidnapping ring.

  Deutschland, ’26. Evidence of right-left alliance. Ensenada, ’40. The formal alliance meets. It pervades three case lines: ’31, ’33, ’42.

  More background facts. Fritz Eckelkamp is born Protestant. He’s orphaned early. He’s raised by a Jewish family. He’s Yiddish-fluent.

  Ashida cut back to Alameda. Fritzie is tried, convicted, slammed for twenty-five years. He’s sent to San Quentin. He studies law texts and petitions for a retrial. It’s now 2/31. His application is granted. The trial is scheduled for Los Angeles District Court.

  Three newspaper stories were clipped to the file. They were perfunctory. Clip #1 announced eight convict retrials. Judicial errors had been determined. The retrials would take place in L.A. They would begin in mid-May, ’31. Clip #2 announced the gold-train run. It was set for May 18. There it is—San Francisco to L.A. Clip #3 announced a rail workers’ strike. It would cripple but not halt operations. The San Francisco train yards have endured labor strife. The strike would hit 4/25. That meant this:

  Certain train runs would be combined.

  U.S. government runs. California state runs. That meant the run. Ashida surmised this:

  The convict-retrial run and gold-train run were secretly combined. Fritz Eckelkamp learned this. He had leftist contacts at the Frisco train yards. He planned the mass escape. He escaped for good. The other convicts were gunned down. Fritzie worked solo. He cut his fellow convicts loose, impromptu. He planned the derailed-track snafu. The escape went down. Chaos reigned. It suited Fritzie’s designs. Marxist realpolitik. Expendable convicts are killed. Only his freedom counts.

  Ashida backtracked. He pulled the Alameda custody file and skimmed it. He caught a hot file note.

  Fritzie met Leander Frechette in ’27. They were county-jail inmates then. Frechette. He’s these three things. He’s Negro/mentally dim/big and inhumanely strong. He’s the chief gold-heist suspect. He’s the bête noire of the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s and Deputy Karl Tullock. Frechette was a trainman and rail-yard worker. He’d been jailed for Assault One. He took part in a Frisco labor brawl. An obscure file note sizzled. A guard boss caught the odd friendship. Here’s this Kraut armed robber and dim colored youth.

  Ashida surmised:

  Frechette is not dim. He feigns insolvency. It complements his labor-thug pose. He conspires with Fritz Eckelkamp. He tells Fritz that he works gold-run jobs on occasion. The heist is theoretically planned. It’s a jailhouse-bullshit concoction. It’s conceived in advance of Fritzie’s San Quentin jolt. It’s all shuck and jive at that stage.

  Ashida backtracked. He pulled Fritzie’s jail visitors’ log and skimmed it. He caught a hot file note.

  Martin Luther Mimms visited Frit
zie. There’s Mimms, in Alameda County. He’s a corrupt preacher/slumlord/race racketeer. He owned the 46th Street klubhaus. He’s tight with ranking L.A. cops. Jump—’27 to ’31. Mimms springs Leander Frechette from the Santa Barbara jail. Mimms halts the beatings of Deputy Karl Tullock.

  Mimms. He’s L.A.-based. He’s tight with high-up L.A. cops. Who’s the boss L.A. cop in 1931? It’s James Edgar “Two-Gun” Davis.

  Names. Dates. Guesses. Extrapolation. Surmise.

  Frechette creates the initial train-track diversion. He employs his fearsome strength and bare hands. The escape occurs. The train journeys south. There’s a second track snafu. It’s Frechette’s work, as well. Frechette off-loads the gold bars on his person. He hands them off to—

  ?????

  Jean Staley facilitates Fritzie’s escape. She’s Fritzie’s lover. They haul southbound. They dodge roadblocks. Jim Davis aids the escape. He clues Fritzie and Jean in to roadblock deployment. Said roadblocks are pulled on U.S. 101 south. Right before this ritzy nut farm. It’s Terry Lux’s nut farm. This is all informed guesswork.

  Elmer Jackson chats up Ruth Szigeti. She cites Eckelkamp’s resemblance to Meyer Gelb. Her statement startles Elmer. He almost blurts his big guess on the scrambler-phone call.

  Ashida surmised. Let’s confirm or refute. This investigation is all about that.

  Meyer Gelb has burn-seared fingers. They’re covered by graft marks. Meyer Gelb was hauled in and braced per the Griffith Park fire. His scarred fingers tweaked the Arson Squad cops. That has to be true. Gelb’s fingerprint ID has been compromised. What’s their next step? What would the Arson cops do?

  They’d order up a Bertillon measurement chart. They’d establish a certified Meyer Gelb ID. That raises this question:

  Was Fritz Eckelkamp Bertillon-charted? Did Alameda County or the San Quentin lab chart his measurements?

  Ashida prowled file paper. He jumped ’27 to ’28 and Fritzie’s Quentin jolt. There it is. The Quentin lab charted him, 1/12/29. That’s one comparison point.