Джеймс Эллрой - This Storm

“We’d bat the breeze sometimes. I knew he was pals with the governor, Juan Lazaro-Schmidt, who’s a Nazi sympathizer and a big Jew-hater. So what? World conflicts breed strange bedfellows. I could live with that, but not with him stiffing me for three big boatloads of fish.”

Dudley said, “Did the quantities that he purchased in any way arouse your suspicions?”

“Yeah, they did. After Pearl Harbor, I started thinking, What’s he want all that fish for? You follow me, boss? Fish, submarine crews, sailors with hearty appetites?”

Dudley lit a cigarette. “We are having parallel thoughts, sir.”

“Okay, so I’ll wrap it up, then. I was having these suspicious thoughts, and Hanamaka owed me money. He lives up in the Baja hills, so I drove up there to collect. It was December 18 — I remember because it’s my birthday. I drove up there, but the house had been cleaned out.”

Dudley said, “Take me there. We’ll leave now.”

Hector said, “This jungle juice has got me hopped up. I might try to escape.”

Dudley said, “I’m prone to whim, sir. I’ll either shoot you dead or bid you sayonara.”

They cut inland. They hit half-paved roads and breezed through lettuce fields and scrub hills. Bugs bombed the windshield. Dudley tapped his wipers and scraped them to pulp.

They hit low mountain ranges. Low clouds blurred the view. Hector was blitzed. He blathered out his hopes and dreams and extolled jigtown L.A.

He’d get a soft internment berth. He’d deflower Jap virgins and learn to play the bass sax. He’d teach the virgins to play skin flute. He’d rent his boat out to full-blood cholos while he was inside.

Central Avenue. Está the most. Ivy Anderson’s chicken shack. Minnie Roberts’ Casbah — the best spook gash in the West. Club Alabam, Club Zombie. Stan Kenton, mud shark. He’s got twenty-eight Congo cuties on the string.

Jam sessions. Back-to-Africa mosques. Political clubhouses. Zoot-suit pachucos, zorched on Sinarquismo. These two rogue cops and their craaaaaazy crib on East 46th. Crap games and cooked terpin hydrate. Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes.”

Maybe he’ll learn the bass clarinet. Maybe he’ll open a seafood dive — Hector’s Hacienda. Bring la familia. He’ll import that Cuban guy with the two-foot dick. El Cubano will poke your mujer while you watch and jack off.

Dudley half-heard it. He took rickety bridges across arroyos and climbed more scrub hills. Hector switched gears and jabbered: right there, it’s right there !

Dudley swung a tight left turn. Dudley braked and saw it:

A mock ski chalet. Two stories/pitched frame/big glassed-in view. Front carport and no cars extant.

Dudley pulled into the carport. Hector smiled at him. So, Ichiban ? What have we got here?

Dudley winked. Dudley slipped him a border pass and a ten-dollar bill.

Hector took off. He amscrayed, vamoosed, and vanished in five seconds flat.

Dudley stepped from the car. He sniffed the air. He felt raindrops. He pulled his piece and walked up to the door.

It was locked. He stepped back and threw his weight. He slammed hard and shouldered the door in.

He looked right and saw dumped furniture. He looked left and saw a blood-spattered wall.

Morgue Powwow. One forensic agenda. ID the Charred-Box Man.

Morgue personnel: Joan, Dr. Nort, Hideo Ashida.

They measured Box Man. Joan stifled a yawn. She’d indulged a late night at Lyman’s. She’d hit the sack at 5:00 a.m.

Ashida placed the bones on a gurney. Dr. Nort unrolled his tape. Joan steadied Box Man. Dr. Nort marked the height at seventy-five inches.

Joan said, “He was six-three. If we factor in erosion at the joints and the compression of the spine that comes with age, we can posit that he was as tall as six-four and a half in his youth.”

Dr. Nort poked odd bones. “He was tall, and heavyset. Note the pelvic width.”

Ashida measured the back-to-front rib cage. He got a fifty-two-inch circumference.

Joan said, “Big man.”

Dr. Nort said, “He must have gone two forty-five. His spine’s crunched. Note the socket frays. You carry that much weight, you pay a price. I’ll go out on a limb. He went DOA in his early forties.”

Joan jiggled the foot bones. “Hey there, cutie.”

Ashida flushed. He balled his fists and glared.

“We’re having a scholars’ lark here, Miss Conville. I should add that our late friend in no way constitutes a breaking case, while the lab is currently backlogged with breaking-case evidence, which demands our more immediate attention.”

Joan flushed. She balled her fists and glared back.

“We’re backlogged with Japanese-property confiscations, Dr. Ashida. I think you might feel a certain ambivalence about that aspect of our work. I deem that understandable, and I can hardly condemn you for dragging your feet and exploiting our late friend’s reappearance, so that you might abstain from facilitating your own countrymen’s misfortune.”

Oooh — hear that pin-drop silence? Now, hear it streeetch.

Joan glared at Ashida.

Ashida glared at the floor.

Dr. Nort said, “Children, enough.”

Joan lit a cigarette. Dr. Nort, ditto. Ashida looked up. Joan blew smoke in Box Man’s face. Dr. Nort laughed.

They all stretched and unclenched. They put out some small talk. Safe topics — the weather, the war, the ’42 congressionals. The PD’s Fed-probe travails.

Ashida coughed. “We can check CCC worker lists and DB lists in the newspapers. We’ve got report carbons stored somewhere, and the fire department Arson Squad must have a comprehensive file.”

Dr. Nort said, “That’s assuming our late friend was a CCC worker.”

Joan said, “We can cross-check the death lists to height listings on California drivers’ licenses and CCC registration cards. We can cross-check those names against missing-persons reports.”

Dr. Nort tapped Box Man’s skull. He’d extraction-bored the bullet hole last night.

“I dug out the spent. It’s flattened and badly decomposed.”

Ashida said, “I’ll examine it at the lab. I might determine a partial make on the lands and grooves.”

Joan said, “We could try for a match to ballistics bulletins from ’33. We could run test fires with old custody guns.”

Dr. Nort slow-cruised Joan. She knew the drill. The cruise ran head to toe. It was half-leer comprehensive.

“How did you get this job anyway?”

Joan laughed. “I was drunk New Year’s Eve. I hit a car and killed four Mexicans. Bill Parker goes for me, and I’m sure you can fill in the rest.”

Dr. Nort went oooh-la-la. Ashida balled his fists and glaaaared.

Oooh-la-la? Well, not quite.

Joan walked to Lyman’s. She was cash-flush. She’d hit an Alien Squad crap game and won forty scoots.

The game ran most Sunday nights. Wendell Rice and George Kapek draped the squadroom floor and steered the show. Bluesuits and Bureau men rolled.

Lee Blanchard and Elmer Jackson rolled hot. Joan put five on the pass line and let it ride. She cashed out right on cue. Forty clams — Man-O-Manischewitz!

The boys called her “Red.” That’s a new one. Elmer slipped her a mash note. She ruffled his hair and laid one on him. Rice and Kapek wolf-howled. Catbox Cal Lunceford roared.

Joan cut south on Hill. She counted back to New Year’s Eve and ran highlights. Her Navy life then, her PD life now. The show ran four days, door-to-door.

She liked the PD. She liked Mike Lyman’s Grill. She perched there and eavesdropped most nights. She rebuffed passes and logged scuttlebutt. She learned the personnel.