by James Ellroy
Mrs. Big Bob said, “This is wearing me thin. Bob, you get in there and phone-book that creep.”
I said, “Hush, now. You don’t get a show like this every day.”
Bill enacted deep befuddlement. I can’t piece this together, Mondo. I know you went to this German technical college. You’re educated, so you know all about the Greeks and all this other highbrow shit. I’ve read your green sheet, Mondo. You can’t be a Red and a Nazi at the same time. Any fool with a high-school education knows that much.
Üntermensch Bill baited the hook. Übermensch Mondo snapped up the bait.
“Here’s the thing about History, pendejo. Every so often someone comes around and explains that what’s what ain’t what. This is by way of saying that Salvy Abascal gave a talk at Dresden Poly. It was pro-Nazi, which wowed my little clique. He had this Jewish pal named Meyer Gelb, which conversely ticked us off. He explained the rudiments of totalitarianism, which allowed us to see that the Reds saw things the same way we did. He pointed out that Jew Hatred and Workers Unite was all the same shuck. Do you know what ‘prescience’ is, pendejo? It’s when you predict the future and it comes true, against all empirical evidence. Which is by way of saying that Salvy predicted this war we’re in, along with a U.S. and Russian victory, which necessitates the need for a potently inclusive new totalitarian alliance to surmount the inevitable postwar chaos and monkey-wrench the world’s new idiot taste for democracy.”
Bill said, “I read a Federal subversive summary. It described a conference, along the lines of what you just described. I’m wondering if you were there.”
“Of course I was there. I was there when they signed the Magna Carta and when Moses parted the Red Sea. I was there when your puto forefathers signed the Declaration of Interdependence. You’re wearing this look I’ve seen before, pendejo. You just figured out that what’s what ain’t what, and I’m not just some dumb pachuco.”
Bill said, “Do minutes for the conference exist?”
Díaz laughed. “They’re a myth. They’re like Das Kapital and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. They’re some jive that the great unwashed thinks is real.”
“The gold, Mondo? What about that? Is that just a pipe dream, too?”
“It’s all a pipe dream. It’s a nightmare, and nobody knows where the goddamn gold is. Ask Salvy and that cracker pal of his. For all I know, they cashed it in for S & H Green Stamps.”
Big Bob said, “Miss Lake’s right. You don’t get a show like this every day.”
125
(SAN FRANCISCO, 10:00 A.M., 4/9/42)
Blanchard crowed and groused. The Fed-probe acquittals. His domestic woes. He blew steam from Manzanar to Golden Gate Park.
“Whiskey Bill and Elmer J. That’s the word. They pulled some mischief in the Fed vault. Nobody doubts that Bill Parker’s smart. But he’s out in the open with Kay now, and that ticks me off.”
Ashida ignored him. They sat outside Kezar Stadium. Leander Frechette picked the spot. Leander will walk up. He’ll ask how things stand. They’ll trek memory lane.
The Alameda County Jail. Remember, Leander? You, Fritz Eckelkamp, and Wayne Frank Jackson. Your screwball alliance. You conceived a daring gold heist.
Blanchard arranged the meet. He called Frechette last night. Leander was affable. Blanchard assured him—this ain’t a roust.
It’s a waltz. He’ll know that. His criminal actions preceded all legal cutoff dates. How’s this shit stand now? That’s easy. Chaos has intervened.
Blanchard said, “Parker’s a pervdog. I respect him, but I don’t like him. He’s out to set the white man’s world record for entrapping college girls. First Kay, then Big Joan. The war put a bug up his ass. His libido’s overheated. He’s been running roughshod since Pearl.”
Ashida ignored him. Chaos has intervened. He sent the forged minutes out. Constanza Lazaro-Schmidt will receive them. Dudley Smith will read them. Dudley might note a grievous narrative lapse.
Elmer called him this morning. Elmer sobbed and begged forgiveness. He’d just heard a radio broadcast.
Eight dead in Kern County. Three sabotage attacks. Farmworker saboteurs. Mondo Díaz, in custody. Díaz, the ringleader. Wetbacks for the drudge work.
The report stunned Ashida. He’d interviewed Díaz at Hollenbeck Station. Elmer sobbed. He said he’d withheld crucial drift. The East L.A. sweep. Elmer and Buzz Meeks squeeze Frankie Carbajal. Frankie reveals the sabotage plan. He reveals the plan under duress.
