This Storm

1 Elmer Jackson (Los Angeles, 9:30 P.M., 12/31/41)

Stakeout.

It’s a sit-and-wait job. Some hot-prowl burglar/rape-o’s out creeping. He’s Tommy Glennon, recent Quentin grad. He’s notched five 459/sodomies since Pearl Harbor.

Happy fucking New Year.

Three-man stakeout. Two parked cars. 24th and Normandie. Sit and wait. Endure bugs-up-your-ass ennui.

The rain. Plus war-blackout regulations. Drawn shades, doused streetlamps. Bum visibility.

It’s a stag hunt. The PD worked that way. Four victims mugshot-ID’d Tommy. The Chief and Dudley Smith conferred. They called it. Per always: perv shit on women mandates DEATH.

Elmer gargled Old Crow. He had the front-house car. Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle had the alley. Tommy had the crib cased. Two leggy sisters lived there. Lockstep surveillance locked down the gestalt.

Central Burglary tailed Tommy a week running. Elmer moved the sisters out and moved his leggy girlfriend in. She had the legs and the stones for the job.

Ellen Drew. His part-time girlfriend and part-time Paramount starlet. Ellen glommed raves in If I Were King and went pffft. She part-time whored for Elmer and his full-time girlfriend.

Brenda Allen. Part-time squeeze of Chief Jack Horrall. It’s who you know and who you blow. Call-Me-Jack set up the bait gig.

Elmer scoped the house. Upstairs lights gleamed. Ellen cracked the shades to spotlight her gams. It violated blackout regs and lit her legs gooooood. Tommy G. was a leg man. Elmer read his Quentin file and glommed the gestalt.

Thomas Malcolm Glennon/white male American/DOB 8/19/16. Preston Reform School and Quentin. Tight with pachucos and Four Families tong men.

Fireworks popped somewhere north. The rain drenched the sparks and killed the effect.

“It’s who you know.”

Elmer knew Dudley and Call-Me-Jack. Thus, this shit job. Mike B. and Dick C. were Dudley’s strongarm goons. Dud got the night off. Some unknown geek shivved him three days ago.

Elmer yawned. Elmer futzed with his two-way radio. Police calls spritzed.

Niggertown 211/Happytime Liquor/prowl cars at scene. Dope roust at Club Zombie. Mexicoon rumble, 84th and Avalon. Zoot-suit beaners ex-cape.

Elmer yawned. Elmer skimmed the dial. He hit a civilian band and got lucky. The PD’s New Year’s bash warbled.

It’s live from City Hall. It features Count Basie’s Band. The Detective Bureau muster room’s rigged with radio mikes. The Count’s at the keyboard. There’s Lester Young’s sax.

Here’s the inside tattle. Two bluesuits popped the Count with reefers. Jack Horrall caught wind and tossed the pitch. Your call, Count. Six months honor farm or a one-night engagement?

Rain slammed the car. Said rain outslammed Count Basie. Elmer skimmed to Band 3. He caught an open line to Breuning and Carlisle.

“Know” and “blow.” Maladroit Mike and Dipshit Dick. This jive New Year’s Eve. What good’s your insider-cop status?

He loved Headquarters Vice. It dispensed yuks and served to scotch his call-biz competition. Then the fucking Japs bombed fucking Pearl Harbor and fucked the white world up the brown trail.

He got detached to the Alien Squad. It was Japs twelve days a week. Japs, Japs, JAPS. Foreign-born, native-born, for sure and alleged Fifth Column. Raid their pads. Confiscate their goods. Transport them to ritzy horse stalls at Santa Anita.

Band 3 popped sound. Breuning and Carlisle bullshitted. Who shivved the Dudster? Their rambunctious kids. This meter maid with jugs out to here.

Breuning and Carlisle gassed. They hashed out the Fed’s phone-tap probe. The PD was knee-deep in shit. It’s a nail-biter.

City Hall was bugged and tapped, floor-to-rafters. Rival cop factions spied on each other. Grifter cops, tonged-up cops, cop strikebreakers. The Feds took note and launched a probe.

Cop fiefdoms. Cop thieves. Cops in the Silver Shirts and German-American Bund. Calls to the DA’s Office. Calls to Mayor Fletch Bowron. Detective Bureau cops be scaaared.

Elmer was scared. He ran a call-girl ring. He peddled flesh to the L.A. elite. He made biz calls from the Vice squadroom.

