Kay caught the kerfuffle. She X-ray-eyed Joan. Elmer said, “There’s your gossip.”
“If you mean vehicular manslaughter, I’ve already heard it. Lee told me. He said it’s worse than the dead Mexicans, but he wouldn’t say why.”
Elmer shrugged. “You know everything that I know. If there’s more to it, you could ask Bill Parker.”
Kay jiggled his hands. Elmer laced up their fingers.
“Kick Lee out. You don’t sleep with him, anyway. Tell Parker to leave his wife and marry you. If he nixes it, I’ll marry you. I’ll get a cop job in Bumfuck, Indiana. We’ll live fat and sassy on a farm someplace.”
Kay laughed and unlaced their fingers. She scanned the bar and X-ray-eyed Big Joan.
He got itchy. He stayed batshit. He fought the Saturday Night Blues.
Elmer drove to his place and fed his tropical fish. Said fish ignored him. Itchy feet pushed him back out. L.A. was blackout black. He drove straight to Brenda’s place.
He almost walked in. Oooh-baby grunts stopped him dead at the door. He peeped the front window. Shit — Brenda’s shtupping Jack Horrall on the floor.
Elmer drove to Ellen’s place. He parked outside her building and reconnoitered. He elevatored up to her floor. He climbed out on a fire escape and peeped the front room. Shit — Ellen’s shtupping her husband on the couch.
More loose ends. More fucking rain. Mama, dem blues gots me baaaaaad.
Elmer drove to Chapman Park. Brenda’s fuck flop overlooked the Ambassador Hotel. Tonight, at the Coconut Grove: Glenn Miller and the Modernaires.
He parked and elevatored up. He let himself in and stormed the kitchen. He built a ham sandwich and a highball. He pondered dumb moves.
Send Kay flowers. Send Big Joan flowers. Take her to the Coconut Grove. Mess with Bill Parker.
Elmer guzzled his highball. He unlocked the wall peek and checked the camera gear. He skimmed the play-for-pay girl book.
Charlotte, French expert. Dirty Diane, striptease. Call the switchboard. You’re the boss. You get the woof-woof for free.
Or—
Hit the Lincoln Heights Jail. Brace Crazy Don Matsura. Remember? He had that menu for Eddie Leng’s Kowloon.
The rain got worse. He snail-trailed up the Parkway to 19th Avenue. The jail stood upside the off-ramp. He hooked right and sluiced up to a PD space. He got out and ran in.
The entrance hall was bare bones/all gray cement. Elmer brushed off his raincoat and shook himself dry. A night cop lounged by the gate racks. He wore that I-hate-this-job look. He beady-eyed a cheesecake book.
Elmer walked up and badged him. The night cop said, “So?”
Elmer said, “I’m with the Alien Squad. You’ve got a frisky Jap named Donald Matsura here. I know, because I brought him in.”
The night cop said, “He ain’t so frisky now. Banzai, if you know what I mean.”
“Why don’t you explain what you mean?”
“I mean, Chief Horrall called the watch commander. He said Ace Kwan would like a few words with your boy. As in, ‘Put him in a sweatbox and then walk away.’ ”
Elmer slipped the dink twenty. “Ace and I go way back. Call-Me-Jack, likewise. If Ace is still at it, I’d like to watch the show.”
“Well...”
Elmer doubled up the bribe. The night cop went Mum’s the word and racked the front gate. Elmer took the main catwalk back. Crisscrossed catwalks extended. Japs were packed in six and eight to a cell.
He hit a bisecting hall. He saw recessed doorways. Oh, yeah — it’s sweatbox row.
Four twelve-by-twelve rooms. All the same. Look-see mirrors/floor-bolted tables/two screwed-down chairs.
Elmer cut straight left. He peeped three mirrored doors and got bupkes. He peeped room #4 and got the real shit.
There’s Demon Don. There’s Uncle Ace. It’s the well-known third degree.
Ace was a known rubber-hose man. His hose looked heavy-duty. It was friction-taped. It stood straight up. It had to be ball bearing — packed.
Matsura was chair-cuffed. Ace swung the hose. He threw tight shots — arms, rib cage, legs.
Elmer popped the door. A shit and piss stink hit him. Matsura screamed. He bucked his chair. The floor bolts shimmied. One bolt pulled loose.
Ace saw Elmer. Ace said, “Jack H. give okay.”
Elmer said, “You mean Dudley did.”
Matsura dribbled blood on the table. Ace threw a head shot. Matsura screamed. Gold bridgework flew.
Ace gibbered. Matsura dribbled blood. Elmer saw gum flaps laced in.
Ace shrieked, trilingual. He went Chink/English/Chinklish. Elmer caught this:
You Jap fucker/you tonged up/Four Families/sell terp/winos and dope fiends. You sell pharmacy hop/with Lin Chung/you know Tommy Glenn—
Ace stopped. Ace went Oops. Ace shut his fat fucking mouth.
Elmer went Oh shit.
Ace swung the hose. He threw rib shots and leg shots. Elmer heard bones break. Matsura dribbled blood. The hose cracked down the middle. Ball bearings flew—
Elmer grabbed Ace by the neck and hard-shoved him. Ace bounced off the back wall and hit the floor flat on his ass. Matsura bucked his chair and tore out all the floor bolts. The chair capsized.
Ace keened and screeched. It was some heathen curse. He got to his knees and pulled out his dick. He piss-polluted this big pool of Jap blood.
18
(Ensenada, 9:15 A.M., 1/4/42)
That cretinous redneck. That Klan-klique bumpkin. That maladroit buffoon.
The telephone exploded. Dudley dropped the receiver. It cut Mike Breuning off.
Bad news. Elmer Jackson muscled Ace Kwan and caused a big upscut. Tough tiff at the Lincoln Heights Jail.
Dudley lit a cigarette. His office spun. Squadroom noise went cacophonous. The temperature zoomed.
He wiped his face and roused the switchboard. He got more bad news. All Baja-to-L.A. circuits — full up.
He should call Jack Horrall and demand reprisals. That could boomerang. Jack was thick with Brenda Allen. That fact mandated circumspection.
Dudley rubbed his bad arm. The sling came off yesterday. An Army doc checked him out and pronounced him okay.
Minor aches persisted. They induced flutters and sweats. They derailed his concentration. His mind wandered. He teethed on the inconsequential. Little things set him off.
His wife called. She wanted to chat. He forgot his eldest daughter’s name. Claire eavesdropped on the bedroom phone. It enraged him.
Claire missed Mass this morning. It vexed him. Claire was off with her fetching, if feral, new waif. The girl vexed him no end.
Joan Klein was age fifteen. She was a New York runaway and a Zionist Jew. Her immigrant kin veered hard left. Claire found the girl très enchanting.
She bought the girl clothes. She got her a room down the hall. The girl told tall tales. Labor agitators clash with Fed thugs. Mayhem results.
He humored Claire. He said, “You’re underemployed, darling. You’re picking up strays and grasping at straws.”
Claire lashed out. She defamed the “effete” Hideo Ashida. She excoriated the harmless dilettante Kay Lake. Young Kay shivved him in Kwan’s basement. Claire fell prey to her most fleeting whims. The charge was preposterous.
José Vasquez-Cruz gored Claire. She thought she gored him. That was très Claire. She confused enmity with mild contempt. She said, “I think I’ve seen him before. Somewhere — perhaps a demonstration.”