The Black Dahlia

  RAVES FOR THE BLACK DAHLIA

  “High-intensity prose. Reading it aloud could shatter your wineglasses.”

  —ELMORE LEONARD

  “An absolute masterpiece and Ellroy’s finest work to date … played out against a beautifully dark, moody, ‘40s L.A. jazz score. The ultimate novel noir.”

  —JONATHAN KELLERMAN

  “If you don’t read James Ellroy’s THE BLACK DAHLIA, you will have only yourself to blame, my friend.”

  —LARRY KING

  “The toughest tough-guy book you’ll ever read! Big, ambitious, with passionate characters, grand obsessions, a fine sense of period and ambiance … Much more than a mystery, this is a real novel.”

  —WILLIAM BAYER

  “Turgid with passion, violence, and frustration … imaginative and bizarre.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “A riveting 1940s noir Hollywood setting, full of period flavor and investigative detail.”

  —Boston Herald

  “THE BLACK DAHLIA hits you like Chinatown directed by Caryl Chessman. With it, James Ellroy surges to the forefront of contemporary American mystery fiction—Krafft-Ebing in one hand, a chainsaw in the other.”

  —ANDREW VACHSS

  “Ellroy has brilliantly poised the story between beauty and gross ugliness, honor and corruption, sense and loyalty, knowledge and ignorance. This is a big novel, ambitious in theme and content, and it’s the finest of its kind that I’ve read in many a year.”

  —Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine

  “James Ellroy has taken this unsolved murder, put his own savage spin on the story, and turned it into compelling fiction … fascinating reading, since Ellroy seemingly cannot write a dull line.”

  —Hartford Courant

  “THE BLACK DAHLIA meets the primary criterion of a good mystery read—you can’t put it down … Ellroy is the master of a very difficult craft.”

  —San Diego Union-Tribune

  “A major book.”

  —Library Journal

  “Fine attention to detail and dead-on sense of the period … Ellroy has established himself as one of the finest practitioners of noir fiction.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Ellroy distills the introspective style, slang, and racism of the ‘40s roman noir … His characters, individuals all, are beautifully shaded, and he captures the mind-numbing detail of police work.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “Ellroy kept me glued to the chair … His ear for 1940s speech is flawless.”

  —Newsweek

  “A riveting, volatile, and sometimes repulsive novel… It also is raw, scary, tough, and masterful

  —San Antonio Express-News

  “A dark, compelling work of fiction … This is a tough book. It’s a good one, too.”

  —San Jose Mercury News

  “Ellroy’s seventh mystery and his best … The texture of his writing—dark, moody, tense—gains originality with each novel. If you want to go to hell and back, this book is for you.”

  —Los Angeles Daily Breeze/News Pilot

  “The novelistic equivalent of film noir.”

  —Christian Science Monitor

  “Ellroy’s apocalyptic visions are keenly realized, and his strong moral convictions are conveyed to the reader. This powerful and unforgettable novel should not be missed.”

  —Rave Reviews

  “Haunting … A book of deep friendships, conflicted love, and the brooding and merciless obsession of the characters with the Black Dahlia.”

  —Los Angeles magazine

  “Ellroy’s best yet… Ellroy is here to stay. Our great-grandchildren will be reading this book.”

  —RICHARD LAYMAN

  “A fast-moving, brutal, and enjoyable police novel … This is red-hot writing.”

  —Milwaukee Journal

  “Masterful … A shocker that other writers would kill to have written. This one is not to be missed; it’ll hang you out to dry.”

  —HARLAN ELLISON

  “Building like a symphony … a wonderful, complicated but accessible tale of ambition, insanity, passion, and deceit, with the perfect setting of booming, postwar Los Angeles.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Also by James Ellroy

  Destination: Morgue!

  The Cold Six Thousand

  Crime Wave

  My Dark Places

  American Tabloid

  Hollywood Nocturnes

  White Jazz

  L.A. Confidential

  The Big Nowhere

  Suicide Hill

  Killer on the Road

  Because the Night

  Blood on the Moon

  Clandestine

  Brown’s Requiem

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the autor’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  The author gratefully acknowledges Houghton Mifflin to quote All My Pretty Ones, copyright © 1962 by Anne Sexton

  Copyright © 1987 by James Ellroy

  Afterword copyright © 2006 by James Ellroy

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: March 2010

  ISBN: 978-0-446-50446-1

  Contents

  RAVES FOR THE BLACK DAHLIA

  Also by James Ellroy

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part II

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Part III

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Part IV

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  HILLIKERS: An Afterword to The Black Dahlia

  The Black Dahlia

  To Geneva Hilliker EUroy

  1915-1958

  Mother:

  Twenty-nine Years Later,

  This Valediction in Blood

  Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator,

  My first lost keeper, to love and look at later.

