This Storm

by James Ellroy

Elmer reskimmed his roust sheet. One column tagged locations. He noted boocoo

spots nearby. Yeah—but where’s Eddie Leng’s Kowloon? He’d

psycho. He ran afield sometimes. Breuning drained his mai tai. “Tommy’s tonged up the ying-yang. Him and Four Families go way back.” Elmer unwrapped a cigar. “We should issue an APB and call the Immigration cops. Tommy used to run wetbacks. He’ll have a green sheet, sure as shit.”

with rat-outs. Tommy Glennon know Huey Cressmeyer! Tommy go queer up at Preston! It

rival—ice-blond Veronica Lake. Rice and Kapek thumped blue-kerchief guys. They imitated Jap Zeros. They knocked tong punks off pallets and hauled them down from Cloud 9. Elmer water-doused them. The noxious fumes messed with his gourd. He

Tommy G. run wets from T.J.! Tommy G. supply truck farms in Imperial Valley! Don’t know who slice Dudster—don’t know, don’t know, don’t know! Elmer laid on the hurt. Rice and Kapek worked their sap gloves. They got more eeeek and

Tommy nancy boy! Don’t know where he is! Tommy poking some priest! Elmer caught that one. It brought back Tommy’s address book. It underlined the St. Vib’s listing. Rice

recalled that number for Eddie Leng’s Kowloon. Kantonese Kuisine. Ord & Hill. Your gracious host, Eddie Leng. It’s a

He smelled something all scorched up. He knew from scorched. He’d flamethrowered Nicaraguan insurgents. It dispersed crowds good. Those humps got their tail feathers singed.

Well, shit—it’s fried flesh, not scorched. Eddie Leng was rope-cinched to a four-burner stove. He was barefoot. Charred anklebones extended from two fryer thingamajigs. Residual grease and blood bubbled. Eddie’s feet got deep-fried. Elmer reeled and caught himself. He double-scanned the stiff. Eddie wore reet-pleat pants and a Hawaiian shirt. Some fuck folded his hands on his chest. Note the tattoo. It’s there on the right forefinger-thumb web. It’s an “SQ” circled by snakes. Remember Tommy Glennon’s tattoo stencil? It’s flat out just like that.

(LOS ANGELES, 4:45 A.M., 1/1/42) Opium. His private room at Kwan’s.

trash. Dudley smoked opium. He succumbed to pictures and colors. His mind still logically tracked.

back. Stopover, Dublin. His trek to the New World. Joe Kennedy and Father Coughlin wave. Uncle Joe donates gun money. J. J. Cantwell funnels it to Republican causes. It’s 1921. Dudley Liam Smith’s a schoolboy killer. Uncle Joe says he’ll sponsor American citizenship. There’s a Grafton Street skirmish.

Background

Schoolboy Smith shoots three Black-and-Tans. Their faces explode. Dudley

Tommy at that costume party. Brentwood, winter ’39. The Jewish Maestro’s home, sublet. Nazi antics reenacted. Orgiastic overtones. Sturmbannführer D. L. Smith injudiciously attends. Dudley fought back jitters. He reached for his pipe.

A Western Union telegram. Dudley slit the envelope and read it. The tone was brusque. The gist was this: It’s an active-duty summons. We’re calling you in, early. Report to the Special

Intelligence Service command post in Ensenada, NOW.

(LOS ANGELES, 6:30 A.M., 1/1/42) Thumps. Muted

quicksville. Booze blackout. You’re driving up the coast road. Then something happens. Now you’re HERE.

He was midsized and slight. Joan loomed over him. Captain’s bars and three hashmarks. Wire-rim glasses.

Bill

you before.’ ” Parker gripped the bars. “You might well have. I checked your enlistment file. We attended Northwestern concurrently.” Joan gripped

“What happened? Why am I here?” Parker lit a cigarette. “You’ve been arrested for four counts of vehicular manslaughter. Four men are dead because you drove inebriated in a heavy rainstorm. If you’re lucky, you’ll do five years at Tehachapi.” Joan stepped

Parker grinned a tad. “You’re a cum laude forensic biologist. A prison sentence would scotch whatever degree of success you might ultimately achieve.” “You’re leading me, Captain. There’s something going

“You rid the world of four vicious thugs. I’ll extend muted bravos, and add that all opportunities carry a price. If you resign your Navy commission, I’ll see to a dismissal of all charges against you. I’ll secure you a position with the PD’s Central Crime Lab and personally vouch your wartime employment.” Booze blackouts, skeet guns, cop voyeurs— “Is this your métier, Captain? Have you made a career out of entrapping young women?”

