Джеймс Эллрой - This Storm

I enjoyed the view from Claire’s terrace. The setting was lovely; the passing parade was provocative. Terry Lux walked Saul Lesnick by a few minutes ago; a doddering Jim Davis had preceded them. All of It. Supporting cast glimpses. Joan Conville’s All One Story.

Elmer, Hideo, and I conferred on the phone, at least once a day. I was kept up to speed on All of It and shared the information with Bill. Meyer Gelb, once Fritz Eckelkamp, had been murdered. Elmer and Buzz shot and killed the fleeing Frankie Carbajal. The Beverly Hills PD made Frankie for the homicide. Elmer saw the body and thinks otherwise.

The corpse was stiff-cold. The torture cuts had congealed. Elmer talked to Dr. Nort Layman. Dr. Nort had performed the postmortem; he tagged the time of death as 2:00 a.m. Elmer found the body at 11:30. Dr. Nort removed a .25-caliber bullet. The cause of death: one small-bore gunshot wound to the head. The postmortem exonerated Frankie Carbajal. The Beverly Hills cops liked him, regardless. A Mex fascist kills a Communist. Cops slay the slayer. It played nicely open-and-shut.

The Carbajal shooting troubled Elmer. It came on the heels of the sabotage revelations. Frankie had pretipped Elmer and Buzz. They sat on the lead. Then Frankie appears and enlivens their stakeout. Elmer may confirm my hunch or play it mum. Buzz killed Frankie in cold blood. It silenced Frankie. He could not snitch the held-back lead now. His death bought Elmer and Buzz a skate.

What they hath wrought. What we have all precipitated.

The forged minutes have gone out. Constanza Lazaro-Schmidt must have received them; Dudley must have read them. How will he react? The minutes pushed him toward Meyer Gelb and Salvador Abascal. Dudley could not have killed Gelb. He was ensconced in Baja and did not know where to find him. Gelb was killed by a small-bore weapon. Dudley employed big-bore weaponry.

Thad Brown passed Bill a tip. Jack Horrall had issued an ultimatum. Dudley has one week to turn himself in or suffer PD-sanctioned reprisals. Call-Me-Jack has sought outside-agency help here. A Federal posse stands on call. Postal inspectors and Treasury agents. Ex — Texas Rangers. The hard boys who took down the Ma Barker mob, along with Bonnie and Clyde.

What fate hath wrought. What we have all precipitated.

Dudley might go after Salvador. Dudley might deem the minutes a ruse and comport circumspectly. Dudley might surmise that Hideo Ashida forged the minutes. What Hideo hath wrought, in the name of love. What early-wartime L.A. has done to us all.

I heard voices out on the walkway. Young Joan sounded gleeful; Claire kept going Ssshhh, people sleep late on Sunday. The terrace door swung open; Joan saw me and crashed into me and waved a poster tube.

I noted the V-mail sticker and Russian postage stamps; I saw that the tube had been resent by Constanza Lazaro-Schmidt. Confluence. Comrade Shostakovich to a fascist seductress to Maestro Klemperer. What this war hath wrought. Otto could now upstage Maestro Toscanini and stage his benefit show.

We ran inside. We crash-landed the piano and pulled out the score. I sight-read my way through it and isolated the best three-handed part. It was the tanks-approaching-Leningrad passage that Otto had already played for me. Claire arrayed the appropriate sheets on the music stand; Joan sat down at the bench between us. We were the just-formed Dry-out Farm Trio. We poised our hands over the keys. Claire gave the downbeat.

Boom, boom, boom. Nazi tanks circle Leningrad. It was bluntly ominous music that made us all roar. We hit true notes and flubbed notes and laughed through it all. Boom, boom, boom. What life hath wrought. How did I get this pigshit lucky? I’m a rogue prairie girl from Sioux Falls.

Coffee klatch. Crash Squad alumni, at loose ends. Lyman’s back room, now moribund.

The alums kicked their chairs back and got cozy. Ashida, Lee Blanchard, Buzz Meeks.

