Джеймс Эллрой - This Storm

“You’re remote tonight, baby. You’re wearing that crown of thorns, as my preacher daddy used to say.”

Saul said, “You wouldn’t understand. I can’t blame you for what you don’t know. You’re game, but you’re not enlightened.”

Elmer yukked. Annie winked at the see-thru. Old Saul sighed.

“Hoodlums laid waste to my office. They stole valuable recordings and smeared jingoistic slogans on the walls. I can’t go to the Beverly Hills Police or the FBI, and I certainly can’t go to my friend Ed Satter—”

Saul stopped cold. Annie tweaked on Satterlee. Old Saul tweaked her tweak. Elmer tweaked both tweaks.

Parker said, “He nailed her reaction.”

Elmer went Yep. Old Saul eyeballed Annie. He pushed off his pillow and zoom-lensed her.

“Do you know Ed?”

Annie shrugged. What’s with this Ed? I don’t know this Ed whoever.

“I tricked with Eddie Cantor once. It was after this Save the Jews wingding. He’s the only Ed I know.”

Parker said, “She’s not convincing.”

Elmer went Yep.

Old Saul jumped out of bed. He was stooped and chicken-chested. His cashew dick flop-flopped.

He orbed the walls. He patted the walls. He poked at wall junctures. He’s an old CP hand. He knows from wall bugs and honey traps.

He poked wall moldings. He pulled a spackled wire off a baseboard and yanked it out from under a rug. Annie jumped out of bed. She faced the see-thru, buck naked. She flashed this fetching Oh shit look.

Old Saul caught it. He dropped the wire and went for Annie. Elmer and Parker jumped.

They tore out of the crawl space. They tumbled into the bedroom and dog-piled old Saul. They floor-pinned him. He sissy-kicked and flailed. Annie snagged the sap in Elmer’s waistband.

She applied a good grip. She whipped shots at old Saul’s genitalia. Old Saul screamed. Elmer gassed the floor show. Annie yelled “You Fucking Traitor” roughly ten zillion times.

Fat Boy unfurled a portable screen and set up his projector. Dudley cut the lights. His suite subbed for Grauman’s Chinese.

Fats boomeranged. He returned to L.A. and shot straight back to Ensenada. He supplied that klub haus lead. He’d retrieved a memory. It spurred this return visit.

Orson met a fruit kid on his goodwill tour. The kid attended the Walpurgisnacht party. He was a jazz musician. He knew another fruit kid. That kid attended klub haus jam sessions. That kid was a jazzman. That kid bragged up the klub haus snuffs. That kid and “some Red-fasco woman” snuffed Rice, Kapek, and Archuleta.

It was secondhand drift. It comprised a hot lead, regardless. It supplanted prior leads. It confirmed the queer white boy and Jap sword man.

Here’s Orson’s memory. Orson met that other kid. The kid appeared in the Walpurgisnacht smut film. He’d bragged up his Jap sword-licker friend and some darktown clubhouse. It had to be him.

Hence, Orson returns. Hence, this home movie. Roll it, Fats.

Dudley pulled a chair up. El Gordo adjusted the film spools. He wore Bermuda shorts and a loud Hawaiian shirt.

“Your man’s the clarinet player. When the camera pans to the woodwind quintet, you’ll see him.”

Dudley cued Welles. Lights, camera, action. Wagner hit the sound track. Trumpets and low strings. It’s Götterdämmerung. Dig the bleak intercessional strains.

A title card: “Berlin, ’29.” It denotes bleak atop bleak. Here’s Alban Berg’s Lulu and grainy stock footage.

It’s a street riot. It’s Reds versus Brownshirts. There’s Marxist banners and swastikas ablaze. Bullyboys wield two-by-fours. The Brownshirts outnumber the Reds. It’s a rout. Blood flows in crisp black-&-white.

There’s a quick cut. Weill and Brecht replace Berg. There’s “Mackie Messer.” Lotte Lenya warbles it.

Bam! — there’s a new title card. “Near Munich, 6-30-34.” Bam! — we’re outside a country inn. There’s a dumb paper moon. The inn looks one-dimensional. We’re on a cheap studio set.

Four black-clad SS men approach the door. Two men are Negro. Two men look Samoan. Fat Boy Welles provides surreal laffs.

Schubert usurps The Threepenny Opera. It’s a woodwind quintet. We’re inside the inn. There’s a Nazi-garbed ensemble. Three string men and one oboe. The queer boy’s on clarinet. It’s his skin flute in lieu of hard flesh.

Welles said, “That’s him.”

“Him.” Their triple-snuff suspect. He’s blond. He’s innocuous. He’s lanky, and seems to be tall.

A quick cut. Auf Wiedersehen, Schubert. “Mack the Knife” returns.

We’re in a small bedroom. We’re peeping an all-boy bacchanal. It’s a daisy chain. The lads wear Brownshirts and nothing else. They’re cinched groin-to-buttocks. They pump and gesticulate. There’s pelvic thrusts twenty boys long.

The SS men enter the room and shoot them. They employ toy Lugers. Cap-gun pops hit the sound track. The daisy chain collapses. The bugger boys disengage.

Dudley studied the film. He’d seen stray cuts at the party. He recalled none of it now. He was gone on hop then. He was flat sober now.

The screen blurs. “Mackie Messer” goes garbled. Wagner rides again. It’s Das Rheingold. More trumpets and more low strings.

The screen unblurs. The daisy chain replicates. It’s men and women now. They’re linked groin-to-mouth.

The camera cuts away. Walter Pidgeon appears and struts as Adolf Hitler. He’s Homerically hung. He rubs his toothbrush mustache. Claire De Haven kneels and gobbles his schvantz.

I’m writing a letter to Hideo Ashida now. I will hand-deliver it to Manzanar. I will include a wire recording of Ed Satterlee’s phone chat with Mike Breuning. I may send the second recording to Dudley Smith.

It’s beginning to cohere. Joan’s “all one story” is careening toward final explication. Hideo recounted his first interview with Kyoho Hanamaka; second and third interviews may well have occurred. My letter will urge Hideo to move beyond mere dissembling and omission. I will demand that he repudiate and fully betray his dear Dudley.

I’m exhausted. I visited Claire at Terry Lux’s retreat last night; we gabbed until dawn and had steak and eggs in the lounge. Jim Davis sat a few tables over; a male nurse attended him. Comrade Jim is faltering. He had trouble lifting his fork.

Claire’s morphine cure is proceeding. She talks and smokes incessantly and rails against her once-dear Dudley. She reads the Bible and obscure prayer books and often coils a rosary around one hand and forms that hand into a fist. Dear Claire. She showed me letters that Beth Short and Joan Klein have sent her. I studied the girls’ cursive styles and unformed sentence structures. Dudley has seven daughters; these two are his favorites. Their expressed condemnation would dismay and perhaps bitterly wound him. I would, of course, craft both texts.

Elmer and Bill leaned on Sid Hudgens. They imposed a gag order on Sid’s scandal-sheet machinations and secured his subscriber list. I will write the text that Sid’s 461 paid subscribers will read. The sheet will be sent to key SIS personnel and ranking officers in the Mexican State Police. Every known comrade/ Kamerad will receive the sheet; it will go out to Jack Horrall, notable Feds, Archbishop Cantwell and L.A.’s papal high brass. It will go out to Dudley himself. I will smear Dudley Smith in the Salacious Sidster’s trademark style. I will instigate insidious ink. Everything that I write will be true.