2:16 a.m.

Scotty fumbled with me.

He showed up an hour ago. His hands were bruised; his suit was wrinkled; he wore a shoulder-holstered gun. My wartime lover. The “first emergency hire” of the Los Angeles PD.

He had surveilled me late Wednesday night; he had observed my date with Hideo Ashida. I should have been furious—but something made me step back from it.

My rough boy was distraught. He bolted three quick scotches, carried me upstairs and went at my body. He’d start to kiss me, stop and burrow into me. He’d get up and adjust the curtains to further contain us.

The bedroom is dark. We can’t read each other. It’s as if we’re back in the blackout.

I put my hand on Scotty’s chest and felt him pulsing. I said, “Tell me.”

He said, “I was waiting outside here, way late Wednesday night. I’d just got sworn in. I wanted to tell you before someone else did. You came home, but you went out again, and I wanted to get things straight in my mind before I told you. Then you drove to Linny’s and met Ashida. He was at the ceremony, so I knew you knew.”

I smoothed his hair and undid his holster. He relaxed a bit. I placed his holster on a bedside chair.

“I was angry at you for following me. But I understand it now.”

Scotty said, “I like Ashida okay, but he’s a Jap. I wanted to tell you, but when you saw me outside Linny’s, I knew he’d tell you and take it away from me.”

I said, “I’m sorry. And you know I couldn’t have known.”

“I know. But there’s a war on, and he’s a Jap. It’s like I said the other night. You spread yourself pretty thin.”

I touched Scotty’s face. His eyes were wet. I brushed away tears.

Scotty trembled. He said, “I killed a man. I thought I’d join the Marines and shoot Japs on some island. I killed a Chinaman instead.”

His tremors moved to my body.

“What happened? How did it happen?”

He said, “Ace Kwan’s niece was killed. The guy who did it went after Dudley, so I shot him.”

“And?”

“There’s no ‘and,’ Kay. That’s all I’m supposed to say. You can read about it in the Mirror. Dud gave Sid Hudgens the exclusive.”

I rolled away from him. There was Dudley Smith and Lee; Dudley Smith, Lee, and Abe Reles. “The canary can sing, but he can’t fly.” Coney Island and a drop out that window. A dead Chinaman now.

Scotty rolled into me. His breath subsided. He’d said it.

The bed was disarrayed. I pulled the covers over us and felt the hitch that signified Scotty’s drifting to sleep. A five-day love affair and this body’s knowledge already. The hitch felt safe.

Scotty slept. I turned on the bedside lamp and moved the beam away from him. I got out the tract I stole from Claire De Haven’s.

The title was Fascist Harvest. An L.A. policeman’s badge was pictured below it.

The prose style was luminous by propaganda-tract standards. The introduction rehashed beefs pertaining to Chief Jim Davis. It was stale stuff—but then the author riveted me.

Davis was abetted in his repressive enforcement schemes. The brains and “oppressive mind-set” behind them belonged to his administrative aide. The aide was a ruthlessly ambitious and incandescently brilliant lieutenant named William H. Parker.

Lieutenant Parker was an exceedingly gifted attorney-at-law. Lieutenant Parker utilized his legal prowess to enhance his personal power within the Los Angeles Police Department and to increase political autonomy for the Los Angeles Police. These measures were couched within a disingenuous and entirely self-serving populist stance. They restricted political influence as it regarded day-to-day police work. They dashed all notions of civilian oversight on the Los Angeles Police. They set the stage for greater political-police collusion, once compliant politicians with “quasi-reformer” credentials were lured into the PD’s fold. The tract predicted the current reign of Mayor Fletch Bowron and Chief “Call-Me-Jack” Horrall, and laid the blame on the then Lieutenant William H. Parker.

Lieutenant Parker was a sterling long-term thinker. His legal mind was attuned solely to his own goals. He despised the Davises, Bowrons and Horralls of the world and facilitated their power solely to pave the way for his own ascent. He created the police regimes that he purported to despise and intended to reform at that far-ahead moment when power came to him. The author praised Parker here. He employed Marxist methods with magisterial aplomb. His city charters greatly increased the civil-service protection granted to Los Angeles police chiefs and gave them a free rein to ignore civilian interference and rule for life. Lieutenant William H. Parker was no less than the creator and sustaining force behind Police State Los Angeles and the theocrat’s utopia that he planned to build from scratch. The author of the tract knew it: “As a victim, as a citizen engaged in revolt, as an affluent woman rendered a casualty in Whiskey Bill Parker’s war.”

So, it’s personal. So, it’s all about the two of you.

The text went to memoir. Claire De Haven described an antipolice rally in Pershing Square. The date was October 11, 1935. Claire was twenty-five and organizing for the Socialist Workers Party. L.A. cops beat a Negro prisoner to death at the Lincoln Heights jail. Protests ensued.

Police influence quashed a rising hue and cry. Lieutenant Bill Parker extorted newspapermen citywide. He pledged favors if they suppressed their coverage. They did. The incident faded from public consciousness. The SWP called for a rally on October 11.

Claire was there. The rally was peacefully run. Mounted cops attacked the protesters. Lieutenant Parker commanded them. Claire saw him in jackboots and Great War tin hat. She was beaten, kicked to the ground and tossed in a paddy wagon. She was locked up on the women’s tier at the Central Station jail. I was in the jail Monday night. I was locked up with a score of Japanese women. They were commandeered in a moment of racial hysteria.

Sheriff’s matrons tended to the female prisoners. They were stripped and sprayed for lice. A very large matron with a Jewish surname took her time with Claire. She fondled Claire’s breasts, shaved her hair close, dressed her in a scratchy smock and threw her in a cell. Claire saw herself in a mirror. She had been beaten and molested. Her mirror image brought to mind Renée Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc.

Claire’s lawyer father bailed her out. She fixated on the man in jackboots and glasses. She talked to a Police Department plant. The man said, “That’s Whiskey Bill. Let me tell you about him.”

Joan of Arc. William H. Parker.

Claire kept her hair short. She viewed The Passion of Joan of Arc repeatedly. The Protestant-reared atheist converted to Catholicism. She attended Mass at Saint Vibiana’s. Lieutenant Parker worshiped there. She observed him every Sunday morning. She watched Lieutenant Parker comport with an Irish-born policeman named Dudley Smith. She saw Lieutenant Parker and Sergeant Smith laugh and joke with Archbishop Cantwell. Monsignor Joseph Hayes became her confessor. He was also Lieutenant Parker’s confessor.

The rest of the tract was pure indictment.

William H. Parker’s intent was to place Los Angeles under martial law. His reforming zeal was the fascist ethos of subordinate and control. His Catholicism was the male vituperation of the Borgias. Her Catholicism was the ecstatic revelation of Joan of Arc.

I put down the tract. Officer R. S. Bennett slept beside me. I turned off the lamp. My bedroom went war-blackout dark.

The tract was never publicly issued—I sensed that very strongly. None of the information was documented in Claire’s file. The relationship was impersonal on Parker’s side—I sensed that even more strongly. He never saw the tract or saw Claire in church. It didn’t matter. She saw Parker, just as he saw me.

Claire’s middle name was Katherine, my full first name. I had lived a version of her life. The lover beside me killed a man this very night. His presence consoled more than disturbed me.

I have lain still for hours. I am aswirl in madness and magic. I don’t know what to do next.