  —ANNE SEXTON

  Prologue

  I never knew her in life. She exists for me through others, in evidence of the ways her death drove them. Working backward, seeking only facts, I reconstructed her as a sad l
ittle girl and a whore, at best a could-have-been—a tag that might equally apply to me. I wish I could have granted her an anonymous end, relegated her to a few terse words on a homicide dick’s summary report, carbon to the coroner’s office, more paperwork to take her to potter’s field. The only thing wrong with the wish is that she wouldn’t have wanted it that way. As brutal as the facts were, she would have wanted all of them known. And since I owe her a great deal and am the only one who does know the entire story, I have undertaken the writing of this memoir.

  But before the Dahlia there was the partnership, and before that there was the war and military regulations and manuevers at Central Division, reminding us that cops were also soldiers, even though we were a whole lot less popular than the ones battling the Germans and Japs. After duty every day, patrolmen were subjected to participation in air raid drills, blackout drills and fire evacuation drills that had us standing at attention on Los Angeles Street, hoping for a Messerschmitt attack to make us feel less like fools. Daywatch roll call featured alphabetical formations, and shortly after graduating the Academy in August of ‘42, that was where I met Lee.

  I already knew him by reputation, and had our respective records down pat: Lee Blanchard, 43-4-2 as a heavyweight, formerly a regular attraction at the Hollywood Legion Stadium; and me: Bucky Bleichert, light-heavy, 36-0-0, once ranked tenth by Ring magazine, probably because Nat Fleisher was amused by the way I taunted opponents with my big buck teeth. The statistics didn’t tell the whole story, though. Blanchard hit hard, taking six to give one, a classic head-hunter; I danced and counterpunched and hooked to the liver, always keeping my guard up, afraid that catching too many head shots would ruin my looks worse than my teeth already had. Style-wise, Lee and I were like oil and water, and every time our shoulders brushed at roll call, I would wonder: who would win?

  For close to a year we measured each other. We never talked boxing or police work, limiting our conversation to a few words about the weather. Physically, we looked as antithetical as two big men could: Blanchard was blond and ruddy, six feet tall and huge in the chest and shoulders, with stunted bowlegs and the beginning of a hard, distended gut; I was pale and dark-haired, all lanky muscularity at 6 foot 3. Who would win?

  I finally quit trying to predict a winner. But other cops had taken up the question, and during that first year at Central I heard dozens of opinions: Blanchard by early KO; Bleichert by decision; Blanchard stopped/stopping on cuts—everything but Bleichert by knockout.

  When I was out of eye shot, I heard whispers of our non-ring stories: Lee coming on the LAPD, assured of rapid promotion for fighting private smokers attended by the high brass and their political buddies, cracking the Boulevard-Citizens bank heist back in ‘39 and falling in love with one of the heisters’ girlfriends, blowing a certain transfer to the Detective Bureau when the skirt moved in with him—in violation of departmental regs on shack jobs—and begged him to quit boxing. The Blanchard rumors hit me like little feint-jabs, and I wondered how true they were. The bits of my own story felt like body blows, because they were 100 percent straight dope: Dwight Bleichert joining the Department in flight from tougher main events, threatened with expulsion from the Academy when his father’s German-American Bund membership came to light, pressured into snitching the Japanese guys he grew up with to the Alien Squad in order to secure his LAPD appointment. Not asked to fight smokers, because he wasn’t a knockout puncher.

  Blanchard and Bleichert: a hero and a snitch.

  Remembering Sam Murakami and Hideo Ashida manacled en route to Manzanar made it easy to simplify the two of us— at first. Then we went into action side by side, and my early notions about Lee—and myself—went blooey.

  It was early June of ‘43. The week before, sailors had brawled with zoot suit wearing Mexicans at the Lick Pier in Venice. Rumor had it that one of the gobs lost an eye. Skirmishing broke out inland: navy personnel from the Chavez Ravine naval base versus pachucos in Alpine and Palo Verde. Word hit the papers that the zooters were packing Nazi regalia along with their switchblades, and hundreds of in-uniform soldiers, sailors and marines descended on downtown LA, armed with two-by-fours and baseball bats. An equal number of pachucos were supposed to be forming by the Brew 102 Brewery in Boyle Heights, supplied with similar weaponry. Every Central Division patrolman was called in to duty, then issued a World War I tin hat and an oversize billy club known as a nigger knocker.

  At dusk, we were driven to the battleground in personnel carriers borrowed from the army, and given one order: restore order. Our service revolvers had been taken from us at the station; the brass did not want .38’s falling into the hands of reet pleat, stuff cuff, drape shape, Argentine ducktail Mexican gangsters. When I jumped out of the carrier at Evergreen and Wabash holding only a three-pound stick with a friction-taped handle, I got ten times as frightened as I had ever been in the ring, and not because chaos was coming down from all sides.

  I was terrified because the good guys were really the bad guys.

