This Storm

by James Ellroy

  A final head-scratcher scratched. Ed the Fed placed a recent spate of late-nite calls. He called all-nite eateries and cop spots. As in Lyman’s and Kwan’s. He called them interchangeable. Who you lookin’ fo, Brutha Ed?

  Elmer paid the bill. He schlepped over to 416 Bedford and donned his B and E wig. Buzz was parked curbside. Elmer got in and tossed him a french-dip sandwich. Buzz snarked it.

  Beverly Hills. The psych-doctor district. Pitch your woes to Doc Saul. He’ll fuck you up worse than you are.

  416 was a mock-château job. Lobby, elevator, stairs. Offices above. Kay made keys off Annie Staples’ wax mounts. It was a walk-in caper.

  Buzz said, “The building’s empty. Everybody up and left two hours ago.”

  Elmer grabbed their tool kit. It was two grocery sacks, double-wrapped. Buzz jiggled the keys. They choked back B and E giggles and charged.

  They crossed the sidewalk. Elmer lugged the bags. Buzz held the keys. The lobby door opened easy. They checked the directory. Saul Lesnick, M.D.: suite 216.

  They took the stairs. The second-floor hall was pitch-dark. Elmer flashed his flashlight and read door plates. There’s 216.

  Buzz unlocked the door. They stepped in and locked themselves in. Elmer hit the lights.

  The waiting room featured agitprop art. Workers Unite!!! Beefcake boys waving scythes. Elmer made the jack-off sign. Buzz unlocked the inner-office door.

  Elmer hit the lights. There’s the psychee’s couch. There’s the psych doc’s desk. There’s file cabinets. There’s more Commo wall art. Tanks rolled through Red Square. Butcher Stalin screamed. The Russki alphabet resembled DT hieroglyphs.

  Buzz yanked at the file drawers. They were locked. Elmer dug into his bag. He pulled out the two silencers and tossed one to Buzz.

  They tap-screwed their roscoes and stood back. They aimed in unison and blasted the drawers. The silencers went pfffft. Bullets pierced the file locks and ricocheted through the drawers. The office got all gunsmoked up.

  They slid the file drawers open. They both went wooooooo. They thought they’d find patient folders. Nix to that. They found wire-recording spools.

  Elmer grabbed all of them. He dumped them in the bags. Buzz hit Old Saul’s desk. The drawers were locked. Buzz aimed tight and blasted them open. Gunsmoke smoked the whole room now.

  Elmer dug through the drawers. Old Saul stashed his jerk-off books there. It was Nazi shit. Hopped-up Hildegards in black tunics whipped terrified Jews. The Hildas wore jackboots and had tits out to here. The Jews wore skullcaps with propellers on top. Full-page ads hawked dick-size enhancers and eugenics brews.

  Elmer tossed all the drawers. He thought he’d find correspondence and an address book. Nix to that. He found more Nazi shit and a jack-off suction device.

  Buzz flashlight-flashed the walls. He said, “Looky here.” Elmer tracked the beam.

  He saw wires spackled to wainscot strips. He saw wires stuck to wall junctures and tucked under rugs. He saw painted-over wires stuck to lamp stands.

  “He’s bugging his patients. I don’t see no other explanation.”

  Buzz said, “Let’s fuck that fucker up.”

  They pulled the wall wires. They unspooled the rug wires. They dumped the lamps and yanked the microphones. They got out their paint and brushes and refestooned the walls.

  Buzz painted swastikas and hammer and sickles. Elmer painted X marks over them. Buzz painted “Death to Traitors!!!” Elmer painted “America Forever!!!”

  111

  (LA PAZ, 10:00 A.M., 3/29/42)

  Cocaine and cigarettes. Their standard breakfast. Rut and talk. Their standard MO.

  They stuck to Constanza’s bedroom. Peons puttered, just outside. Constanza motormouthed. She plumbed two topics. Her brother and the gold.

  Dudley played attentive lover. His thoughts ran afield. Al Wilhite found Kyoho Hanamaka. Hideo was debriefing him. Hideo had failed to report.

  The bed sagged and grazed the floor. It succumbed to overuse. They banged the headboard loose last night.

  Constanza said, “I was thinking of the brand you stamped upon my brother. I would imagine he’ll employ Terry Lux to prettify the damage you did.”

  Dudley sniffed cocaine off a bread plate. He shivered. He got the chill, the numb teeth, the whoosh.