The radio browned out. Shit — line crackle, static, hiss. Elmer twirled the dial. He caught some luck there. Good Lord — it’s Cliffie Stone’s Hometown Jamboree.

It was auld lang syne for displaced crackers. That was him, defined. Cliffie connoted hayrides and moonshine. Cliffie brought back Wisharts, North Carolina.

Wisharts was Klan Kountry. Geography is destiny. Klan life fucked up his daddy and big brother, Wayne Frank. That hate-the-jigs diet stuck in young Elmer’s craw. He hit eighteen in ’30. He joined the Marine Corps. Semper Fi: Parris Island, Camp Lejeune, Nicaragua.

Man-o-Man Managua. The Marine detachment backstops puppet Führer Somoza. Jarheads snuff his political rivals and stand embassy guard. They’re bellhops and part-time assassins. El Jefe loves Lance Corporal E. V. Jackson. Hence a plum job: run Jefe’s favorite whorehouse.

He learned the biz that way. It spawned his notion of call-service-to-your-door girls. Jefe shot him Plum Job #2. He watchdogged the L.A. police chief.

James Edgar “Two-Gun” Davis. One vivid lunatic. Davis and Jefe were sordid soul mates. They boozed and whored together. Davis loved Lance Corporal E. V. Jackson. Here’s why:

A leftist zealot charged Davis with a machete. Lance Corporal Jackson shot and killed him. Davis shot Lance Corporal Jackson a police department appointment.

Goodbye, Marine Corps. Hello, Los Angeles.

Elmer liked police work. Davis set him up with a cooze pusher named Brenda Allen. Elmer and Brenda clicked. They concocted their phone-exchange biz and saw it flourish. The L.A. grand jury sacked Two-Gun Davis. He poked one Jailbait Jill too many and took it up the dirt road.

Call-Me-Jack’s in now. He’s got 7 % of the call biz. Sergeant E. V. Jackson is twenty-nine. He’s one lucky white man.

Cliffie Stone laid down hick ballads. That was Wayne Frank’s mawkish meter. Wayne Frank was a hate dog and nativist nabob. Kid brother Elmer notched opportunities. Wayne Frank harvested shit.

Wayne Frank goes Klan, goes rumdum, goes hobo. He habituates the West Coast and clocks an untimely end.

Elmer gargled Old Crow. He was half-tanked. It was 10:18. Tommy G. always hit between 10:00 and midnight.

The hick music rubbed him raw. He doused the radio and gassed on the rain. His prowl car was sunk fender-deep.

He checked the house. Cracked blinds gave him a look-see. Ellen was upstairs. She was pacing and smoking. She provided a Leg Show De-luxe. Smoke plumes plumed out a transom slot.

Elmer tuned in Band 3. Mike B. groused to Dick C. Dudster this, Dudster that. More drift per their rambunctious kids.

More line fuzz and static. Elmer killed his jug and tossed it out the window. “Whoa, Junior” fuzzed in.

Elmer grabbed the receiver and flipped the talk switch. The fuzz-static cleared.

“Yeah, Mike.”

“Our boy’s coming south. He hopped the next-door fence. You take the front. Let him sniff Ellen and start upstairs before you sh—”

Elmer jumped.

He shoved out the door. He puddle-leaped and lunged for the curb. His shoes squished and leaked. He pulled his piece and chambered a round.

His hat flew off. The rain stung his eyes and ratched up his vision. He made the lawn/the front porch/the front door.

It’s unlocked. Go in slow now. You oiled the hinges and jambs. Tommy won’t hear shit.

He got inside. He smelled Ellen’s cigarette smoke and perfume. He made for the stairway. He squished all over the living room rug.

Mike and Dick squished toward him. They hit the stairway. Everybody went sssssshhh.

They scoped Tommy’s muddy footprints. They heard floorboard creaks and foot scuffs upstairs.

Mike winked. Dick did that slice-the-throat thing. Elmer gulped — mother dog, holy shit—

Ellen screamed.

Mike whooped. Dick whooped. They ran upstairs and raised a ruckus. They bumped each other off the walls and hit the landing. Elmer heard front-window glass shatter. Tommy pulled some human-fly stunt.

Elmer ran back out the door. There’s that black sky and sluice rain, there’s half a glimpse. There’s Human Fly Tommy, running northbound—

He’s two front yards up. He’s cutting toward the sidewalk. There’s no soaked grass and more traction there.

