Jonathan Santlofer - L.A. Noire - The Collected Stories

A plan formed in my head.

I would speed past Ray’s, just to make sure the lummox wasn’t there waiting for me. I’d park around the corner, so Bonnie wouldn’t see my Lincoln and run…

Bonnie.

Her face hung in front of me like a phantom. Her smiles, her megawatt smile, her kiss, her sickening scent of jacaranda trees…

She would help me put things right. It was not too late. You can always take digits from one column and move them to another… right?

Bonnie tried to shove her tongue in my mouth as I turned onto Los Angeles Street. I spat at her ghostly image as I approached Ray’s, which is probably why I didn’t see the drunk stumbling in front of my headlights.

We use our instruments to measure the distance and angles from a fixed position to points unknown.

But the moment I felt my Lincoln’s wheels run over that body, I knew I was definitely headed somewhere incalculable, immeasurable.

“What’s your name, anyway?”

“What difference?”

“Come on, pal. We’re gonna be working together next couple of weeks or so. Just two vets, riding around, seeing the country. That’s the story they gave us. So I gotta have something to call you by, just in case.”

“Case of what?”

“It’s one hell of a drive, all the way to L.A. Cops stop us, I should know what name’s on your ID, right?”

“I was hitching a ride.”

“In that suit? Not gonna fly. Makes it too complicated, anyway. Down the road, I mean.”

The short, compactly built man in the passenger seat of the big sedan said nothing for a few seconds. Finally, as if conceding the reasonableness of the driver’s request, said “Mendil,” without turning his head.

“Mendil?” the thickset man behind the wheel said. “What kind of name is that?”

“Just a name.”

“There ain’t no such thing as ‘just a name,’ pal. Take me, for instance. I tell you my name is Seamus O’Reilly, you know I’m Irish, am I right?”

“No.”

“No?! What other kind of name could it be?”

“Fake.”

“Huh! Well, right you are at that one. But my mug’s a map of Galway, as my mother used to say.”

The passenger pulled the front of his felt fedora down over his eyes, as if to shield them from the sun.

The driver took the hint… for about ten minutes. “Seems funny, don’t it? The war’s been over for a couple of years, and here we are, driving all the way across the country right back to where it started.”

“The war didn’t start in L.A.”

“Christ, you must think I’m as thick as a paving stone! I just meant the West Coast. That’s where the Japs made their move. Fucking ambush, it was. After that, even a pansy like Roosevelt, he didn’t have no choice.”

The passenger snatched a pack of Lucky Strikes from the top of the dashboard.

Damn! I didn’t even see his hand move, the driver thought to himself.

The passenger flicked his wrist. A single cigarette shot into his mouth. His thumb cracked, and a wooden match flared into life. He took a measured drag, carefully replaced the pack, and used the tap of a single finger to send it sliding across the dashboard.

“Nice to see these in a white package,” the driver said, pushing in the dashboard lighter.

Silence reigned for another twenty minutes. The miles slipped past as the big car gobbled long patches of concrete.

“They say you go without smoking for a few weeks, you lose your taste for them. What a crock. Me, I didn’t have one for months. Fucking Japs. I still don’t know how I made it through that march. Walk or die, that’s what they kept saying. Walk or die. Far as I’m concerned, we should have bombed that whole island into the ocean.”

“Too valuable.”

“Yeah, I guess it was. The island, I mean. But those little yellow monkeys… I wish I’d killed a few more of them, at least. It feels better when you handle that kind of work yourself.”

“True enough.”

“You were there?”

“Europe.”

“So you didn’t see how they—”

“I saw how they fought.”

“How the hell could you see Japs fight in Europe?”

“Nisei brigades.”

“Oh, yeah. I heard about them. Crazy bastards.”

“They had something to prove.”

“I guess so. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“I do.”

“Yeah? How could that be?”

“I had something to prove, too.”

“You? The boss told me you did stuff, but he didn’t say what.”

The passenger leaned back in his seat, rolled down his window, snapped out the still-burning stub of his last cigarette, and closed the window again.

“They gave me a dishonorable,” he said, after another minute of silence.

“For what?”

“Killing Nazis.”

“That was the whole point, right? I mean, that’s why they sent us over. Guys like me and you, right? We were supposed to kill the other guys.”

“They said I killed some Nazis after they surrendered.”

“How were you gonna do that? Once it was over—”

“It wasn’t over. What they said was, I gunned down a bunch of them while they had their hands in the air.”

“What the fuck? Who cares?”

“Eisenhower, I guess. Whoever was in charge.”

“Why’d you—?”

“Camp guards,” the passenger said, as if that explained everything.

“How’d they even find out? There weren’t any generals on the front lines, pal.”

“Somebody talked.”

“Ratted you out?”

“You could say that.”

“I’ll bet the louse got a medal for it, too.”

“Maybe posthumously.”

“What?”

“After his death.”

“He got killed over there, you mean?”

“No. After he testified.”

“You mean, like, right in the barracks?”

“Barracks? No. He was back here. In this clubhouse. Yorkville, you know where that is?”

“Way over on the East Side?”

“Yeah. He was supposed to make a speech or something; I’m not sure.”

“He got drilled right there?”

“Not just him. Whole place blew up.”

“Hey, I heard about that. I mean, it was on the front page and everything. That was some blast.”

“There’s been bigger.”

“Wait a minute! That guy, he wouldn’t happen to be… what the hell was his name?… people were saying he was going to run for city council?”

“Hendricks.”

“That’s the one! Big war hero. He was a shoo-in. What the hell was he doing over in Yorkville?”

“That’s the district he was running in.”

“But that’s Germantown.”

“So? They get to vote there, too.”

“I guess that’s right. At least he was a white man. When we had to pass through Chicago to change cars? One thing the boss was clear about—we stay outta the South Side. The niggers’re bunching up over there. Making their own plays. That’s what we get for letting them fight.”

“Yeah, that was a real privilege.”

“I don’t mean that part. I mean, teaching them all about… you know, guns and stuff.”

“You think they didn’t know before?”

“Down south, sure. But if you look close, you see they never turned those guns in the wrong direction. Not until after the war, anyway.”

“Rifles for food, pistols for each other.”

“Yep! That’s it, exactly. But we send them over, we’re telling ‘em to shoot at white men. Probably never thought of it before.”

“You really believe that?”