Buzz sipped coffee. “BHPD likes Carbajal for the Gelb job. Elmer and me are breathing a big sigh of relief.”

Blanchard sipped coffee. “Dr. Nort disagrees.”

Ashida sipped coffee. “I gave Elmer Frechette’s lead on Chuckie Duquesne. He’s on his way up to the Musicians’ Local right now.”

Buzz said, “Elmer’s a busy bee. He told me he went by Johnny Shinura’s building and did some shinnying up a drainpipe. Johnny’s roost had been cleaned out, but he found two bedrolls on the third floor. He figures Johnny and Chuckie were hiding out there, up until the Feds seized the place.”

Blanchard lit a cigarette. “If Chuckie’s our queer white boy, then who’s the woman who got raped? Joe Hayes says that’s our motive, right there.”

The back room oozed sloth. Ashida tidied up. He straightened the report boards and emptied ashtrays. He tossed stale cold cuts. He dumped booze empties.

Buzz lit a cigar. “I caught Jack Horrall and Brenda A. going at it here. The ’36 Olympics were on the radio. Jack’s a floor man from way back.”

Blanchard said, “Hideo’s due back at Manzanar. I’m driving him up.”

Buzz tossed a paper sack. Ashida snagged it on the fly. Buzz said, “I almost forgot. Elmer snatched this from Shinura’s place. He wanted Hideo to see it.”

Ashida emptied the sack. Leather strangling gloves fell out.

Black leather. Fetishistic. A Weimar Berlin and red-light Tokyo item. Palm-weighted. One size fits all.

Buzz whistled. Blanchard went oooh-la-la. Ashida held the gloves up.

“They explain the single-hand-span bruises on the victims’ necks. All the killer had to do was apply moderate pressure. The palm weights would do the rest.”

Buzz said, “Hideo’s theorizing here.”

Blanchard said, “As theories go, I like it. It fits Hideo’s man-woman theory. The man holds the ice pick and keeps our guys immobilized, while the woman applies the elbow grease.”

Buzz waved his cigar. “I’ll bite. But who is this crazy ginch?”

The Teletype tapped-tapped and furled paper. Blanchard tore it off the spool.

“M. L. Mimms is back from his rouse-the-natives tour. Two airport cops saw him get off the late New York flight. The Navy JA’s kicked Link Rockwell loose. He was on the same flight as the Rev.”

He saw Dudley everywhere. Cri de coeur. He saw him conjured and unbidden. All men looked like him. No man looked like him. Je m’excuse, pour ma trahison.

Ashida cabbed southbound. The hackie You’re a Jap ’d him. Ashida shut his eyes and saw Dudley. The cab passed through darktown. Je ne te verrai pas blessé.

Kay pledged him the Mimms interview. It secured their forgery deal. She stipulated a co-interviewer and suggested Elmer. He tried to find Elmer. He called the DB and Brenda’s house. Elmer was out. He called Kay’s place and got no answer. He tried the Musicians’ Local. He asked if a Sergeant Jackson had been by. Sergeant Jackson was looking for a horn man named Chuckie Duquesne.

The clerk said, “No, but that’s an odd coincidence. An Army major named Smith called and asked for Chuckie’s address, which I sure don’t have. This major was some mick with a brogue. He told me a nutso story about how he identified Chuckie from some smut film that Orson Welles showed him. I told him Chuckie’s a clandestine sort of guy, but he’ll be gigging at the Taj Mahal tonight. Orson Welles himself. Don’t that take all?”

The hackie cruised Central Avenue. They hit a midday traffic lull. Ashida steered him by the klub haus. It was a flat vacant lot now. Jordan High footballers scrimmaged. They were colored. The white coach looked like Dudley Smith.

The hackie U-turned back to Central. There’s the jazz strip. Club Alabam, Port Afrique, Club Zombie. The façades have been refitted. Rioters had torched cars and business fronts. He killed two of them. Dudley Smith killed many more.