Джеймс Эллрой - This Storm

It’s a stag hunt. The PD worked that way. Four victims mugshot-ID’d Tommy. The Chief and Dudley Smith conferred. They called it. Per always: perv shit on women mandates DEATH.

Elmer gargled Old Crow. He had the front-house car. Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle had the alley. Tommy had the crib cased. Two leggy sisters lived there. Lockstep surveillance locked down the gestalt.

Central Burglary tailed Tommy a week running. Elmer moved the sisters out and moved his leggy girlfriend in. She had the legs and the stones for the job.

Ellen Drew. His part -time girlfriend and part -time Paramount starlet. Ellen glommed raves in If I Were King and went pffft. She part- time whored for Elmer and his full -time girlfriend.

Brenda Allen. Part -time squeeze of Chief Jack Horrall. It’s who you know and who you blow. Call-Me-Jack set up the bait gig.

Elmer scoped the house. Upstairs lights gleamed. Ellen cracked the shades to spotlight her gams. It violated blackout regs and lit her legs gooooood. Tommy G. was a leg man. Elmer read his Quentin file and glommed the gestalt.

Thomas Malcolm Glennon/white male American/DOB 8/19/16. Preston Reform School and Quentin. Tight with pachucos and Four Families tong men.

Fireworks popped somewhere north. The rain drenched the sparks and killed the effect.

“It’s who you know.”

Elmer knew Dudley and Call-Me-Jack. Thus, this shit job. Mike B. and Dick C. were Dudley’s strongarm goons. Dud got the night off. Some unknown geek shivved him three days ago.

Elmer yawned. Elmer futzed with his two-way radio. Police calls spritzed.

Niggertown 211/Happytime Liquor/prowl cars at scene. Dope roust at Club Zombie. Mexi coon rumble, 84th and Avalon. Zoot-suit beaners ex -cape.

Elmer yawned. Elmer skimmed the dial. He hit a civilian band and got lucky. The PD’s New Year’s bash warbled.

It’s live from City Hall. It features Count Basie’s Band. The Detective Bureau muster room’s rigged with radio mikes. The Count’s at the keyboard. There’s Lester Young’s sax.

Here’s the inside tattle. Two bluesuits popped the Count with reefers. Jack Horrall caught wind and tossed the pitch. Your call, Count. Six months honor farm or a one-night engagement?

Rain slammed the car. Said rain outslammed Count Basie. Elmer skimmed to Band 3. He caught an open line to Breuning and Carlisle.

“Know” and “blow.” Maladroit Mike and Dipshit Dick. This jive New Year’s Eve. What good’s your insider-cop status?

He loved Headquarters Vice. It dispensed yuks and served to scotch his call-biz competition. Then the fucking Japs bombed fucking Pearl Harbor and fucked the white world up the brown trail.

He got detached to the Alien Squad. It was Japs twelve days a week. Japs, Japs, JAPS. Foreign-born, native-born, for sure and alleged Fifth Column. Raid their pads. Confiscate their goods. Transport them to ritzy horse stalls at Santa Anita.

Band 3 popped sound. Breuning and Carlisle bullshitted. Who shivved the Dudster? Their rambunctious kids. This meter maid with jugs out to here.

Breuning and Carlisle gassed. They hashed out the Fed’s phone-tap probe. The PD was knee-deep in shit. It’s a nail-biter.

City Hall was bugged and tapped, floor-to-rafters. Rival cop factions spied on each other. Grifter cops, tonged-up cops, cop strikebreakers. The Feds took note and launched a probe.

Cop fiefdoms. Cop thieves. Cops in the Silver Shirts and German-American Bund. Calls to the DA’s Office. Calls to Mayor Fletch Bowron. Detective Bureau cops be scaaared.

Elmer was scared. He ran a call-girl ring. He peddled flesh to the L.A. elite. He made biz calls from the Vice squadroom.

The radio browned out. Shit — line crackle, static, hiss. Elmer twirled the dial. He caught some luck there. Good Lord — it’s Cliffie Stone’s Hometown Jamboree.