Escaped wetbacks. All torch men. Salvador A. was behind it. Dud S. didn’t know shit. Elmer and Buzz withheld the lead. They’d gone rogue. The lead was their hole card. It’s their redneck mea culpa now. Eight people got blown up.
Elmer sobbed and hung up the phone. Kay called a few minutes later. She’d been up to Kern. Bill Parker braced Mondo Díaz. Mondo riffed dialectic and finked the deal out.
The Kameraden pulled the sabotage. Salvador A. ordered it. He’s Comrade Number One. That puto Irishman didn’t know shit.
Chaos intervenes. It’s hubris ascendant. Comrade Ashida perpetrates it. He plays a hunch based on a specious assumption. Salvador is not El Grande Jefe. Meyer Gelb is. The faux minutes proceed off that hunch. Comrade Ashida writes as Herr Apparatchik.
Herr Apparatchik defames Abascal. He’s a cholo chump out for the gold. Herr Apparatchik ignores Comrade Hanamaka’s lead. Hanamaka said the big boss is a “Mexican Stalinist.” Here’s a revised hunch. Abascal is that Stalinist.
The minutes go out. They are geared to spark two confrontations. Dudley versus Abascal, Dudley versus Gelb. Chaos intervenes. Dudley reads the minutes. They contradict breaking news. His wetbacks as saboteurs? Unknown to him? He might sense Salvador’s hand. He might sense Salvador as El Boss Führer. He might sense the document had been faked.
Chaos intervenes. Statie goons pop Dudley at his dope ranch. Dick Carlisle shot that dizzy dish to Lee Blanchard. Dudley called Jack Horrall. Chief Jack pulled strings and got him released. Dudley’s on the loose now. He’s a gone-rogue Army major. He’ll probably run to Constanza. He’ll be with her when the minutes arrive.
Herr Apparatchik. Née Comrade Ashida. He sent the minutes out precipitously. He demanded no money. He disregarded consequences. He’s culpable here.
Elmer’s culpable. Buzz is culpable. They should have reported the sabotage lead. Kay’s the most culpable. She’s their La Jefa and queen bee. She bends men who want to fuck her to her impervious will. She assessed him as a man who declines to fuck women and adroitly massaged his love for Dudley Smith. The minutes have gone out. Dudley will know that Comrade Ashida forged them. He has the skill. No one else does. Dudley will know that he betrayed him.
Chaos intervenes. They’re closing in on the klubhaus killer. It seems like small recompense. Jean Staley and brother Robby. Johnny Shinura, curio broker. Johnny’s the Jap sword man. Who’s the queer jazzman? Who’s the woman who got raped?
A clean solve looms. The details remain uncertain. Chaos may subsume all resolution. Winner take nothing—if he forfeits Dudley Smith’s love.
Nannies pushed strollers by. Vendors pushed food carts. Storm clouds whooshed overhead.
Blanchard nudged him. “You got tears in your eyes, Hideo.”
“I thought I could have something both ways, but I forgot to consider the price.”
“Welcome to the world, son. Our friend Kay taught me that selfsame thing, quite a while back.”
* * *
—
They walked and talked. Kezar to the rose garden, Stanyan Street to Fell. Ladies pushing strollers gawked them. It was relative size more than race.
Ashida was small and slight. Leander loomed high and blocked out the sun. Folks called him “Skyscraper” and the “One-Man Eclipse.”
He confirmed Dr. Death’s chronology. He confirmed the cabal’s chain of command. Salvy was
the Stalinist and Top Dog Comrade. Meyer Gelb deferred to him.
Leander was affable. He worked as a longshoreman. He eschewed agitation and indulged a yen for 459 PC. He had a wife and kid here in Frisco and a wife and three kids in L.A. He kept in mail-drop touch with select comrades. He refused to name names.
They bought ice-cream bars and lounged on the grass. Blanchard lounged twenty yards back. He was the bodyguard. Ashida ran the Q & A.
“Hanamaka told me the gold has lain fallow for some time. Gelb and Abascal are the only ones who know where it is.”
Leander shook his head. “I’ve never known Comrade Kyoho to be mistaken about anything, but I think he’s wrong here. I think Wayne Frank and the Reverend Mimms might be able to give you a more recent accounting.”
“Why?”