  Sailors were kicking in windows all along Evergreen; marines in dress blues were systematically smashing streetlights, giving themselves more and more darkness to work in. Eschewing inter-service rivalry, soldiers and jarheads overturned cars parked in front of a bodega while navy youths in skivvies and white bell-bottoms truncheoned the shit out of an outnumbered bunch of zooters on the sidewalk next door. At the periphery of the action I could see knots of my fellow officers hobnobbing with Shore Patrol goons and MPs.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, numbed, wondering what to do. Finally I looked down Wabash toward 1st Street, saw small houses, trees and no pachucos, cops or blood-hungry GIs. Before I knew what I was doing, I ran there full speed. I would have kept running until I dropped, but a high-pitched laugh issuing from a front porch stopped me dead.

  I walked toward the sound. A high-pitched voice called out, “You’re the second young copper to take a powder from the commotion. I don’t blame you. Kinda hard to tell who to put the cuffs on, ain’t it?”

  I stood on the porch and looked at the old man. He said, “Radio says cabdrivers been makin’ runs to the USO up in Hollywood, then bringin’ the sailor boys down here. KFI called it a naval assault, been playin’ ‘Anchors Aweigh’ every hour on the half hour. I saw some gyrenes down the street. You think this is what you call an amphibious attack?”

  “I don’t know what it is, but I’m going back.”

  “You ain’t the only one turned tail, you know. ‘Nuther big fella came runnin’ this way pronto.”

  Pops was starting to look like a wily version of my father.

  “There’s some pachucos who need their order restored.”

  “Think it’s that simple, laddy?”

  “I’ll make it that simple.”

  The old man cackled with delight. I stepped off the porch and headed back to duty, tapping the knocker against my leg. The streetlights were now all dead; it was almost impossible to distinguish zooters from GIs. Knowing that gave me an easy way out of my dilemma, and I got ready to charge. Then I heard “Bleichert!” behind me, and knew who the other runner had been.

  I ran back. There was Lee Blanchard, “The Southland’s good but not great white hope,” facing down three marines in dress blues and a pachuco in a full-drape zoot suit. He had them cornered in the center walkway of a ratty bungalow court and was holding them off with parries from his nigger knocker. The jarheads were taking roundhouse swipes at him with their two-by-fours, missing as Blanchard moved sideways and back and forth on the balls of his feet. The pachuco fondled the religious medals around his neck, looking bewildered.

  “Bleichert code three!”

  I waded in, jabbing with my stick, the weapon hitting shiny brass buttons and campaign ribbons. I caught clumsy truncheon blows on my arms and shoulders and pressed forward so the marines would be denied swinging room. It was like being in a clinch with an octopus, and no referee or three-minute bell, and on instinct I dropped my baton, lowered my h
ead and started winging body punches, making contact with soft gabardine midsections. Then I heard, “Bleichert step back!”

  I did, and there was Lee Blanchard, the nigger knocker held high above his head. The marines, dazed, froze; the club descended: once, twice, three times, clean shots to the shoulders. When the trio was reduced to a dress blue rubble heap, Blanchard said, “To the halls of Tripoli, shitbirds,” and turned to the pachuco. “Hola, Tomas.”

  I shook my head and stretched. My arms and back ached; my right knuckles throbbed. Blanchard was cuffing the zooter, and all I could think to say was, “What was that all about?”

  Blanchard smiled. “Forgive my bad manners. Officer Bucky Bleichert, may I present Señor Tomas Dos Santos, the subject of an all-points fugitive warrant for manslaughter committed during the commission of a Class B Felony. Tomas snatched a purse off a hairbag on 6th and Alvarado, she keeled of a heart attack and croaked, Tomas dropped the purse, ran like hell. Left a big fat juicy set of prints on the purse, eyeball witnesses to boot.” Blanchard nudged the man. “Habla Ingles, Tomas?”

  Dos Santos shook his head no; Blanchard shook his head sadly. “He’s dead meat. Manslaughter Two’s a gas chamber jolt for spics. Hepcat here’s about six weeks away from the Big Adios.”

  I heard shots coming from the direction of Evergreen and Wabash. Standing on my toes, I saw flames shooting out of a row of broken windows, crackling into blue and white flak when they hit streetcar wires and phone lines. I looked down at the marines, and one of them gave me the finger. I said, “I hope those guys didn’t get your badge number.”

  “Fuck them sideways if they did.”

  I pointed to a clump of palm trees igniting into fireballs. “We’ll never be able to get him booked tonight. You ran down here to roust them? You thought—”

  Blanchard silenced me with a playful jab that stopped just short of my badge. “I ran down here because I knew there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about restoring order, and if I just stood around I might have gotten killed. Sound familiar?”

  I laughed. “Yeah. then you—”

  “Then I saw the shitbirds chasing hepcat, who looked suspiciously like the subject of felony warrant number four eleven dash forty-three. They cornered me here, and I saw you walking back looking to get hurt, so I thought I’d let you get hurt for a reason. Sound reasonable?”