Джеймс Эллрой - This Storm

The Chapman Park flop was booked tonight. Cary Grant, Butch Stanwyck, and Ruth Mildred Cressmeyer were tricking with “Ten-Inch” Tony Mangano.

Tony tricked switcheroosky. He turned Ruth Mildred straight in one-night allotments. Ruthie was a disbarred physician and scrape doc. Ruthie was tight with Dudley Smith. Ruthie recruited lez girls for Brenda.

Fourteen peepers had booked seats for the show. The peepers peeped anonymous. They paid fifty scoots a head. Butch and Tony commanded top dollar.

Also, on tonight’s roster:

Mickey Rooney booked a girl. Likewise John “Cricket Dick” Huston. Eight girls for a USC frat bash. Six boys for a Brentwood hen party.

Elmer signed off the call. The phone rang and startled him. He snagged the new call.

“Talk to me.”

“It’s Kay, Elmer.”

“Well, then. Some weather, huh? It’s like the flood in the Bible. You think it’ll ever stop?”

Kay laughed. “I didn’t call to discuss the weather.”

Elmer laughed. “Well, it sure ain’t the war, because we hashed all that out the last time we talked.”

“Don’t be a C.T. You know what I’m angling for.”

“Oh, yeah? And what’s that, pray tell?”

Kay stage-sighed. “Come on, Elmer. Give.”

Elmer stage-sighed. “The party? The big redhead with Bill Parker? That catch your eye?”

“Now, he gets to it.”

“Hard not to notice, huh?”

Kay laughed. “I’ve known William Henry Parker the Third for twenty-seven days, and during that time he has repeatedly cast his eyes about for tall, red-haired, naval-officer women.”

Elmer said, “You’re counting the days since you’ve met him. What’s that tell you about yourself?”

Kay said, “You’re deliberately tweaking me.”

Elmer said, “I don’t know no more than you do, except how much you love that man.”

Kay blew him a kiss and hung up. The ten-second phone call was her standard MO.

Elmer yawned and kicked his shoes off. He got out the Vice clerk’s list. He studied Tommy G.’s address book and put shit together.

St. Vibiana’s Church. He decoded that one already. It’s the home of papal poobah J. J. Cantwell. He’s the Dudster’s old pal.

The Deutsches Haus. 15th and Union. Pro-Nazi hot spot. Kraut regalia for sale.

Let’s backtrack. We’re in Tommy’s hotel room. There’s that tattoo stencil. It features swastikas and an “SQ” circled by snakes. The “SQ” snake job was embroidered on the late Eddie Leng.

More names, more phone numbers. Huey Cressmeyer. A Hollywood phone exchange. That’s no surprise. He’s Ruth Mildred’s perv-o son and a Dudster informant. C-town tattle: Huey and Tommy were reform-school chums.

Monsignor Joseph Hayes. A West L.A. exchange. More C-town drift: Tommy and “some priest” travel the Hershey Highway.

Jean Clarice Staley. A Hollywood exchange. That rates a Huh? She’s a woman — but Tommy runs Greek. He rapes women — he don’t call them.

That hot-box pay phone. It’s right upside the Herald. It’s drilled for slug calls. Plus this head-scratcher. It rates a big Huh?

Fourteen pay phones. All down in Baja. All in Ensenada. All eighty miles south of T.J.

Let’s backtrack. Tommy ran wetbacks for Carlos Madrano. That Spanish-language book in Tommy’s room.

Head-scratchers. Brain-broilers. Code 3 Alert. Look out, son. You’re brushing upside Dudley Smith.

Rain kicked up hard. Elmer walked to the front window and looked out. He saw fresh mud slides. He saw storm crews on Crescent Heights.

Let’s backtrack. The Griffith Park slide, the old-new DOA. Let’s backtrack. The 1933 fire.

It’s October 3. It’s 103 degrees in L.A. Santa Ana winds change course. CCC workers are out cutting brush. Wayne Frank’s among them.