“The Rev wanted to repo the gold, and I can’t say that I blame him. I’d call him the first man among us who wised up to the way life plain old is. He’d come to see the Kameraden as a bunch of treacherous shitbirds who’d blow the whole world up if they got half a chance. All that 1931 idealism and commitment got to be ancient history, and the Rev wanted his fair share of the gold, just like any other properly self-interested man in your run-of-the-mill democracy. He heard that the Sinarquistas and some of their satellite thugs were looking for a clubhouse rental, so he had Link Rockwell rent them the 46th Street place. Link stayed on and did some infiltration. The Rev figured Link might get some leads on the gold there, which he sure as hell did. He heard Salvy and Wayne Frank took hold of the gold, not Comrade Gelb. That’s as far as the Rev takes the story, because he always busts out laughing then.”
Ashida said, “That’s all you know? They took possession of the gold, and that’s it?”
Leander winked. “The Rev’s got the storytelling prowess. He can surely tell you more.”
Ashida let it go. Leander ran intractable. He held his hole cards tight.
“Jean Staley. Her brother, Robby. A Japanese curio peddler named Johnny Shinura. A purportedly homosexual jazz musician. He’s tall and blond, and he has a female companion, purportedly very nervous and roughly thirty years of age. The three klubhaus victims purportedly raped her.”
Leander tossed his ice-cream stick and wiped his hands on the grass. A stroller lady strolled by. She gawked the jig and the Jap.
“Jean’s brother was a homo, for what that’s worth. Johnny S. was bughouse crazy, but you must already know that. I don’t know any woman who got raped, but the jazz quiff has got to be Chuckie Duquesne.”
126
(LOS ANGELES, 9:00 A.M., 4/10/42)
Ruth practiced. She played Sibelius and lit the whole courtyard. He recognized composers now. He heard concerto strains out here on the street.
Elmer fought the jimjams. He’d had the sweats and frets since he got the word. Eight Kern County dead. Him and Buzz could have stopped it. They held it back and covered their backsides.
He sobbed to Kay and Hideo. He sobbed to Buzz. He sobbed himself into these frets. He sat in his sled and waited out Sibelius. Don’t interrupt Ruth. She’ll bite your head off. She’s caught the muse.
She fed her lovers cues. Morning practice meant Get Out. Elmer sat in his sled. He had a clear courtyard view. Some geek will exit her bungalow. Ruth sustained heavy bed traffic. Kay called her “relentless” and “egalitarian.”
Elmer fought the frets. He fretted up the Kern County dead and Meyer Gelb. Buzz found Comrade Meyer. Buzz conceived a bold approach and pin-mapped that shitheel.
The hump lived in L.A. The hump had to. The hump attended Otto Klemperer’s parties. He always arrived alone. Joan’s diary stated that. How’d Gelb get to the parties? Let’s try taxicabs.
Buzz called the Maestro. He laid out a line of officious shit and coaxed a list of party dates. He canvassed cab dispatchers then. He had the party dates and the Maestro’s address. He checked evening pickup logs for dates going back to Pearl Harbor. He checked sixteen cab companies. Company seventeen—tilt.
He tagged seven parties and seven pickups in Beverly Hills. The Simon’s Drive-in at Wilshire and Linden. It’s a neutral pickup spot. Comrade Gelb’s cautious. Comrade Gelb must live nearby.
Buzz tagged seven pickups. Buzz tagged the same hackie three of those times. Buzz braced the cat and lubed him. The hackie had good recollection. He remembered this guy. The guy had burn-scarred hands.
Buzz pounded pavement then. He made Gelb for an apartment-house dweller. The blocks south of Charleville were all house blocks. That restricted his range. He schlepped Wilshire to Charleville, Charleville to Beverly Drive. He entered apartment-house foyers. He scanned mailbox slots. He got no Meyer Gelbs and no hinky M.G.s. That approach tapped out. He ran block-to-block stakeouts then.
He car-perched and peeped doorways on Linden. He saw Gelb on stakeout night #3.
We got him pin-mapped. What’s next? That’s obvious. We kidnap him and turn on the heat.
Elmer eyeballed Ruth’s bungalow. He had peeper tendencies. He liked to perch and watch. He saw nifty shit that way.
Sibelius diminuendoed. Babs Stanwyck breezed out Ruth’s door. Note her wet hair and love-struck demeanor. Woo-woo! Round Heel Ruth rides both ways!
Babs breezed to her boss Packard coupe and peeled northbound. Elmer breezed into the courtyard. Ruth sat on her steps. She looked flustered and distractified.
