This Storm
- Автор: Эллрой Джеймс
- Серия: Second L.A. Quartet #2
- Год: 2019
- Язык: английский
- Год: Knopf, Borzoi Books
- ISBN: 978-0-307-95700-9
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «This Storm». Краткое содержание книги:
El Tigre revealed zero. They stressed the Sinarquistas and his Peeping Tom busts. El Tigre came off bemused. He wore a sharkskin zoot suit and a coiled-snake pendant. He sported snarling-tiger tattoos.
Blanchard yawned. Ashida yawned. El Tigre told stale jokes. A lion is fucking a zebra. If a nigger and a Mexican jump off the Taft Building, who hits the ground first? Come-San-Chin, the Chinese cocksucker. That old chestnut.
El Tigre was twenty-nine. He graduated Lincoln High and LAJC. That was enticing. Ashida dispatched the Hollenbeck watch boss. El Tigre came off educated. See what you can find out.
Díaz lit a cigarette. He’d smoked all of his and half of Blanchard’s. He was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
“You guys have been good to me. I’ll concede that. You’ve read me pretty well, too. You know a tough nut to crack when you see one. I got popped for 459, back in ’38. It was a humbug roust. Two jamokes named Dougie Waldner and Fritzie Vogel leaned on me. They were rough boys. I withstood their grief, so you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll withstand yours.”
Blanchard yawned. “That Fritzie’s a mean one. He’s never learned the art of waiting your suspect out.”
Díaz said, “I’m the intransigent type. The day you wait me out will be the twelfth of never.”
Blanchard rolled his eyes. He ruffled the phone book on the table. The ’41 White Pages. Heavy and fat. The classic tell-me-now tool.
Ashida said, “You’re well-spoken, Mondo.”
“For a beaner. That’s what you’re saying.”
“No, I’m saying you’re well-spoken, by any and all standards.”
“Don’t butter me up, Charlie Chan. I’ve been buttered up by experts.”
Blanchard yawned. “Charlie Chan’s a Chink. You’re confusing him with Mr. Moto. Peter Lorre plays him in the movies. I popped that little twerp for possession of morphine. Some studio bulls put the skids to it.”
Ashida yawned. Díaz mock-yawned. Peter Lorre — snoresville. The room buzzer buzzed. Ashida got up and cracked the door.
A bluesuit passed him a folder. “That educational stuff you asked for. LAJC requisitioned it from the U.S. Passport Office. Your pal here did some traveling and raised some eyebrows.”
Ashida nodded. The bluesuit took off. Ashida shut the door and skimmed file pages.
Díaz had a Passport Office green sheet. He’d matriculated in Germany, circa ’35. He attended Dresden Polytechnic. He had a graduate chem degree. He’d joined the Nazi and left-wing Sparticist parties. He built bombs for Franco’s Falange and blew up Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War.
Díaz said, “Mr. Moto’s in a trance. He’s conniving something. He’s the inscrutable yellow man of the East.”
Blanchard said, “What gives?”
Ashida dropped the file and grabbed the phone book. He applied a two-hand grip and a baseball swing and smashed Díaz in the head. He heard his nose snap and watched blood burst. He reversed himself and slammed downward. Díaz whiplashed and jackknifed and bounced off the chair.
Blanchard jumped up and stood back. Díaz burrowed into the chair legs and covered his head. Ashida pounded his back. He made like Mr. Moto. He talked pidgin singsong.
“Dresden Polytechnic.”
“Your chem degree.”
“Your conflicting memberships.”
“Fascist or Communist. I’ll hit you until you roll.”
Díaz scrunched down and covered up. Ashida phone-booked him. He hit Díaz in the back, Díaz in the legs, Díaz in the head. He caught side shots of drop-jawed Lee Blanchard. He heard Díaz singsong-yelclass="underline"
“Fuck Salvy.”
“Fuck his puto Greenshirts.”
“I’m playing the left-right field.”