Joan laughed. “I’ve read monographs by

your Dr. Ashida. I greatly admire them.” “Would you like to meet Dr. Ashida?” Joan said, “When?” Parker said, “Now.”

(LOS ANGELES, 7:45 A.M., 1/1/42) The bash felt stale

The dead kids. Ashida teethed on it. He teethed each and every split second. He sipped coffee and stayed alert. Bill Parker issued a gag order. No reporters, no public exposure. Four male wetbacks, muerto. It stands at THAT. The Navy woman

Ashida jumped topics. Romantic intrigue bored and vexed him. “I read a Teletype from Fourth Interceptor. There’s allegedly hidden air bases out in Indio and Brawley. The command picked up coded pay-phone calls from here to Baja.” Elmer shrugged. “Dud’s headed south. He’ll nip that grief in the bud. ‘Knock, knock, who’s there? Dudley Smith, so spies beware.’ ” Ashida

wolf-growled. Ashida deployed Man Camera. He framed Parker and the redhead. He panned to Kay Lake and caught her reaction. He zoomed in for a close-up. Kay and Parker shared This Big Freighted Look. Parker and the redhead hit the buffet. They ignored the food and mixed high-test Bloody Marys. They clicked glasses. Their hands brushed. Kay saw it all. Thad Brown walked up. He ignored dozed-out Blanchard. He braced Ashida and Elmer. “Let’s go. We’ve got mud slides in Griffith Park. They’ve dislodged a body by the golf course.”

(LOS ANGELES, 8:30 A.M., 1/1/42) They

First reports state this: The stiff is a long-term decomp. That means all bones. It washed up on the par-3 golf course. Said course adjoined Mineral Canyon—i.e., the spot where Wayne Frank Jackson died. Elmer agitated it. Elmer segued to more pressing shit. Eddie Leng’s deep-fried feet. Tommy Glennon’s address book. He’d dropped the book

arc lights lit this: Soaked grass up the fairway. The mud spill and all this loose soil. A big dirt hole. Exhumed mud sluicing down to this flat spot. The spill

down the hillside. It’s a pine box—six-six by two feet. It’s charred black. They’re char marks, for sure. Intermittent marks—mud-and-root-matted.

Ashida pointed to the goo. “That’s congealed quicklime. It serves to speed decomposition.” Elmer relit his cigar. Forbes and Goossen lit cigarettes. Brown spit tobacco juice. “That tags it Murder One.”

foot-tapped the box. “Note the width of the pelvis and the overall length and breadth of the remains. The victim was male, tall, and heavyset.” Brown

gouged him. October 3, ’33—the Griffith Park blaze. Ashida tapped a shattered rib bone. “It’s a knife-thrust homicide. The killer hit hard, went in deep, and twisted the knife.”

backlit the whole golf course. “You remember that big fire, back in ’33? I’m thinking it could have whooshed over the box and caused all the charring.” Ashida said, “I don’t think so. There’s too much mud for the fire to have gone that deep.”

He said, “Elmer could be right. I think the box was burned concurrent with an aboveground fire. 1933 might be a good guess.”

Tony tricked switcheroosky. He turned Ruth Mildred straight in one-night allotments. Ruthie was a disbarred physician and scrape doc. Ruthie was tight with Dudley Smith. Ruthie recruited lez girls for Brenda.