“Sergeant Elmer has once again been lurking. It is a leitmotif with him. He lurks to allay his restlessness and to sate his curiosities. Sergeant Elmer is a voyeur. He should move to Berlin and join the Gestapo.”
Elmer yukked. Ruth had that mordant streak. It played off-kilter now. She still played distractified.
“I liked the Sibelius.”
“There was nothing to like. You are an undiscerning listener. Barn-dance music is more your métier.”
Elmer sat down beside her. Their arms brushed. He felt tremors. Round Heel Ruth, electrizized.
“You seem shook up, sweetie. You’d think a sleepover with Babs would have you all pacified.”
Ruth lit a cigarette. “I was at the Musicians’ Local on Vine Street all night. I filled in for an absent first violin and recorded the third Bartók Quartet. Babs came by to pick up a book I’d borrowed, and to wash her hair. She enjoys my shampoo, more than she appreciates my prowess. You are ever the policeman, Elmer. You attribute motive in a most paranoic way.”
Elmer laughed. “Let’s hit the hay. It’s been too long, and I’ve missed you.”
Ruth X-ray-eyed him. “You’ve been crying. Your face is flushed and mottled, and your beady eyes are bloodshot. Am I the source of your tears? I would think a man as promiscuous as you would engage a woman such as I with more distanced affections.”
Elmer teared up. Not that much. He was done in and sobbed out.
“I withheld a confession. Eight people died. I’m in some shit I can’t step out of, in more ways than I can count.”
Ruth flicked her cigarette. It hit a wet grass strip and fizzled.
“Scheiss, eh? Are you in the scheiss as the Koenigs, Sandor, and I seem to be? We are facing a Federal deportation order, my callow friend. The lawyer Otto secured for us explained the motive behind it, so I will explain it to you. Your Mr. Hoover is perturbed, because our names were mentioned in a memorandum pertaining to extortion and an FBI agent under house arrest. Expulsion from the United States. Does not my scheiss exceed your scheiss, mein herr?”
Extortion. House arrest. That meant Ed the Fed Satterlee.
“I didn’t come here to brawl with you, love. I didn’t show up to compare notes on who’s got it worse, either.”
Ruth said, “You have blood on your hands. Allow me to commiserate, and add that it is not Jewish blood, and not the blood of three hundred.”
“Are we going for volume here? Is Jewish blood any better than plain old white and Mexican blood?
”
Ruth wheeled and slapped him. She knocked off his hat. Her nails raked his cheek and drew blood.
* * *
—
Buzz said, “I’m going to kill him. Dudley Liam Smith, muerto. It’s the only way this deal makes any sense.”
Elmer relit a cigar. “This deal has never made sense, and it never will. There’s too much to it, and it goes back too far. It’s not supposed to make sense. Kay told me that, and if Kay says something, it’s true.”
Daylight stakeout. Elmer’s sled. Four eyes on 562 South Linden. This four-flat apartment house. This pink mock château. Gelb had the upstairs-left spot.
Buzz relit a cigar. “I rented a motel room, up the Ridge Route. Nice and secluded. We’ll put the blocks to El Comrade there.”
Elmer said, “Bring your pet scorpion. One look at him, and Gelb’ll shit his britches.”
Buzz scoped Elmer’s cheek. “Ellen clawed you, right? I’ve seen a couple of her pictures. She’s got that caged-tigress thing going.”
Elmer tiger-growled. “Girlfriend #4 scraped me. She’s your jungle cat.”
Buzz said, “I mixed a terp and chloral hydrate cocktail. We’ll sedate Gelb and toss him in the trunk.”
Elmer blew smoke rings. “You don’t seem too upset about those dead folks up in Kern.”
Buzz said, “Easy come, easy go. It’s not like losing your own near and dear.”
* * *
—
Elmer dozed. He dipped to some torrid locale. Jungle Cat Ruth scratched him. Jungle Cat Annie loved him. Jungle Cats Brenda and Ellen tossed him out in the rain. Jungle Cat Kay took him home to her glade.
Some stray cat nudged him. Elmer blinked and opened his eyes.
Buzz went Looky, looky. He pointed across the street and up. Frankie Carbajal ambled toward Comrade Gelb’s place. He wore a Sir Guy shirt and loose flannels. Note the creepy-crawler tennis shoes and gun bulge.