  “Terry’s the best at what he does. I could hardly begrudge your brother his services. I’m dining with Orson Welles in Ensenada tonight. He utilized Terry recently. Terry deftly allayed some damage I inflicted.”

  Constanza lit a cigarette. “Fierce you. Such utility. Such brutal agency.”

  Dudley kissed her breasts. Constanza and cocaine. His morning bifecta. She seized his body. His mind whooshed elsewhere.

  The microdot letter. The planned sabotage. He’d warned off brother Juan. He did not report possible attacks to Fourth Interceptor. Kyoho Hanamaka. Constanza’s former lover. He’d described Kyoho’s self-torch job. Constanza said he saw too much in Deutschland and Russia. It was his time to die. He simply gave up.

  “You haven’t mentioned the gold in at least three minutes, darling. Are you relinquishing your grasp?”

  Constanza primped him. She wiped his face with a bedsheet. The whoosh raised a sweat.

  “Allow me to gloat over my brother. You enacted a long-overdue revenge.”

  Dudley lit a cigarette. “I pentothaled a rather sodden Kamerad. He described a convergence at a German technical college. The late Juan Pimentel, and young men named Díaz and Jamie. Joe Hayes, whom I’ve mentioned before, was a member of their bund. The mid-’30s, I think. I’m wondering if the overall cabal was formed then.”

  Constanza said, “No. I believe it all began to germinate before the fire. I would call the meeting of Kyoho and Meyer Gelb the point of germination. Meyer was recruiting for the Comintern at the Paramount Studio. People fell under his sway. The Kommisariat was Meyer’s idea. He predicted the world conflict, as we see it today. His prophecy preceded Kyoho’s sojourn in Germany and Russia.”

  The Wolf cocked his head. Constanza’s scent aroused him. He probed Constanza’s mind. She disclosed just so much. This vexed the Wolf.

  Constanza said, “I have a lead on the minutes for the Baja conference. What would you pay for them?”

  * * *

  —

  Welles was late. Film folk ran breezy and tardy. He knew that beast inside and out.

  He’d extorted them. Harry Cohn paid him well. They misbehaved. He snapped furtive photographs. They starred in Columbia cheapies, resultant.

  Johnny Weissmuller jumps jailbait. Tallulah Bankhead snarfs muff at lezbo hot spots. Duke Ellington sires Kate Hepburn’s mulatto love child.

  Welles was late. Like Salvy was late in T.J. Salvy refused to chaperone the Japs and the wets. The Wolf teethed on it.

  Dudley ordered a private room. The del Norte staff salaamed and obliged. Welles drew flocks of autograph hounds. This room would hold them off. Orson called and requested the audience himself. It was a snitch and snitch-runner confab. It mandated privacy.

  Dudley drummed the table. He felt fluttery. The flight back induced jitters. Cocaine exacted a price. He missed Constanza more than he should.

  Dudley Liam Smith. Such a schoolboy crush. How unsound of you.

  The door swung open. Such élan. Orson Welles entered rooms. He walked to the table. He was six-three and porcine. He exuded bonhomie and snitch fear.

  Dudley stood up. They shook hands. Fat Boy’s clasp was damp and weak. Dudley wiped his hand on the tablecloth. He made a blunt show of it.

  They sat down. Dudley poured champagne. It was one-dollar swill. L’auteur, le gourmand. He’ll gag on it.

  “It’s good to see you, Dudley.”

  “You’re looking sleek, lad. Would you consider me brusque if I asked what brings you to Ensenada?”

 
Welles sipped champagne. He almost but not quite pulled a face.

  “It’s quite the ad-lib proposition. Howard Hughes flew us down. Dolores del Rio’s sister needed a blind date.”

  Dudley went Tu salud. “Allow me to chart your train of thought, lad. You have information for me, and you thought you’d kill two birds with one stone.”

  Welles guffawed. Note the coward’s cringe within.

  “That’s Dudley Smith for you. He cuts to the third act, and forswears the amenities.”

  “On that note, lad. You’re not here to waste my time, and who am I to deny Miss del Rio’s comely sister your presence?”

  Welles coughed. “Well, I’ve been making appearances for the OIACC, as you well know. I’ve been traveling with a small jazz combo, and I’ve put together a few incidental things I thought might interest you.”

  Dudley sipped rotgut champagne. He pulled a face and gagged it down.