Elmer cut crossways and hit asphalt. His flapping raincoat slowed him down. He gained ground, lost ground, gained ground. He aimed at Tommy’s back and popped three rounds. Muzzle flash turned the rain red.

Tommy gained ground. Mike and Dick fired — back there, long-distance. Shots ricocheted off front porches.

Tommy ran east on 26th. Elmer caught a sideways look and emptied his clip. The flare messed with his eyes and made little halos.

Elmer ran east. He reloaded and sprinted. His raincoat slipped off. Window shades went up. He got some sight-in light.

He gained ground. His wind faltered. Something dropped from Tommy’s pants pocket. He stopped and aimed tight. He had him, he had him, something said DON’T. He squeezed three shots wide on purpose.

Tommy cut north. He’s a Human Fly. He’s a fleet-foot rape-o. Watch him vamoose.

Elmer heard Mike and Dick, way back there. Shots bounced off the street. Them dumbfucks blasted will-o’-the-wisps.

Elmer stopped and caught some breath. He walked east and checked the sidewalk.

Tommy dropped something. Elmer saw it and picked it up. Well, now. Tommy dropped a red leather address book.

Ellen said, “Swell New Year’s.”

Elmer said, “I had that same thought.”

“I guess you’re not much of a shot.”

“Come on. At night, in the rain?”

They drove through Hollywood. Ellen flopped at the Green Gables Apartments. It adjoined Paramount and lubed early cast calls. Ellen had a second marriage going. Two husbands and a kid at age twenty-seven. Her hubby was off with the Air Corps. She serviced Elmer’s clients out of ennui. She serviced Elmer, likewise.

Elmer hit Melrose, westbound. Call it Aquacade by Night. Muted streetlamps. The blackout and curb-high floodwater.

Ellen lit a cigarette. “He pulled out his pecker and waved it. That’s when I screamed.”

Elmer yocked. Ellen wagged a pinkie. Tommy Glennon — hung like a cashew.

Elmer yocked anew. Ellen groped his trouser pockets and extracted his roll. She peeled off a fifty and stuffed the roll back.

“That felt nice.”

“Not tonight. The weekend, maybe.”

“I’ve got late duty. My bodyguard gig with Hideo Ashida.”

Ellen said, “He’s cute, for a Jap. Do you think he’s queer?”

“Come on. He’s the best forensic chemist in this white man’s PD.”

Ellen tossed her cigarette. “Tell Jack Horrall thanks for the fifty, and tell him no more bait jobs for this little black duck.”

“Anything else?”

“Tell him I said you should go back in the Marines. There’s a war on, and you should be fighting it, like my husband.”

Elmer said, “Do you love me?”

Ellen said, “No. You’re just my wartime diversion.”

Ellen scrammed at the Gables. Elmer U-turned and booked east. This nutty brainstorm percolated. His short hairs prickled on overdrive.

Tommy G. lived at the Gordon Hotel. Breuning and Carlisle were too lazy to go toss it. The Gordon was straight up Melrose.

Let’s prowl Tommy’s room. Let’s sniff leads. Let’s get some buy-back on that fuckup. Let’s mess with Dudley Smith.

The Dudster gored his goat. Hey, Elmer — toast this guy. That don’t sit right. He ain’t no black-robe killer.

The goddamn rain. Backed-up sewers. Mud slides. No hot toddies, no swell women.

Elmer parked upside the Gordon and puddle-jumped in. The lobby was threadbare. A clerk dozed by the switchboard. He wore a green felt leprechaun hat.

Tommy rented 216. Elmer walked upstairs and braced the door. He caught zero voices and no radio warble. He pulled his piece and shoulder-popped the jamb.

No Tommy. No nobody. Just this flop. Just this twelve-by-twelve den of despair.

No bathroom. One closet. A milk-bottle pissoir by the bed. No chairs. One closet, one chest of drawers.

Elmer locked himself in. Thunder shook the whole building. Geeks yelled “Happy New Year!” out on Melrose.

He checked the closet. It contained nada. That meant Tommy lammed. He had a car or stole a car. He traded shots with three cops and vamoosed. Farewell, you rape-o cocksucker.

Elmer tossed the drawers. He caught some provocative shit.

A teach-yourself-Spanish book. A smut-photo book. Spicy donkey-show pix, à la Tijuana. Note the porkpie hat on El Burro.