“I’m in with the real Kameraden.”
“We’ve got cutouts and mail drops and microdots.”
“We’ve got rebop straight from Buck Rogers.”
“We’re running shakedowns and we’ll have spaceships before this war is through.”
“We’re invisible.”
“We’re everywhere.”
“We’ll rule the postwar world.”
“Ask my cutout, Two-Gun Davis. Ask sub-Führer Meyer Gelb. We’re invisible and we’re everywhere.”
98
(Los Angeles, 11:00 A.M., 3/11/42)
Crash Squad confab. The big postmortem. Let’s kick loose leads to death.
The squad ran underweight now. Ashida split for Baja and pressing Army shit. The roster ran Elmer, Buzz, and Lee Blanchard. Plus Bill Parker and Thad Brown.
They hogged the Hollenbeck muster room. Thad brought a jug. They yawned and stretched and crapped out at one long table.
Elmer was bennie-bopped. Ashida’s absence jazzed him and gored him. Ashida grabbed Jean Staley’s postcards. They might contain microdots. That was all good. Ashida foxed him otherwise. He dumped that microdot letter in the mail slot. It would shoot to La Paz. He’d probably snitch the PO box number to Dudley. Ashida was playing Dud ad hoc. Betray him/rat to him/betray him. Ashida ran this treadmill to The Big Where?
The Big Where? was everywhere. Him and Buzz were half-ass estranged now. Buzz overthumped Frankie Carbajal. They half-ass made up, in the wake. They agreed to withhold certain shit that Frankie revealed.
Like Frankie’s sabotage rat-out. Like Abascal’s double-cross on Dud. Like Abascal’s plan to work wetback saboteurs and plant bombs on U.S. soil. The withhold felt dicey and clammy. The withhold felt good. Him and Buzz were running pure rogue now.
Dud vetted the Tommy Glennon snuff and told him to keep the gold bar. Dud vetted his shot at Wayne Frank’s killer. It all felt dicey-clammy and good. This new Crash Squad had formed. It was him, Kay, Thad, and Bill Parker. Ashida half-ass cosigned their main gig.
Cornhole Dudley Smith. Nullify his evil shit. Notch a clean klubhaus solve. Ashida was a wild card. Buzz was wild card #2. Buzz was running hurt-crazed and kill-crazed. He laid Joan’s diary scoop on him. The scoop gave Buzz this big hotfoot. Yeah — but toward what goddamn end?
Everybody yawned. Everybody stretched. Crash Squad vexation meets Crash Squad exhaustion. The jug went around. Elmer abstained. Booze defused his bennie drift. Thad B. intoned some bad news.
“This Greenshirt fuck Abascal fucked us. He got a lawyer to get Díaz, Santarolo, and Carbajal moved into Federal custody. Hollenbeck Patrol raided their domiciles and turned sixteen revolvers and automatics that Rice and Kapek sold them. The Feds are holding those little Nazi shits under Alien-Sedition Act provisions. My guess is they’ll be in stir awhile, and then get deported to Mexico.”
The room rippled. Abascal be wicked whammy. Elmer caught a whiff of Ed the Fed Satterlee here.
Buzz yawned. “This priest Joe Hayes is Tommy Glennon’s bun boy.”
Parker said, “Ouch — he’s my confessor.”
That roused some yuks. The jug went around. Elmer abstained. Buzz lit a big cigar.
“Archie Archuleta recruited out of the CYO at St. Vibiana’s. You got lots of rich-ass Catholic laymen contributing to the cause. Who knows how many 211s those dinks have pulled so far.”
The room rerippled. Buzz stifled a big yawn.
“Here’s something that may shock the more naïve among you. The Dudster’s hatching racket schemes down in Baja. I don’t see no dropped jaws on that one, so I’ll add that he’s partnered up with Salvy Abascal on that front, which makes him a second- or thirdhand accomplice to all of Salvy’s seditious shit.”