  “I’ll set the scene, lad. You’re traveling throughout Latin America. The combo plays inoffensive music during the cocktail receptions that precede your dinner talks.”

  Welles said, “Right you are. And one of the musicians was a froufrou kid I first met at an admittedly bent party at Otto Klemperer’s place in ’39. Otto was holed up in a sanitarium then, and—”

  Dudley clamped his champagne flute. The stem snapped. Fat Boy missed it. Dudley dropped the shards on the floor.

  “—and the kid told me he was there at the party, which chagrined me quite a bit. He went on to tell me a rather outrageous story about the America Firsters he met—”

  Dudley cut in. “Describe the party, lad. Set the scene for me.”

  “Well, it was what you might call a masked ball, and the theme ran decidedly right of center. People wore Nazi costumes, and I screened an admittedly risqué film that I’d shot. I wore a mask, but the fruit kid recognized my voice from my radio broadcasts, although I’m reasonably sure that no one else did.”

  I was there. You wore a Red Guard costume. I saw parts of your film. It repulsed me.

  “Please continue, lad. You’ve piqued my interest, quite adroitly.”

  Welles smiled. Mere hints of praise induced simpers.

  “Well, the kid told me that he’d seen some real-life Nazis, whom he’d seen in newsreels, there at the party. They were talking out on the porte cochere, and they’d removed their masks. It was about dawn, and there had already been quite a ruckus. Some comatose woman was carried away, on the Q.T., which was—”

  The She was a He. Dead is not comatose. Do you know who you’re talk—

  “Here’s where it gets intriguing, if a bit outlandish. The kid told me the real-life Nazis were discussing the ‘Führer’s ultimately futile war’ and some sort of ‘future exoneration scheme.’ One man said they should assassinate Hitler, or deliberately fail at it, but publicize the failure. Another man said their ‘Red Kameraden’ should do the same thing with Stalin. There was some talk of potential postwar escape routes to Latin America, specifically pro-fascist or pro-Communist countries.”

  Dudley said, “Please continue. It’s like your War of the Worlds broadcast. You’ve got me on the edge of my seat.”

  Welles beamed. “Well, the kid sounded sincere about all this, and I’ll admit to having a soft spot for good stories. This was one story I couldn’t quite shake, and I tossed out hints to a few left-wing and right-wing types I met at various functions. I got a lot of murky responses, and heard rumors that this so-called plot derived from Mexico.”

  Dudley lit a cigarette. “I’m tipping off the edge of my seat. Please continue.”

  Welles laughed. “All right. Here’s the conclusion, and we jump from the winter of ’39 up to the present day. The kid told me a man named Wallace Jamie was at the party. He saw him unmasked, and he just recently put together who the man actually is. He recognized Jamie from newspaper photographs, a few weeks ago. That’s because Jamie’s in Dutch on that big Federal probe. The kid also said he recognized two other men who’d been at the party. Their pictures were in the papers, because they’d been murdered. I’m talking about Wendell Rice and George Kapek. They didn’t actually attend the party. They wore chauffeur’s garb and stood outside, on the porte cochere.”

  Autopsy pix. The dead cops. Gasping mouths. Ice-pick punctures. Single hand-span bruises.

  “It’s a small world, eh? Then the kid tells me that he knows another fruit kid, who’s also a jazz musician, up in L.A. He didn’t know the other kid’s name, but he said that when those murders were all the rage in the papers, the other kid told him he’d been to jam sessions at the clubhouse where the bodies were found. He bragged that he and a so-called ‘Red-fasco woman’ killed Rice, Kapek, and a Mexican friend of theirs. I’m telling you all this because Claire told me you were involved in the police investigation.”

  112

  KAY LAKE’S DIARY

  (LOS ANGELES, 9:00 A.M., 3/30/42)

  Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz. “Clean Gene” to his supporters. “Last Seen Gene” to his detractors. Frequently glimpsed at the Saints and Sinners Drag Ball.

  We met the Sheriff at Kwan’s Chinese Pagoda; Uncle Ace set a table for four in the Chiang Kai-shek Conference Room. Hop Sing goons peddled trinkets out of the room, twenty-four hours daily. REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR!!! signs and I AM NOT A JAP!!! T-shirts were current hot sellers. Ace also sold Jap shrunken heads. They were purportedly harvested by Chinese death squads, in retaliation for the Rape of Nanking. Elmer gave me the true lowdown. Chinese kids at Nightingale Junior High were the culprits. They robbed recently planted graves in Japanese graveyards. Dr. Lin Chung performed the decapitations and supervised the shrinking process.