Nazi armbands. Jap flags. One tattoo stencil. Note the excised parts:

Outlines for swastikas. Outlines for an “SQ” circumscribed by coiled snakes.

Elmer thumbed Tommy’s address book. More odd shit accrued. Look — there’s no addresses and no full names.

Look — a “J.S.” and a Hollywood exchange. “St. Vib’s” and a downtown exchange. It’s probably St. Vibiana’s catholic church.

Look — RE-8761. No names or initials. Republic’s a south-of-downtown exchange.

Look — MA-4993. That number’s familiar. He scoured his brain and snagged it.

Eddie Leng’s Kowloon. A Chinatown slop chute. It’s open-all-nite. It features tasty shark-fin soup.

Eddie Leng was a Four Families tong geek. Tommy G. was a known tong associate.

Plus: three more no name/no initial numbers.

Elmer grabbed the wall phone and roused the switchboard geek. Get me MA-6884, pronto.

The Detective Bureau. The Vice Squad night line. It was manned round the clock.

He got four rings and a pickup. He heard noisemaker squeal. The clerk came off blotto.

“Uh... yeah?”

“Rise and shine, dipshit. You got phone numbers to run.”

The clerk yawned. “That you, Elmer?”

“It’s me, so grab your pencil.”

“I got it here someplace.”

Elmer said, “HO-4612. The subscriber’s got the initials J.S.”

“Okay, I got—”

“The number for St. Vibiana’s Church, and the subscriber name for RE-8761.”

The clerk perked up. “I know that last number. It’s a hot-box pay phone, and them farkakte phone-probe Feds been looking at it. A lot of hinky City Hall guys make their hinky calls from there.”

Elmer said, “Don’t stop now.”

“Who’s stopping? I was just pausing.”

“Come on. Don’t string this—”

“It used to be a bookie’s hot-box, and the drift is it still is. It’s over on 11th and Broadway, by the Herald. That farkakte reporter Sid Hudgens stiffs his unkosher calls from it.”

Sid the Yid. Scandal scribe, putz provocateur. St. Vib’s — the papist hot spot. Eddie Leng’s eatery.

Tommy, what does this shit portend?

2 Dudley Smith (Los Angeles, 11:30 P.M., 12/31/41)

Surging brass. Soaring reeds. Driving rain in syncopation.

The muster room jumped. The Count and his boys cranked it. “Annie Laurie” now. Up-tempo and grandly Gaelic.

The room broiled. Steam heat fights cold L.A. winter. Dance-once-a-year cops danced tonight and overdid it. They quaffed table booze and tossed their dates, willy-nilly. The Count observed. White folks were circus clowns. This confirmed it.

Dudley watched. He had a side table and a cracked-for-air window. He wore his Army dress uniform. Claire wore a kelly green frock.

The Archbishop played to her. J. J. Cantwell liked women. He observed his vows and properly abstained. Monsignor Joe Hayes ignored Claire. She converted. It proved her inauthentic. He reluctantly served as her confessor.

Women repulsed Monsignor Joe. He liked boys. He contravened his vows and indulged his bent.

Father Coughlin liked raw discourse. His trinity was booze, slander, and foment. He loathed the Reds and the kikes. He played to the nuns at St. Vib’s and sundered them with hate tracts. He lived to sway souls and spawn discontent.

A waiter restocked the table. He bowed and laid out scotch, gin, and ice. The waiters were county jail trusties. This lad was a weenie waver. He habituated schoolyards and slammed his ham.

Claire freshened drinks. The clerics lit cigarettes and imbibed. The Archbishop ogled Claire. Monsignor Joe ogled the waiter. Father Charles doodled up a napkin. He drew swastikas dripping blood.

Dudley adjusted his sling. His left arm had sustained multiple shiv wounds. A pesky Chink, surely. Tong intrigue, most likely. He was allied with Uncle Ace Kwan and Hop Sing. Said alliance might have spawned rival-tong enmity. Said shiv man would soon be sternly rebuked.

Claire shared her morphine. It facilitated his rapid recovery. Her love for him outweighed her habit. The drug salved pain and rendered the world elegiac. It granted noblesse oblige.

It deadened his recent failures. Pearl Harbor and the Jap roundups as one big botched business deal.

He hatched war-profit schemes. Ace Kwan assisted him. They all went blooey. He chased a heroin stash in Baja. Mike Breuning, Dick Carlisle, and Hideo Ashida assisted. That went blooey. It was Captain Carlos Madrano’s stash. Madrano and the Mex Staties interdicted the Smith cartel. A Jap sub fiasco played in. He planted nitro in Madrano’s car and blew up El Capitán. It was small recompense.

