Perfidia: A novel - Hardcover

Ellroy, James

 
9780307956996: Perfidia: A novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0307956997 ISBN 13: 9780307956996
Verlag: Random House LCC US, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

It is December 6, 1941. America stands at the brink of World War II. Last hopes for peace are shattered when Japanese squadrons bomb Pearl Harbor. Los Angeles has been a haven for loyal Japanese-Americans-but now, war fever and race hate grip the city and the Japanese internment begins.

The hellish murder of a Japanese family summons three men and one woman. William H. Parker is a captain on the Los Angeles Police Department. He's superbly gifted, corrosively ambitious, liquored-up, and consumed by dubious ideology. He is bitterly at odds with Sergeant Dudley Smith-Irish émigré, ex-IRA killer, fledgling war profiteer. Hideo Ashida is a police chemist and the only Japanese on the L.A. cop payroll. Kay Lake is a twenty-one-year-old dilettante looking for adventure. The investigation throws them together and rips them apart. The crime becomes a political storm center that brilliantly illuminates these four driven souls-comrades, rivals, lovers, history's pawns.

Perfidia is a novel of astonishments. It is World War II as you have never seen it, and Los Angeles as James Ellroy has never written it before. Here, he gives us the party at the edge of the abyss and the precipice of America's ascendance. Perfidia is that moment, spellbindingly captured. It beckons us to solve a great crime that, in its turn, explicates the crime of war itself. It is a great American novel.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, andWhite Jazz, and the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand,and Blood’s A Rover. These seven novels have won numerous honors and were international best sellers.

Perfidia is the first novel of the Second L.A. Quartet, Ellroy’s fictional history of Los Angeles during World War II. The design of this extended work is unprecedented. Ellroy will take characters from the original quartet and trilogy, set between 1946 and 1972, and detail their lives as significantly younger people. Ellroy currently lives in Los Angeles.

www.jamesellroy.net

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CHAPTER 14
KAY LAKE'S DIARY
Los Angeles, December 7, 1941

Sunday brunch with Elmer and Brenda. Decorous, save for the talk.

Brenda owns a lovely home in Laurel Canyon. The furnishings can be seen in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Harry Cohn enjoys Brenda's girls and gave her free run of the Columbia warehouse.

A Mexican maid laid out huevos rancheros. Elmer mixed gin fizzes. Gary Cooper fucked Barbara Stanwyck on the couch I was perched on. Brenda swore that the rumor was true.

I felt disembodied. It was lack of sleep more than shock over what I'd heard at City Hall. Lee Blanchard, Ben Siegel and Abe Reles. Captain William H. Parker's belief that I would now be ripe for entrapment. He held me to be a woman who would stand up for her man and do anything to cover his misdeeds. He was gravely mistaken there.

Elmer said, "Lee caught a squawk with the Dudster. It's all over the air. Four Japs in Highland Park."
Brenda dosed her eggs with hot sauce. "You go straight to shop- talk."

Elmer said, "A good host plays to his guests, honey. Shoptalk is the only sort of talk that Miss Katherine Lake enjoys."

I laughed and picked at my food. Brenda and Elmer were nearly ten years older than I. They were professionals; I was a cop's quasi- girlfriend. The disparity rankled. We all went back to Bobby De Witt and the Boulevard-Citizens job. Open secrets and unspoken truths began germinating there. I wanted to peddle myself to wash the stink of Bobby off of me; Brenda refused to let me do it. She said, "You live by these crazy-girl notions you get from books and movies. I wouldn't be much of a friend if I let you take that nonsense too far."

Elmer handed me a cocktail. I wondered how up-to-date he was on Lee and Ben Siegel. "Bugsy" is now ensconced in a "penthouse" suite at the Hall of Justice jail. Sheriff's deputies serve as valets, flunkies and chauffeurs for visiting starlets. Velvet curtains provide privacy for Ben and his overnight guests. His release is imminent. Abe Reles' "swan dive" scotched the prosecution's case against him.

Elmer smiled and waggled his cigar stub. We possess an odd telepathy and often seem to know what the other is thinking. It always pertains to "shoptalk."

He said, "Lee paid off his chit with Benny Siegel."

I said, "Yes, I figured it out."

Brenda crushed her cigarette on a bread plate. "Tell all, honey. Don't be a C.T."

I said, "No, your lover goes first."

Elmer sprawled in a chair and grabbed Brenda. She fell into his lap and went Whoops! He said, "Thad Brown drove Dudley Smith and Lee to Union Station. He read the papers a few days later and put it together."

Brenda said, "How'd you figure it out?"

I made that zip-the-lips gesture. Elmer said, "Give, sister." Brenda said, "Don't be a C.T."

I played coy. "There's a Traffic captain who knows a lot about Lee."

Elmer draped an arm around Brenda. "How do you know that?"

"Because Captain William H. Parker is courting me."

Brenda hooted. "Honey, that sanctimonious son of a bitch does not court women in any kind of classic sense."

I lit a cigarette. "You mean he doesn't take bribes, beat confessions out of suspects, or screw your girls in the back of Mike Lyman's Grill, where I'm meeting him at 1:00."

Brenda looked aghast. Elmer looked flabbergasted. He said, "Kay, how do you know that Whiskey Bill Parker knows a lot about Lee?"

I blew an imperiously high smoke ring. "Because Parker is courting and coercing me. Because he has me transcribing wire recordings at City Hall before he tells me his play. Because you, Brenda and Lee had a very injudicious conversation on August 14 of '39. You discussed your 'service,' the Boulevard-Citizens robbery and Lee's debt to Ben Siegel. Elmer, you actually said, 'If you owe Ben, he makes you kill somebody for him.' "
Elmer bolted his drink.

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Verlag
Random House LCC US
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307956997
ISBN 13 
9780307956996
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
701
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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