Kay stage-sighed. “Come on, Elmer. Give.” Elmer stage-sighed. “The party? The big redhead with Bill Parker? That catch your eye?” “Now, he gets to it.” “Hard not to notice, huh?” Kay laughed. “I’ve known William Henry Parker the Third for twenty-seven days, and during that time he has repeatedly cast his eyes about for tall, red-haired, naval-officer women.” Elmer said, “You’re counting the days since you’ve met him. What’s that tell you about yourself?” Kay said, “You’re

Elmer said, “I don’t know no more than you do, except how much you love that man.” Kay blew

St. Vibiana’s Church. He decoded that one already. It’s the home of papal poobah J. J. Cantwell. He’s the Dudster’s old pal. The Deutsches Haus. 15th and Union. Pro-Nazi hot spot. Kraut regalia for sale. Let’s backtrack. We’re in Tommy’s hotel room. There’s that tattoo stencil. It features swastikas and an “SQ” circled by snakes. The “SQ” snake job was embroidered on the late Eddie Leng. More

“some priest” travel the Hershey Highway. Jean Clarice Staley. A Hollywood exchange. That rates a Huh? She’s a woman—but Tommy runs Greek. He rapes women—he don’t call them. That hot-box pay phone. It’s right upside the Herald. It’s drilled for slug calls. Plus this head-scratcher. It rates a big Huh? Fourteen pay phones. All down in Baja. All in Ensenada. All eighty miles south of T.J. Let’s backtrack. Tommy ran wetbacks for Carlos Madrano. That Spanish-language book in Tommy’s room. Head-scratchers. Brain-broilers. Code 3 Alert. Look out, son. You’re brushing upside Dudley Smith. Rain

It’s October 3. It’s 103 degrees in L.A. Santa Ana winds change course. CCC workers are out cutting brush. Wayne Frank’s among them. Thirty-four men die. It gets ambiguous here. There’s sloppy rosters and files and fly-by-night work crews. Who died and who didn’t? There’s un-ID’d bodies. There’s Wayne Frank—ID’d off old dental charts. Arson or not? It gets ambiguous here. It’s the Depression. There’s Red revolt in the vox populi. Garment workers agitating. Labor marches. Kreepy Kremlin prophecies. Fires, tidal waves, storms. Elmer dug out his scrapbook. Wayne Frank pix consumed four pages. Wayne Frank in a boxer’s pose, 1924. Wayne Frank in a Klan sheet, 1926. Elmer V. in Marine green, 1930. Wayne Frank giving him the horns.

Wayne Frank imagined impossible shit and convinced himself that it was true. Wayne Frank developed this big gold-heist fixation. May ’31. A mint-train job. A Frisco-to-L.A. gold-transfer run. Gold bars. A small number. Triple-locked in a cage. Shackled passengers under guard. San Quentin convicts bound for retrials in L.A. Chaos attends a track switch in Monterey County. All eight cons escape. Seven men are hunted down. They’re shot on sight faaaaast. One man remains at large still. More grief. A downed-track snafu two hours south. Chaos atop chaos. Guards and crew succumb to frayed nerves. The heist occurs then. The heister or heisters are smart. Just one box’s worth of bars leaves the train. The train treks south. Santa Barbara’s a coal stop. The theft is discovered then. Suspicion falls on Leander Frechette. He’s the train’s odd-job man. He’s dim-witted, Negro, fucking-A strong. The Santa Barbara cops posit a single-o heister. He walked the bars off the train two or three at a clip. It had to be Frechette. Nobody else had the strength. Somebody bossed him. He was too dumb to concoct the plan himself. The Santa Barbara cops beat Frechette baaaaad. He refused to confess. A colored preacher with cop clout intervened. Frechette was released. The case fizzled out. It went to open-file status, stale bread. Wayne Frank hoarded news clips and treasure-magazine pieces. He studied the heist and worked himself up to fever pitch. Wayne Frank, the dreamer. Wayne Frank, the fantasist...

“You know what Kay says. ‘Keep referring to me in the third person. It sends me.’ ” Brenda shut the door. “Katherine Ann. She’s the first thing out of your mouth. She’s the only one you’ll ever love, in case you ain’t figured it out.” Elmer checked

the war, the draft, and you blew that stakeout, so maybe Dudley Smith’s peeved at you. You don’t like harassing these so-called innocent Japs, and you wish you could go back to Vice. Give me a little clue.”

on Tommy Glennon.” Rice said, “Dud’s hipped on Tommy. Something’s going on there that I don’t comprehend.” Kapek said, “Dud’s right hand don’t know what his left hand is doing.” Elmer

The hard rain revived. He drove through swamped intersections and sewer floods. Who snuffed Eddie Leng? Who’s the dead man in the box? Elmer