Thirty-four men die. It gets ambiguous here. There’s sloppy rosters and files and fly-by-night work crews. Who died and who didn’t? There’s un-ID’d bodies. There’s Wayne Frank — ID’d off old dental charts.

Arson or not? It gets ambiguous here. It’s the Depression. There’s Red revolt in the vox populi. Garment workers agitating. Labor marches. Kreepy Kremlin prophecies. Fires, tidal waves, storms.

Elmer dug out his scrapbook. Wayne Frank pix consumed four pages. Wayne Frank in a boxer’s pose, 1924. Wayne Frank in a Klan sheet, 1926. Elmer V. in Marine green, 1930. Wayne Frank giving him the horns.

Wayne Frank was taller and handsomer. Wayne Frank was smarter and meaner. Elmer V. was slow to rile. He could kick big brother’s hate-dog ass all day long.

What made Wayne Frank tick? Nobody knew. Wayne Frank was whimsical. Wayne Frank imagined impossible shit and convinced himself that it was true. Wayne Frank developed this big gold-heist fixation.

May ’31. A mint-train job. A Frisco-to-L.A. gold-transfer run. Gold bars. A small number. Triple-locked in a cage. Shackled passengers under guard. San Quentin convicts bound for retrials in L.A.

Chaos attends a track switch in Monterey County. All eight cons escape. Seven men are hunted down. They’re shot on sight faaaaast. One man remains at large still.

More grief. A downed-track snafu two hours south. Chaos atop chaos. Guards and crew succumb to frayed nerves. The heist occurs then. The heister or heisters are smart. Just one box’s worth of bars leaves the train.

The train treks south. Santa Barbara’s a coal stop. The theft is discovered then. Suspicion falls on Leander Frechette. He’s the train’s odd-job man. He’s dim-witted, Negro, fucking-A strong. The Santa Barbara cops posit a single-o heister. He walked the bars off the train two or three at a clip. It had to be Frechette. Nobody else had the strength. Some body bossed him. He was too dumb to concoct the plan himself.

The Santa Barbara cops beat Frechette baaaaad. He refused to confess. A colored preacher with cop clout intervened. Frechette was released. The case fizzled out. It went to open-file status, stale bread.

Wayne Frank hoarded news clips and treasure-magazine pieces. He studied the heist and worked himself up to fever pitch. Wayne Frank, the dreamer. Wayne Frank, the fantasist. What makes Wayne Frank tick? He’s a news-clip hoarder and treasure-magazine collector. He’s an all-time fabulist.

“Oh, Lord. He’s in a fugue state. He’s got his scrapbook out, and he’s gone stir-crazy from the rain.”

Elmer flinched and spilled his highball. Brenda walked soft. She snuck into her own house. It was some trick on high heels.

“You know what Kay says. ‘Keep referring to me in the third person. It sends me.’ ”

Brenda shut the door. “Katherine Ann. She’s the first thing out of your mouth. She’s the only one you’ll ever love, in case you ain’t figured it out.”

Elmer checked his watch. “It’s almost noon. The party must have run long.”

“I spent some time with Jack. I’ll tell you, so you won’t ask. It was a paid date, and Jack said he wants you to run bag to some city councilmen. Him and Fletch got worries on that phone-tap probe. They’re buying forgiveness in advance.”

Elmer smiled. “Let’s hit the kip. We ain’t spent time there in a coon’s age.”

Brenda said, “The weekend, maybe. You know I do my best work by appointment.”

Elmer scoped the world at large. Hard rain hit, palm trees wiggled, palm fronds flew.

“There’s too much going on out there. God’s telling us something.”

Brenda said, “You’re at loose ends, Citizen. You’re looking to louse something up and put yourself in a jam. Go see Ellen and get your ashes hauled. You’ll do us both a favor.”

Ellen tapped his forehead. “You’re broody. Something’s going on in there. And don’t tell me it’s the Fate of Mankind, because you’re not that deep.”