Джеймс Эллрой - This Storm

He got out and stretched his legs. He unholstered his piece. He weaved and saw wisps, wisps, and wisps.

The lab door flew open. The sound echoed loud. Three Blackshirt Staties walked toward him. He smelled burnt-almond fumes.

Boots scuffed gravel behind him. The Wolf growled, out of nowhere. A wet rag smothered him and scoured out the wisps.

Stench. Mildew and urine. Words — off to what we call left. Cognizance. Brain function. Spanish words. What we call language. Crackle sounds. What we call radio.

“Bombing attacks.”

“Suspected sabotage.”

“Crop-farm acreage.”

“San Joaquin Valley.”

Cognizance. Scent. Of blood and entrails, of rancid fur. His face burned. Burnt almonds means a chloroform tincture. That’s brain function. It’s the will to forge thought and isolate sensation. It’s the ability to link sensation to thought.

Dudley Liam Smith, you’ve been sandbagged. Dudley Liam Smith — you took a nap.

He opened his eyes. He saw four squashed rats and his own bloody hands. Entrails and fur. Bite marks on his wrists. He’d squashed them himself.

The Wolf licked his face. It revived him. The Wolf supplied a travelogue.

We’re in the Statie barracks jail. Blackshirts commandeered your biz fronts. Japs, dope, wetbacks. You’ve been usurped.

He kissed the Wolf and thanked him. The Wolf told him to torture and kill Meyer Gelb. Herr Gelb has the gold. Es la verdad. Kill Juan Lazaro-Schmidt. Constanza will leave us if you don’t.

Cognizance. Brain function. They stole his gun, his watch, his money. He’s on a bare cement floor. Cognizance. Language. “Sabotage,” “San Joaquin Valley.” Brain function. The ability to extrapolate.

You’re still exhausted. You remain impaired. Let the Wolf explicate here.

Sid Hudgens spoke la verdad. Salvy Abascal has betrayed you. He smuggled saboteurs in with that last batch of wets. It’s why he refused to ride north. Salvy es El Grand Jefe de los Kameraden. You are a dupe of your own sentimentality. Trust wolves before you trust dashing and fawning young men.

The Crash Squad HQ stood abandoned. Daily briefings had been discontinued; the report boards drooped off the walls. The once-hot cop murder job now ran parallel to cases going back eleven years. Attrition and factionalism had decimated the squad proper. Mike Lyman’s back room returned to what it once was: a rendezvous spot for married cops and their girlfriends.

Like Bill Parker and me, drinking highballs and dining on cheese puffs. Meeting in cop-assigned places. Utilizing them as love shacks and hole-ups, where we hashed out What the hell is all this?

Elmer was off somewhere; Buzz notched an address for Meyer Gelb and was staking out the location. He talked to that bail bondsman in San Francisco; the man kicked loose Leander Frechette’s address. The DA granted Joe Hayes immunity. The Japanese sword man was ID’d as Johnny Shinura. The invert white boy had a gal pal. Hideo Ashida considered them viable klub haus suspects. Kyoho Hanamaka was dead. Hideo lied to Dudley. Sensei Death told me nothing. Hideo crossed the line over to God’s side.

It might all be breaking. It might dwindle down to dashed leads and misinformation. None of us knew.

We had the back room to ourselves. I wanted to head to our Ambassador spot and make love. Bill wanted to hash out What the hell is all this?

I said, “Hideo wants to interview Frechette. It’s part and parcel of his forged-document deal.”

Bill said, “We’ll have Lee bodyguard him. He can’t go to San Francisco alone.”

“Hideo called me this morning. He’s completed the minutes, and he’ll be sending them along to the Lazaro-Schmidt woman.”

Bill just nodded. I dug through his pants pockets and pulled out his cigarettes. It was a regular routine of ours; Bill always gasped.

“Say something, please. It’s a nice breezy night, and I’m antsy.”

Bill smiled. “Here’s two observations. First, you know how to get a man’s attention. Second, I need to have a talk with Buzz Meeks. He most certainly intends to kill Dudley, and I have to dissuade him, before he goes off half-cocked.”

I laughed. The Teletype clacked and rolled paper; Bill got up and detached the sheet. He read through it and crossed himself.

“It’s from Fourth Interceptor. They’re reporting multiple incidents of sabotage, up near Bakersfield. There’s three dead at a private-plane hangar. A garage filled with bomb materiel was blown up in Taft, with two more dead there. Maricopa’s got a Bund hall, arsoned. It was packed with illegal ordnance, and was torched to the ground.”

I crossed myself. “It’s truck-farm country. Dudley’s running illegals up there.”

Bill ran the full distance Code 3, lights and siren; we made the night trek to Kern County in probable record time. Bill called ahead and spoke to a Sheriff’s captain. The man said his Subversive Squad had raided the Bund hall on Pearl Harbor Day. The ordnance had remained on the premises; the county and the Feds were embroiled in a big jurisdictional brouhaha. The man closed with “If you’ve got questions, I might have some answers by the time you get up here. And there might be an L.A. angle on this thing.”

Kern County was low, wide, and flat; U.S. 99 north cut straight through it. It was farm and oil country. Pump derricks stood tall; they framed the low-lying terrain. We crossed the Maricopa city limits and saw lights beamed up a half mile ahead. It had to be arc lamps at the arson scene. Bill sighted in on the glow and drove straight to it.

Forty-odd lamps threw light on a half block torched to a husk. Rubble mounds stood ten feet high. Firemen probed them with axes and shovels. Bill parked beside a perimeter rope closing off a slew of fire trucks and prowl cars. The mounds hissed and spat embers. Uniformed deputies lounged around and watched.

We got out and walked over to them; a tall man noticed us and ambled up. He said, “Captain Parker and Miss Lake, right? Who else could it be at this time of night?”

Bill flashed his badge; the captain introduced himself as Bob Boyd and passed us calling cards and BIG BOB BOYD FOR SHERIFF campaign buttons. I pinned on my button; Big Bob all but swooned.

He said, “Here’s what we’ve got, and here’s the consensus. We’ve got eight dead at three sites, with three holed-up winos fried in this Bund hall. We think some ex-caped wetbacks from some farms south of here are good for all three jobs. They took off just preceding the blasts, so that has to be it. We tossed out a dragnet right quick, and we snagged a hinky Mex named Mondo Díaz at the Bakersfield bus depot. We ran a subversive-sheet check on him, and damned if he didn’t get nailed by your police department just recently. He bailed into Federal custody, hightailed to Mexico, then made his way back here. He’s not a righteous wet — but we think he’s the ringleader of these bomb-tossing sacks of shit. We leaned on him at the county jail, and he admitted as much. He’s in with some Nazi beaners called the Sinarquistas, so why they’d want to up and bomb a Bund hall, I’ll never know.”

Bill said, “Plant Mr. Díaz in a sweatbox, Captain. I’d like to have a few words with him.”

The All-Star PD hits Kern County. Big Bob Boyd proves himself a most gracious host.

The Sheriff’s Detective Bureau hopped at midnight. Off-duty deputies showed up for the show. They brought their wives and girlfriends; they were all Big Bob supporters and inclined to think I was swell. The incumbent Sheriff, “Kickback” Kit Denkins, was a notorious no-goodnik. He took bribes from crooked building contractors and solicited high school girls for their soiled underwear. Big Bob was running an insurgent campaign against him. He called up a group of his partisans and suggested a hoedown. The bite was a dollar a head. All the proceeds went to his campaign pot. Big Bob provided corn liquor and potato chips. Plus a gallery peek at the Bill Parker — Mondo Díaz tiff.