9:14 a.m.
Parker paced his den. It was men’s club–furnished. Framed certificates honored him.
His law school degree. His state Bar plaque. His Phi Beta Kappa key. Thirty-four police commendations.
The certificates covered three walls. The fourth wall was masking-papered. Inked headings denoted this:
Blackouts/Traffic Statistics.
Alien Squad/Subversive Roundups.
Watanabe Case/Details-Chronology.
Lake/De Haven.
Parker paced. He was doomsday exhausted. His glasses slid down his nose.
He was stretched Mass-wafer thin. He threw a fit in full uniform. He was afraid that he was missing things. That meant write them all down.
Blackouts/Traffic Statistics. Jot graph notes.
Last night’s blackout spawned a Negro riot. Five people died in car wrecks. A soldier shot a society dame at a checkpoint. She did not hear his “Halt!” warning. He drilled her dead.
Alien Squad/Subversive Roundups. Jot graph notes.
“Feds go to ‘B’ subversive list. Details to come.”
“Hold squad briefing. Urge officers to curtail strongarm methods.”
He’d seen War Department Teletypes. FDR had full-scale internment plans. Army teams were scouting sites throughout the Southwest. The local jails were Japped to the tits. A mass evacuation boded. Hold for the Jap diaspora.
Watanabe Case/Details-Chronology. Jot graph notes.
“White man/purple sweater. Black car outside house, 12/6/41, near time of death.”
“H. Ashida to do tire molds/most likely futile.”
“Watanabe calls to Santa Monica pay phones.”
Lake/De Haven. Jot graph notes.
He raised his pen. The world dipped off its axis. He was that fucking tired.
Lake/De Haven. It’s all in his head. There’s nothing to jot on the graph.
Kay Lake was working both ends of it. She was a swoony unfulfilled artist. She saw her film as a luminous polemic. She wanted to entrap Claire De Haven. She had to win his “fatuous” and “presumptuous” war. Her courtroom testimony settled the Boulevard-Citizens case. He would put her on the witness stand and doom the Red Queen. He would craft her oratory. She would explicate his theocratic resolve.
She senses his misgivings per the roundups. She thinks she can instill apostasy. Their meetings leave him tense. He thinks of her more than he should.
Parker laid his head on the graph. His arms and legs were rubberized. The wall held him up.
The door creaked. Helen walked in. She wore her gardener’s jumpsuit.
“You’re a wreck, Bill. You should take the day off and sleep.”
He kept his head down. It hid the Lake/De Haven graph.
“I can’t. I have to collate Teletypes, and Horrall wants a briefing on the blackout.”
“The world can do without you for a day. You didn’t start the war, and I don’t think you’ll be the one to finish it.”
“Bill, please. Please rest, please don’t sleep in the cot room at City Hall, please tend to yourself, and please don’t run away from me like you’ve been doing.”
She looked perky. She always looked perky. She was born perky.
“I’ll take Sunday morning off. We’ll go to Mass and get breakfast at Lyman’s.”
Helen laughed. “Where you’ll disappear into the back room and read Teletypes. Where you’ll gab with Thad Brown and joke about ousting Jack Horrall. Where—”
“Helen, please—”
“Bill, please stop neglecting your marriage. Bill, please curtail your brusque behavior with my family and friends. Bill, please take the pledge again, because I can’t stand seeing you drunk. Bill, please don’t work so hard and learn to have some simple fun, so you won’t have nightmares and sweat up the bed on the few nights we share it. Bill, please quit praying aloud when you think I can’t hear it, because I don’t want to know what you’re saying to God. Bill, please stop getting crushes on college girls when you have a woman who—”
Parker ran.
He made the back porch. He covered his ears. It didn’t kill this:
Helen stomps through the house. Helen slams doors. Helen gets her car and guns it. Helen lays rubber down the driveway.
He kept a jug in the toolshed. He walked over and snatched it. He took three good pops.
He got the burn and the shudders. He got the bright colors. He got that moment you go somewhere else.
He stashed the bottle. He got an idea. He went back inside and snatched his desk phone. An operator plugged him through to Chicago.
Northwestern U. The campus cops. He had cachet there.
The Chief came on the line. Parker laid it out.
Joan. A biology major. About twenty-five. Tall and red-haired. He saw her shoot skeet off Lake Michigan. She owned a vent-rib 12-gauge.
The Chief said he’d jump on an ID. Parker hung up.
He felt sandbagged. Doomsday, Armageddon. Booze begets instant misconduct and regret. He walked to the couch and fell down.
Yeah, that’s it.
It’s 1916. Those are brothel windows. Now it’s ’24 L.A. He’s beating up his first wife. They’re at the hospital. She’s bandaged up and spiteful. She’s hitting him back.
Church processions. He’s shaking a mitre box. Pope Pius XII in Deadwood? no, that can’t be.
Church bells. No, doom bells. Bloody thorns or his gun belt gouged him awake.
He opened his eyes. His wristwatch read 8:14.
Not the Pope—the Archbishop. Jimmy and Dudley—the mad micks.
He got up and opened the door. They saw him disheveled and roared that mick way. His Eminence favored golf togs outside the rectory. He wore a pink sweater and kelly green slacks.
Dudley said, “Our future Chief, roused from sleep.”
J. J. Cantwell said, “We’re three Catholic men relieved of our duties. We’re going to get shit-faced drunk and defame the Prottys and the kikes.”
Parker ushered them in. His Eminence was sixty-six and rambunctious. Dudley doted on him. They met in Ireland, circa 1919. Dudley killed British soldiers. Cantwell funneled gun money.
Dudley said, “I smell Helen Schultz Parker’s corned beef and cabbage, warming in the oven.”
Cantwell said, “Schultz? Bill married a Hun? We might have to intern her, along with all the heathen Japs.”
Dudley said, “She’s a fine Catholic lass, Your Eminence.”
Cantwell said, “We’ll have to have Bill explain this new war to us, Dud. Father Coughlin lays the blame on the coons and the sheenie bankers, and I tend to agree with him.”
Dudley said, “America and Ireland first, Your Eminence. You know where I stand on that.”
Cantwell said, “Let’s get shit-faced drunk and defame that Jew shitheel in the White House. Franklin Double-Cross Rosenfeld, his name is.”
Parker yawned. He was hungover. He craved a hair of the dog.
The phone rang. It hit him as gunshots.
He grabbed it. “Yes?”
“It’s Thad, Bill. Please put Dudley on.”
He passed the receiver. Dudley took it and dispensed winks.
He said, “Sergeant Smith.” He listened. He said, “Certainly.” He passed the phone back.
“There’s devilish mischief in Chinatown. My presence is required.”
Ignore the tone. Read his eyes. Dear God, such glee.