  Thus, breakfast with Sheriff Gene. Bloody Marys, hangtown fry, and Emperor Tso’s flapjacks. Elmer, Bill, and I sat across from the Sheriff; he was three morning cocktails in and emitted a glow. His eyes clicked: Bill to Elmer to me. He already knew Bill and knew Elmer through Brenda—but what’s this young cooze doing here?

  Bill kicked things off. He’d sent the note requesting the sit-down and had braced Biscailuz in advance. Brusque Bill: the meeting pertains to Bev’s Switchboard.

  “We know you’ve got points in Bev’s, Sheriff. We’d be going the search-warrant route if that weren’t the case.”

  Biscailuz said, “I can read tea leaves. You’re talking about a raid.”

  Elmer butted in. “Nobody’s judging you for those points, boss. Everybody’s got operating costs. You know damn well that Brenda and me are letting Jack H. dip his beak.”

  Biscailuz winked at me. “Miss Lake’s got judgment written all over her. I know girl Bolsheviks when I see them.”

  I laughed and lit a cigarette. Bill lit up out of my pack.

  “There’s a great deal of seditious drop mail passing through Bev’s. I want to raid the premises and seize it. Wallace Jamie and the Ness family hold the deed to Bev’s, and a priest named Joe Hayes has a profit percentage. We’re not looking for publicity, and we’re not looking to turn this into indictments. We only want to depose Wallace Jamie, in order to turn leads on the klubhaus job and two related cases from ’31 and ’33.”

  Elmer butted in again. “I know you know Ed Satterlee, boss. A little birdie told me Ed was looking to hang a search subpoena on Bev’s, but you kiboshed it. Ed’s Fifth Column up the wazoo, to the extent that Mr. Hoover’s got him under house arrest. That’s the sort of shitheel who sends drop mail through Bev’s. We figure these here traitors are beset by factionalism, and Ed was looking to gain some sort of advantage with that subpoena plan.”

  The Sheriff drained his third cocktail. “Let’s see if I’m reading you right. This ‘we’ you keep mentioning is you two policemen and Miss Lake. You’re not proxies for the PD, which means you’re open to a little horse trading. Which means you’ll throw Uncle Clean Gene a bone.”

  Bill fumed. I kicked his
leg under the table. My message was Concede. We need him more than he needs us.

  “Ed Satterlee told Elmer that he’d accord him the opportunity to erase his own name on any Fed-probe recordings currently held in custody. I’ve been charged to erase recordings that might implicate Chief Horrall. With Satterlee suspended from duty, a new strategy to enter the evidence vault will have to be conceived and executed. If such a plan can be implemented, I’d enter the vault myself, and erase every single wire-recorded mention of your name.”

  Biscailuz winked at me. The novelty of a woman in the room floored him. Brenda wasn’t sure which way he bounced. He ordered girls out of the girl book. He kept a copy of the boy book handy.

  “That’s okay for starters, Bill. It takes care of me, but it doesn’t take care of mine. For what it’s worth, I like Wallace Jamie, and if he’s Fifth Column, I’m a Hottentot. Moreover, his Uncle Eliot will be mayor of Cleveland soon, and I want him to owe me. So, I won’t permit you to depose Wallace, but I will permit you to seize anything and everything on-site at Bev’s.”

  Elmer butted back in. “You ain’t said what you mean by ‘mine.’ ”

  “ ‘Mine’ means ‘me and all my deputies.’ ‘Mine’ means ‘erase every spool in Fed custody, to make damn sure me and mine don’t get smeared.’ ”

  Bill said, “It’s a deal.” Clean Gene dropped his eyeglass case and ducked below the table to retrieve it. He wanted to look up my skirt. I’d have to tell Brenda: the Sheriff veers toward girls.

  * * *

  —

  Bill and I tucked in at the Ambassador. We discussed the Lesnick burglary first thing.

  Doctor Saul hadn’t reported it. That much was sure. Bill threw feelers out at Beverly Hills PD. Elmer and Buzz robbed his office and desecrated it. Their wall artwork defamed the Kameraden. Saul Lesnick—j’accuse. We’re onto you and yours.