Джеймс Эллрой - This Storm

Hatred fuels me now. It fuels this letter I’m writing. I now pass my hatred along to Hideo Ashida.

I described the Saul Lesnick — Annie Staples misadventure. Bill and Elmer tossed Doctor Saul in the Lincoln Heights drunk tank and let him stew for six long hours. They hauled him to the City Hall DB then. I observed the interrogation through a wall mirror; a wall-mounted speaker served up sound. Lesnick vividly confirmed the Kameraden ’s postwar strategy and stoutly defended the grand ideals of enlightened dictatorship. Bill and Elmer let him blather. Lesnick laid out no less than the world as he saw it. It was one creepy credo. Sid Hudgens would label it “dippy dialectic” and a “miasmic manifesto.” It featured the doctor’s eugenic rationale for slaughtering infants. It ballyhooed Hitler’s Norse breeding camps. It included a stirring defense of the Moscow show trials and Stalin’s mass execution of deviationists and perceived traitors. Stalin’s agrarian purges and Hitler’s assault on the Warsaw Ghetto Jews were plain poppycock. Doctor Saul voiced an intense distaste for one Sergeant E. V. Jackson. He told Elmer that he’d be castrated and sold into slave labor once the comrades took over the world. Elmer turned to the mirror and winked at me.

Doctor Saul talked himself out; Bill got the interrogation down to brass tacks. He asked the questions. Elmer hovered and tapped a phone book on the sweatbox table. Lesnick gulped and credibly snitched.

He’d heard rumors about the gold but possessed no specific information. He was conversant with the Kameraden ’s mail drop and microdot shenanigans. He did not know who the prior Führers were and did not know who the current Führer is. He knew Meyer Gelb and Jean Staley. He did not know that Gelb was once Fritz Eckelkamp and did not know where Gelb hid out. He described Ed Satterlee as an apostolic theoretical Trotskyite and committed Marxist. Ed was the Kameraden ’s fix-it man. Lesnick professed ignorance of the klub haus. He had never been to the klub haus. He did not know Kyoho Hanamaka. He had never met Wendell Rice, George Kapek, and Archie Archuleta.

Bill released Lesnick. Go, shitbird. Twist in the wind. Describe your ordeal to your comrades. I watched Lesnick weave through the City Hall lobby. He bumped into an old friend on his way out the door.

The man was the L.A. Bürgermeister of the Negro Nazi League, and was known to pimp colored girls to DA Bill McPherson. The long-lost soulmates embraced. I overheard their conversation. Lesnick suggested lunch; the Bürgermeister suggested Kwan’s. He went way back with Ace. Ace owned a sweatshop that enslaved eight-year-old kids. The kids stitched the League’s banners and armbands.

The Fifth Column is everyone. Hideo Ashida told me that. It was New Year’s Eve. Hideo had just returned from Venice. Joan Conville plowed a car full of wetbacks and left six dead. Bill Parker put the fix in. He had the hots for the big redhead. It’s all one story, you—

We know most of it now, Hideo. There’s a good deal still to be learned. It entails your betrayal of Dudley Smith. I command your loyalty in this moment. You know what he is. You know this is true.

Bill and Elmer are set to raid Bev’s Switchboard. Do you recall the speech I gave two weeks after Pearl Harbor? Pershing Square was packed. I decried the Japanese internment. You were beaten for being there and being a Jap. I baited the crowd. I told them their options were do everything or do nothing. I’m telling you that now.

Sensei Hanamaka, aka “The Mummy” and “Dr. Death.” He’s faltering. He’s entered an implosive state.

His grin’s stretching wider. His fangs protrude more. He’s caving in. He’ll die soon. He’ll become a Jap Shrunken Head.

Interview #3. It reprised 1 and 2. The salve and burn stink. The visitor’s chair and the hospital bed.

Ashida said, “I’d like to hear your impressions of Wendell Rice and George Kapek.”

Sensei coughed. His fluid bag drained. Sledgehammer dope hit his veins.

“They were second-generation rightist. Rice’s father was in the Silver Shirts. Kapek’s father is a gauleiter in rural Czechoslovakia. I saw them the first time in the winter of 1939. They were chauffeuring America Firsters to a Nazi-themed party in Brentwood. They served well in the manner of henchmen, as evinced by their minor roles in moving illegals under the aegis of Carlos Madrano. Such employment continued into the era of José Vasquez-Cruz, abutting the era of your mentor, Dudley Smith.”

Ashida flinched. He hasn’t called Dudley. He’s put it off repeatedly. Three crucial interviews. What to tell/what to omit/what to obfuscate.

“Again, were they homosexual? The crime seems to be homosexual in its origins.”

“I would not call them homosexual. I would call them fetishistic. Their fetishism was fueled by dope and liquor, along with the trinkets that Archie Archuleta procured for them in Little Tokyo. What would you pay for a slaughter sword deployed at the Rape of Nanking? Your mentor, Dudley Smith, might well be described as a fetishist. Juan Pimentel considered him such.”

Dudley was. Dudley is. Kay’s faux Claire missive. Fetishism implies the lavender look. Dudley’s “effete eye for callow young men.”

Slaughter swords. The Jap sword man. His queer white boy friend. Confirmations accrue and overlap.

“You appear to be deep in thought, Dr. Ashida. I consider it peculiar that you are not taking notes. Did Major Smith tell you not to? I could see where he might want to avoid a public record of our talks.”

Ashida bristled. Don’t torque me, Tojo. He’d heard Elmer J. tell a Jap suspect that.

“Major Smith is a close friend, and my former commanding officer. I consider all his suggestions, but do not consider them commands.”

Hanamaka leered. Opportunist Ashida. Race traitor Ashida. The white man’s lapdog. He heels at Major Smith’s command.

“Let’s return to the trinkets. What were the other types that Archuleta procured, in addition to the swords you mentioned?”

Hanamaka said, “Torture devices. Vile ones. Suits of armor in the shape of Japanese soldiers, fitted with interior spikes meant to inflict horrible death on the wearer. I would call devices such as these militaristically homosexual. Archuleta brought a sampling of them by the klub haus one day while I was there. He said he was the middleman for a ‘fruit’ who sold them to ‘strange-o types’ he encountered on the jazz strip, although the ‘fruit’ did his primary business through the U.S. mail. Archuleta mentioned the ‘fruit’s’ sister very briefly. She was the purported brains of this mail-order business. The sister visited the klub haus one night. I recall her vividly.”

Elmer on Jean Staley. Jean and her “froufrou” kid brother. Robby, ex-jailbird and would-be actor. Not a musician.

We’re up against prior descriptions. The would-be killer’s tall and blond. Jean Staley is short and dark-haired. A tall blond brother seems unlikely. Archuleta’s fruit and the queer-white-boy killer? Probably separate men.

Hanamaka coughed. Blood dripped down his chin. Ashida cracked his evidence kit and pulled his Jean Staley mug shot.

He flashed it. Hanamaka nodded yes. His ID was conclusive. It tied Robby Staley to the Jap sword man. It tied Robby to the queer white boy, once-removed.

Hanamaka yawned and shuddered. The dope jolt had depleted him. Metamorphosis. Here comes your Jap Shrunken Head.

“I think I know you now, Dr. Ashida. One thing continues to perplex me, though. Do you consider yourself Japanese or American?”