Джеймс Эллрой - Hollywood Nocturnes

I settled in to read the junior kamikaze’s rap sheet. There wasn’t much: the names and addresses of a half dozen Jap cohorts — tough boys probably doing the Manzanar shuffle by now — carbons of the kid’s arrest reports, and letters to the judge who presided over the B&E trial that netted Murikami his two-spot at Preston. If you read between the lines, you could see a metamorphosis: Little Tojo started out as a pad prowler out for cash and a few sniffs of ladies’ undergarments and ended up a juvie gang honcho: zoot suits, chains and knives, boogie-woogie rituals with his fellow members of the “Rising Sons.” At the bottom of the rap sheet there was a house key attached to the page with Scotch tape, an address printed beside it: 1746¼, North Avenue 46, Lincoln Heights. I pocketed the key and drove there, thinking of a Maggie-to-Lorna reunion parlay — cool silk sheets and a sleek tanned body soundtracked by the torch song supreme.

The address turned out to be a subdivided house on a terraced hillside overlooking the Lucky Lager Brewery. The drive over was eerie: Streetlights and traffic signals were the only illumination and Lorna was all but there with me in the car, murmuring what she’d give me if I took down slant Bobby. I parked at the curb and climbed up the front steps, counting numbers embossed on doorways: 1744, 1744½, 1746, 1746½ 1746¼ materialized; I fumbled the key toward the lock. Then I saw a narrow strip of light through the adjoining window — the unmistakable glint of a pen flash probing. I pulled my gun, eased the key in the hole, watched the light flutter back toward the rear of the pad, and opened the door slower than slow.

No movement inside, no light coming toward me. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” echoed from a back room; a switch dropped and big light took over. And there was my target: a tall, skinny man bending over a chest of drawers, a penflash clamped in his teeth.

I let him start rifling, then tiptoed over. When he had both hands braced on the dresser and his legs spread, I gave him the Big Fungoo.

I hooked his left leg back; Prowler collapsed on the dresser, penflash cracking teeth as his head hit the wall. I swung him around, shot him a pistol butt blow to the gut, caught a flailing right hand, jammed the fingers into the top drawer space, slammed the drawer shut, and held it there with my knee until I heard fingers cracking. Prowler screamed; I found a pair of jockey shorts on the counter, shoved them in his mouth, and kept applying pressure with my knee. More bone crack; amputation coming up. I eased off and let the man collapse on his knees.

The shitbird was stone cold out. I kicked him in the face to keep him that way, turned on the wall light, and prowled myself.

It was just a crummy bedroom, but the interior decorating was très outré : Jap nationalist posters on the walls — racy shit that showed Jap Zeros buzz-bombing a girl’s dormitory, buxom white gash in peignoirs running in terror. The one table held a stack of Maggie Cordova phonograph records — Maggie scantily attired on the jackets, stretch marks, flab, and chipped nail polish on display. I examined them up close — no record company was listed. They were obvious vanity jobs — fat Maggie preserving her own sad warbles.

Shitbird was stirring; I kicked him in the noggin again and trashed the place upside down. I got:

A stash of women’s undies, no doubt Bad Bob’s B&E booty; a stash of his clothes; assorted switchblades, dildoes, french ticklers, tracts explaining that a Jew-Communist conspiracy was out to destroy the world of true peace the German and Japanese brotherhood had sought to establish through peaceful means and — under the mattress — seventeen bankbooks: various banks, the accounts fat with cash, lots of juicy recent deposits.

It was time to make Shitbird sing. I gave him a waistband frisk, pulling out a .45 auto, handcuffs, and — mother dog! — an L.A. sheriff’s badge and I.D. holder. Shitbird’s real monicker was Deputy Walter T. Koenig, currently on loan to the County Alien Squad.

That got me thinking. I found the kitchen, grabbed a quart of beer from the icebox, came back and gave Deputy Bird an eye-opener — Lucky Lager on the cabeza . Koenig sputtered and spat out his gag; I squatted beside him and leveled my gun at his nose. “No dealsky, no tickee, no washee. Tell me about Murikami and the bankbooks or I’ll kill you.”

Koenig spat blood; his foggy eyes honed in on my roscoe. He licked beer off his lips; I could tell his foggy brain was trying to unfog an angle. I cocked my .38 for emphasis. “Talk, Shitbird.”

“Zeck — zeck — order.”

I spun the .38’s cylinder — more emphasis. “You mean the executive order on the Japs?”

Koenig spat a few loose canines and some gum flaps. “Zat’s right.”

“Keep going. A snitch jacket looks good on you.”

Shitbird held a stare on me; I threw him back some of his manhood to facilitate a speedy confession. “Look, you spill and I won’t rat you. This is just a money gig for me.”

His eyes told me he bought it. Koenig got out his first unslurred words. “I been doin’ a grift with the Japs. The government’s holdin’ their bank dough till the internment ends. I was gonna cash out for Murikami and some others, for a cut. You know, bring ‘em to the bank in bracelets, carry some official-lookin’ papers. Japs are smart, I’ll give ‘em that. They know they’re goin’ bye-bye, and they want more than bank interest.”

I didn’t quite buy it; on reflex I gave Koenig’s jacket pockets a toss. All I got was some women’s pancake makeup — pad and bottle. The anomaly tweaked me; I pulled Koenig to his feet and cuffed him behind his back with his own bracelets. “Where’s Murikami hiding out?”

“Fourteen-eleven Wabash, East L.A., apartment three-eleven. Bunch of Japs holing up there. What are you gonna—”

“I’m going to toss your car and cut you loose. It’s my grift now, Walter.”

Koenig nodded, trying not to look grateful; I unloaded his piece and stuck it in his holster, gave him back his badge kit, rounded up the bankbooks, and shoved him toward the front door, thinking of Lorna accompanied by Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller, the two of us enjoying Acapulco vacations financed by Axis cash. I pushed Koenig down the steps ahead of me; he nodded toward a Ford roadster parked across the street. “There, that’s mine. But you ain’t—”

Shots cut the air; Koenig pitched forward, backward, forward. I hit the pavement, not knowing which direction to fire. Koenig slumped into the gutter; a car sped by sans headlights. I squeezed off five shots and heard them ding metal; lights went on in windows — they gave me a perfect shot of a once-rogue cop with his face blasted away. I stumbled over to the Ford, used my pistol butt to smash in a window, popped the glove compartment, and tore through it. Odd papers, no bankbooks, my hands brushing a long piece of slimy rubber. I held it up and flicked on the dash light and saw a paste-on scar — outré — just like the one eyewitnesses at the bank job said one of the heisters had.

I heard sirens descending, blasting like portents of doomsday. I ran to my car and highballed it the fuck away.

My apartment was in the wrong direction — away from leads on Maggie into Lorna. I drove to 1411 Wabash, found it postmidnight still, blackout black — a six-story walk-up with every single window covered. The joint was stone quiet. I ditched my car in the alley, stood on the hood, jumped up, and caught the bottom rung of the fire escape.

The climb was tough going; mist made the handrails wet and slippery, and my shoes kept slipping. I made it to the third-floor landing, pushed the connecting door open, padded down the empty hallway to 311, put my ear to the door and listened.