Father Coughlin knew Madrano’s replacement. José Vasquez-Cruz was anti-Red and anti-Jew, but less overtly Fascista. Baja bodes again now. Police Sergeant Smith as Army Captain Smith. He’ll meet Vasquez-Cruz and perhaps seek to suborn him. Baja bodes as opportunity reborn.

Count Basie kicked off a Latin-tinged ballad. Claire squeezed his good arm. Let’s dance, mi corazon.

The sling curtailed movement. Dudley let Claire help him up and lead him. She cradled his bad arm. They danced close. Claire laid her head on his shoulder.

She said, “We’ll be there in two weeks. We’ll get tired of this music.”

“Major Melnick has secured us a grand hotel suite. We’ll have our own terrace, with a lovely ocean view.”

Claire nuzzled up. “We’ll go to Mass and observe all the saints’ days. We’ll be taller and better-looking than everyone else, and they won’t believe how well we speak Spanish.”

Dudley laughed. “The hoi polloi will adore you. They’ll call you ‘La Gringa’ behind your back, and wonder how this mick thug got so lucky.”

“Don’t deride yourself, dear. Never forget that I’ve civilized you more than you’ve corrupted me.”

“It’s a toss-up, isn’t it? It’s a determination that time and fate will reveal.”

Claire said, “Yes, darling. It is all of that.”

The dance floor was packed. Revelers bumped and tangled up their feet. Dudley swapped grins with his fellow policemen.

There’s Lieutenant Thad Brown. He’s jawing with a high-yellow songstress. There’s ex-Chief Davis, spiking the punchbowl. There’s Captain Bill Parker and Kay Lake. They comprise a dashed romance. There’s a full room between them. They shoot sparks across it, nonetheless. Parker’s a persistent burr in his tail. Miss Lake’s comely, if fatuous.

Parker’s in uniform. Note his soggy blues and drooping gunbelt. He’s been clocking traffic grief in the rain. He’s hiding out from his wife. He’s here to ogle comely Kay Lake.

Many men find La Lake brilliant and alluring. Parker surely does. He himself does not. She’s a dilettante and a round-heeled police buff. She’s nonconjugally shacked with surly Officer Lee Blanchard. Parker is pious and dangerous. He may ascend to Chief one day.

Bill Parker. The Watanabe case. Roadblocks on his sprint, post — Pearl Harbor.

Fujio Shudo. The Werewolf psychopath. He was Sergeant D. L. Smith’s proffered slayer. Bill Parker worked for a true solve. Bill Parker failed. Hideo Ashida assisted Sergeant Smith. It cinched the whole deal.

Claire swayed close. Dudley felt her tremors. She’d excuse herself soon. She’d retrieve her hypodermic.

He steadied her. She steadied him. It was a new love affair and a most tender pact.

His arm ached. He’d lost weight. The attack climaxed his post — Pearl Harbor sprint.

He vowed vengeance. Mike and Dick were meeting him later. They recruited some Alien Squad muscle. A grand tong sweep loomed.

The Count segued to “Adios.” Soft reeds with low-brass punctuation. A Mexican motif.

Claire said, “Good-byes are never that beautiful.”

Dudley kissed her neck. She was damp there. He knew her body and her dope habit already.

“It’s our song, for the war’s duration. It prohibits all farewells.”

Claire shuddered. He eased her back to their table. Father Charles launched a raw joke. “Have you heard it, Your Eminence? It’s the swell tale of Come-San-Chin, the Chinese cocksucker.”

J. J. Cantwell roared. Joe Hayes glowered. Claire snatched her clutch and made for the loo.

She cuts a swath. Drunken cops step aside. She betrays no haste and smiles at each one.

Dudley checked his watch. It’s 11:51. Where’s Mike and Dick? Where’s dim bulb Elmer Jackson?

Quo vadis, Tommy Glennon?

Tommy self-decreed his extinction. A three-count indictment levied charges. Count One: Tommy raped women and thus annulled the civil contract. Count Two: Tommy was Sergeant D. L. Smith’s ex-snitch and pal of current-snitch Huey Cressmeyer. Count Three: Tommy ran wetbacks for ex — Baja kingpin Carlos Madrano.

