Officers Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert and Leland "Lee" Blanchard, partners and local celebrities from their boxing days, aid the investigation.
The final novel in the L.A. Quartet is White Jazz, told from corrupt LAPD officer Dave Klein's point of view.
As a policeman, Klein has broken the law numerous times, beaten suspects, stolen, bribed, worked for the mob, and had people killed, as well as being a murderer himself.
Klein and Exley discover other Dudley Smith sidelines, selling heroin to the South Los Angeles African-American population, keeping crime in that area "contained", gambling, and voyeuristic pornography tapes.
He hides out with Pete Bondurant (a character who reappears in the Underworld USA Trilogy series' American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand).
In the epilogue, set many years later (1976 at the earliest), Klein says he plans to return to Los Angeles, with the intentions of making gubernatorial candidate Exley confess to the manipulative deals he made, murder Dick Carlisle and Dudley Smith, and find his lover Glenda Bledsoe.
Confidential, White Jazz, Perfidia, This Storm Smith was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1905, and later immigrated to the United States and was raised in Los Angeles, where he joined the LAPD in 1928.
Confidential, Jack Vincennes tells Bud White and Edmund Exley that Dudley worked in the OSS in Paraguay after World War II.
Also, in White Jazz a newspaper story mentions he was a World War II OSS spymaster, has a wife and five daughters, and has killed eight men in the line of duty.
He had a large list of crimes that he had committed, including theft, pornography distribution, murder, and most disturbingly, infanticide—Dudley personally strangled the two-day-old baby of the Herrick family in 1937.
Dudley's racism was also well known, particularly in regards to Jews, and he was a notable proponent of "containment"; as he explained it, keeping the "nigger filth" in African-American areas.
Ed is relentlessly ambitious, politically savvy, and highly intelligent, trying to surpass his father as a policeman and live out late Thomas's dreams.
While conventional justice is not meted out, with Exley entrusting the second murderer of the Loren Atherton case to a known doctor, Dr. Terry Lux, and the ultimate mastermind behind the Nite Owl and other crimes, Dudley Smith cannot be convicted due to lack of evidence, Exley vows he will take down Dudley Smith if it's the last thing he ever does.
His package also includes a blank passport and a .38 revolver with a silencer in case Klein feels absolute justice has not been achieved regarding Dudley.
Confidential, White Jazz, Perfidia Mickey Cohen was a real-life gangster active in Los Angeles, but his exploits in Ellroy's novels are mostly fictional.
He famously arrested Bebop musician Charlie Parker and actor Robert Mitchum on two high-profile pot busts; from a tip off from Sid Hudgens.
The novel is told through Dave Klein's stream of consciousness, as well as articles and newspaper headlines that accompany many of Ellroy's books.
He is an immoral cop who moonlights as a hitman, enforcer, slumlord and lawyer, working for people such as Howard Hughes and the mob.
Confidential, Perfidia, This Storm Buzz Meeks (April 1906 – February 21, 1950) was once a cop who was known for his extreme corruption and bad performance reports.
He would later find work as an enforcer and bodyguard for various figures within L.A.'s underworld including Mickey Cohen as well as movie mogul and business icon Howard Robard Hughes.
Bent on making the rank of Captain with the Bureau, he joined Ellis Loew and Dudley Smith on an investigation of Communists in Hollywood.
This becomes a vital piece of information when as Jack Vincennes is dying, his last words are "Rollo Tomasi", the name that Exley shared with him.
In the film, however, he appears as Mickey Cohen's drugs lieutenant who is killed by Dudley Smith's men, in order to take control of the L.A. Underworld.
Friend of Preston Exley and later Inez Soto, Dieterling created characters similar to Walt Disney's.
Confidential, Perfidia Pierce Patchett (June 30, 1902 – March 27, 1958) is a procurer of prostitutes that resemble movies stars and one of the main antagonists in L.A.
Appearance: White Jazz Appearances: The Black Dahlia, Perfidia, This Storm Known as "Mr. Fire" in the boxing world for his fighting style and personality, Blanchard is an ex-boxer cop who becomes Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert's partner on Warrants after their publicity boxing match to rally support behind a pay increase bond for the police.
Combined with that, his continuing use of Benzedrine, and the soon to be paroled Robert "Bobby" De Witt, a criminal he sent to prison, Blanchard becomes completely unhinged.
For many years he had overseen the tacit agreement between the LAPD and the Kafesjian family, the latter being sanctioned drug dealers in the southside area of LA.
As the novel progresses Wilhite desperately attempts to contain the burglary investigation, headed by Klein at Exley's instigation to prevent years of police corruption from being revealed.
Delbert Melvin "Duke" Cathcart (November 14, 1914 - April 19, 1953); a criminal character and victim of the famed "Nite Owl Massacre".