It was auld lang syne for displaced crackers. That was him, defined. Cliffie connoted hayrides and moonshine. Cliffie brought back Wisharts, North Carolina.

Wisharts was Klan Kountry. Geography is destiny. Klan life fucked up his daddy and big brother, Wayne Frank. That hate-the-jigs diet stuck in young Elmer’s craw. He hit eighteen in ’30. He joined the Marine Corps. Semper Fi: Parris Island, Camp Lejeune, Nicaragua.

Man-o-Man Managua. The Marine detachment backstops puppet Führer Somoza. Jarheads snuff his political rivals and stand embassy guard. They’re bellhops and part-time assassins. El Jefe loves Lance Corporal E. V. Jackson. Hence a plum job: run Jefe ’s favorite whorehouse.

He learned the biz that way. It spawned his notion of call-service-to-your-door girls. Jefe shot him Plum Job #2. He watchdogged the L.A. police chief.

James Edgar “Two-Gun” Davis. One vivid lunatic. Davis and Jefe were sordid soul mates. They boozed and whored together. Davis loved Lance Corporal E. V. Jackson. Here’s why:

A leftist zealot charged Davis with a machete. Lance Corporal Jackson shot and killed him. Davis shot Lance Corporal Jackson a police department appointment.

Goodbye, Marine Corps. Hello, Los Angeles.

Elmer liked police work. Davis set him up with a cooze pusher named Brenda Allen. Elmer and Brenda clicked. They concocted their phone-exchange biz and saw it flourish. The L.A. grand jury sacked Two-Gun Davis. He poked one Jailbait Jill too many and took it up the dirt road.

Call-Me-Jack’s in now. He’s got 7 % of the call biz. Sergeant E. V. Jackson is twenty-nine. He’s one lucky white man.

Cliffie Stone laid down hick ballads. That was Wayne Frank’s mawkish meter. Wayne Frank was a hate dog and nativist nabob. Kid brother Elmer notched opportunities. Wayne Frank harvested shit.

Wayne Frank goes Klan, goes rumdum, goes hobo. He habituates the West Coast and clocks an untimely end.

Elmer gargled Old Crow. He was half-tanked. It was 10:18. Tommy G. always hit between 10:00 and midnight.

The hick music rubbed him raw. He doused the radio and gassed on the rain. His prowl car was sunk fender-deep.

He checked the house. Cracked blinds gave him a look-see. Ellen was upstairs. She was pacing and smoking. She provided a Leg Show De-luxe. Smoke plumes plumed out a transom slot.

Elmer tuned in Band 3. Mike B. groused to Dick C. Dudster this, Dudster that. More drift per their rambunctious kids.

More line fuzz and static. Elmer killed his jug and tossed it out the window. “Whoa, Junior” fuzzed in.

Elmer grabbed the receiver and flipped the talk switch. The fuzz-static cleared.

“Yeah, Mike.”

“Our boy’s coming south. He hopped the next-door fence. You take the front. Let him sniff Ellen and start upstairs before you sh—”

Elmer jumped.

He shoved out the door. He puddle-leaped and lunged for the curb. His shoes squished and leaked. He pulled his piece and chambered a round.

His hat flew off. The rain stung his eyes and ratched up his vision. He made the lawn/the front porch/the front door.

It’s unlocked. Go in slow now. You oiled the hinges and jambs. Tommy won’t hear shit.

He got inside. He smelled Ellen’s cigarette smoke and perfume. He made for the stairway. He squished all over the living room rug.

Mike and Dick squished toward him. They hit the stairway. Everybody went sssssshhh.

They scoped Tommy’s muddy footprints. They heard floorboard creaks and foot scuffs upstairs.

Mike winked. Dick did that slice-the-throat thing. Elmer gulped — mother dog, holy shit—

Ellen screamed.

Mike whooped. Dick whooped. They ran upstairs and raised a ruckus. They bumped each other off the walls and hit the landing. Elmer heard front-window glass shatter. Tommy pulled some human-fly stunt.