Count Three, subordinate clause:

He visited Tommy at Quentin, mid-November. Tommy pumped him per Madrano and his own Mexican plans. He has grand Mexican plans. He will exploit his Army SIS status to implement them. He will push heroin and run wetbacks. He will sell jailed Japs into slavery. Tommy could fuck it all up. Thus, Tommy must die.

Dudley chased pills with club soda. Two for knife-wound pain. Three bennies for late-night woo-woo.

Cantwell, Hayes, and Coughlin were shit-faced. They defamed the coons and Red scourge Joe Stalin. The English prottys concocted this war and brought in the Jew bankers. They fixed the ’36 Olympics. That shine Jesse Owens? He runs slow as me old Irish granny.

Ten seconds to midnight. Count Basie rolled the trumpets — 9, 8, 7, 6—

Dudley stood up. Cops waved table flags. Dudley waved the Stars and Stripes and Irish Republican green.

— 5, 4, 3, 2—

Mike and Dick walked in. Dudley saw them. Such grand goons they were. They saw Dudley and cringed.

Dudley waved and went Tommy? Mike and Dick shook their heads no.

— 1, zero, HAPPY NEW YEAR—

Shouts, back slaps, popped corks galore. Noisemaker blare and flags on sticks—

The Count kicked off “Auld Lang Syne.” Dudley reeled. The mock ballroom went hothouse hot and spun topsy-turvy.

His arm throbbed. He thought he’d faint. Claire sailed up to him.

She steadied him and kissed him.

She said, “It’s our time, love.”

3 Joan Conville (San Diego, 12:15 A.M., 1/1/42)

Should auld acquaintance be—

Yells and hoots. Noisemaker shriek. Shouted toasts and Remember Pearl Harbor!!!

Revelers crammed up the Sky Room. You’ve got Navy brass on a toot. There’s grabbing and groping. There’s full-length necking on the dance floor.

Stan Kenton presents “Artistry in Rhythm.” The Misty June Christy purrs select vocals. The Sky Room was glass-walled and umpteen floors high. You got wide views of battle-dressed beachfront. You got storm clouds and the world’s darkest sky.

Joan dodged gropes. She clutched her purse and made for the door. She was half-gassed. L.A. was three hours north. Army checkpoints would stall traffic. The shoreline blackout would drop shroudlike.

She dodged last-ditch gropes and escaped. She made the elevator and pushed 1. Mirrored walls hemmed her in. They were too good to pass up.

She winked. She whistled. She was too proud to falter and too tall and good-looking to lose.

Her red hair. Her green eyes. Her bold six-foot sway. Her trim winter uniform. Gold buttons and braid.

Lieutenant Junior Grade J. W. Conville, USNR. You shitbird Japs better watch out.

She enlisted in L.A. on Pearl Harbor day. It was pure impulse. She kicked out her one-night lover and drove downtown. The Fed building was deluged. She stood in line six hours straight.

Anchors aweigh.

She was a registered nurse and graduate biologist. Her jazzy CV got her a rank jump at the gate. Nurse Corps training camp loomed. She put in for battleship duty. Point Loma, here I come.

The elevator jarred and stopped. There’s the lobby. Joan pushed her way through swarms of rich stiffs.

The famous El Cortez Hotel. Dowagers and old guys in tuxedos. Walls festooned with tricolored bunting. THWAP THE JAP! signs. Fat Wallace Beery, signing autographs.

Joan ducked out to the parking lot. Short men google-eyed her. Holy moly — the rain.

She got soaked. She found her car and huddled in. She kicked the heater and ran the wipers. She lit a cigarette. She popped over to the coast road, northbound.

She observed blackout regs and rode her low beams, exclusive. They lit up this looooong rain sluice. Beach waves crashed off to her left.

She chain-smoked. She knew the sober-up drill, inside out. Fix on task and quash those dozen highballs.

She blew out of Dago proper. Traffic thinned. She hit a clear stretch and goosed up more speed.

Barrel through. It’s the Conville family code.

It was Earle Everett Conville’s code. It’s his elder daughter’s now. It’s not the kid sister’s. She married a papist and smeared Big Earle’s legacy.

That clear stretch telescoped. It formed one black hole, here to always. Joan floored the gas. Her low beams hit rain smashing down.

Wind slashed it horizontal. Just like Tomah, Wisconsin.

The wind played tricks. Snow flew horizontal. Uprooted trees flew likewise. