Джеймс Эллрой - This Storm

Ace shrieked, trilingual. He went Chink/English/ Chink lish. Elmer caught this:

You Jap fucker/you tonged up/Four Families/sell terp/winos and dope fiends. You sell pharmacy hop/with Lin Chung/you know Tommy Glenn—

Ace stopped. Ace went Oops. Ace shut his fat fucking mouth.

Elmer went Oh shit.

Ace swung the hose. He threw rib shots and leg shots. Elmer heard bones break. Matsura dribbled blood. The hose cracked down the middle. Ball bearings flew—

Elmer grabbed Ace by the neck and hard-shoved him. Ace bounced off the back wall and hit the floor flat on his ass. Matsura bucked his chair and tore out all the floor bolts. The chair capsized.

Ace keened and screeched. It was some heathen curse. He got to his knees and pulled out his dick. He piss-polluted this big pool of Jap blood.

That cretinous redneck. That Klan-klique bumpkin. That maladroit buffoon.

The telephone exploded. Dudley dropped the receiver. It cut Mike Breuning off.

Bad news. Elmer Jackson muscled Ace Kwan and caused a big upscut. Tough tiff at the Lincoln Heights Jail.

Dudley lit a cigarette. His office spun. Squadroom noise went cacophonous. The temperature zoomed.

He wiped his face and roused the switchboard. He got more bad news. All Baja-to-L.A. circuits — full up.

He should call Jack Horrall and demand reprisals. That could boomerang. Jack was thick with Brenda Allen. That fact mandated circumspection.

Dudley rubbed his bad arm. The sling came off yesterday. An Army doc checked him out and pronounced him okay.

Minor aches persisted. They induced flutters and sweats. They derailed his concentration. His mind wandered. He teethed on the inconsequential. Little things set him off.

His wife called. She wanted to chat. He forgot his eldest daughter’s name. Claire eavesdropped on the bedroom phone. It enraged him.

Claire missed Mass this morning. It vexed him. Claire was off with her fetching, if feral, new waif. The girl vexed him no end.

Joan Klein was age fifteen. She was a New York runaway and a Zionist Jew. Her immigrant kin veered hard left. Claire found the girl très enchanting.

She bought the girl clothes. She got her a room down the hall. The girl told tall tales. Labor agitators clash with Fed thugs. Mayhem results.

He humored Claire. He said, “You’re underemployed, darling. You’re picking up strays and grasping at straws.”

Claire lashed out. She defamed the “effete” Hideo Ashida. She excoriated the harmless dilettante Kay Lake. Young Kay shivved him in Kwan’s basement. Claire fell prey to her most fleeting whims. The charge was preposterous.

José Vasquez-Cruz gored Claire. She thought she gored him. That was très Claire. She confused enmity with mild contempt. She said, “I think I’ve seen him before. Somewhere — perhaps a demonstration.”

That felt spot-on. Vasquez-Cruz was a chameleon. He tee-heed to his Army pals. He low-growled to provocative women.

Dudley flexed his bad arm. He made a fist and squeezed it tight. He tore through the pain — and laughed.

Statie HQ:

Three dank buildings inland and south. Slave labor built them. Jail, trooper barracks, administration. They were plopped down beside an arroyo. Lettuce fields stood close by.

Shackled inmates toiled there. Stoop labor. Lift that barge, tote that bale. The jail featured sweat rooms and torture dens. Scorpions nested there. They ate bugs and stung recalcitrant spics.

Admin featured file vaults and cramped office suites. Dudley called ahead. He talked to a lieutenant named Juan Pimentel. They gabbed at length. Lieutenant Juan reported this:

He braced their in-custody Japs. They possessed nada knowledge of the beached sub and dead sailors. He developed Hideo Ashida’s film. He cross-checked it against mug-shot files and resident-alien sheets. He got more nada there. He got no fingerprint matches. Sixteen dead Jap sailors? Es mucho mierda.

Juan Pimentel was muy bueno. He jumped on all the small shit.

He head-counted jail Japs. He got 44 in custody/182 still loose. He prepped admin suite 214. He stacked the custody files and made a pot of coffee.

Dudley drove over and parked outside. Prowl cars hemmed him in. Statie bossmen custom-fitted them. Note the hood-mounted flamethrowers. Note the hand-painted saints and giant rodents emitting death rays.

Dudley entered the building and found 214. Lieutenant Juan delivered. He had the homey touch.

The desk, the chair, the coffee. The ashtray and ceiling fan. The worm-in-the-jug mescal. Forty-four files laid out.

Dudley read through them. He chain-smoked. He read from this spark point:

Kyoho Hanamaka. He’s a naval attaché. Hideo skimmed his file and nailed a big inconsistency.

There were very few KAs. There were no naval KAs. It startled Hideo. Hanamaka was still on the loose. That fact troubled him.

Dudley reread the file and studied the clipped photograph. Hanamaka looked psychopathic.

Born in Kyoto, 1898. Career Navy man. Intel background. Toured Europe, ’35-’36. Toured Russia, likewise. Brilliant student at the German Naval Warfare School.

There were three male KAs listed. They were all fishermen. That was enticing. Jap Navy man, the Baja coast, beached submarines.

Three KAs. Hiroshi Takai, Hector Obregon-Hodaka, Akira Minamura. All coastal fishermen.

Dudley thumbed custody files. He checked name tabs and hit Obregon-Hodaka.

He read the file. The man was a Jap-Mex half-breed. He spoke English. His moniker was “Big Tuna.” He had a valid U.S. travel visa.

Dudley snatched the desk phone and dialed double ought. A jail noncom picked up. Dudley said, “Inmate Obregon-Hodaka. Room 214, please.”

“I know I’m headed for the shithouse, boss. What I’m angling for is a nice internment berth up near L.A. The Chino work farm, maybe. Dexter Gordon’s there. He blows tenor. You’ve got to gas on his chord changes for ‘Ol’ Man River.’ ”

Hector the hepcat. More Mex than Jap. He knew the type. They bred like rats in L.A.

“Quite the jazzman, are you?”

“You ain’t lyin’, daddy. I know L.A. niggertown like I know the coast here. All the coons on Central Avenue call me ‘El Tojo,’ ’cause of my mixed bloodline. I’m the Big Tuna here, and El Tojo in L.A.”

They sipped mescal. Dudley got a glow on. 160-proof. Satanic worms afloat in the jug. No drink for nancy boys.

“Do you possess strong political convictions, sir?”

“Well, I’m not Fifth Column, if that’s what you’re getting at. I’m a live-and-let-live, hold-for-the-downbeat sort of cat. I’m looking to get interned at some amenable spot, sit out the war and go home.”

Dudley smiled. “I wish you well in that regard, sir.”

Hector sipped mescal. His eyes buzzed. He looked halfway blitzed.

“I’ve got a colored girlfriend in L.A. She’s a waitress at the Club Alabam. They’ll let me out once Uncle Sambo wraps this war up. I’ll marry her and have some whelps with her, even though she’s got four pups with Coleman Hawkins already.”

Dudley bowed. “You have convinced me of your political solvency and your allegiance to the Allied cause, sir. Now, please describe your relationship with the Japanese naval attaché, Kyoho Hanamaka.”

Hector made the jack-off sign. “That cocksucker owes me money.”

“Sir?”

“I’d been supplying him with prime tuna for over a year — and by that I mean boatloads. He skipped town owing me mucho dinero. ”

“So, your relationship with Hanamaka was entirely professional?”

Hector plucked a worm from his glass and ate it. Hector evinced great style.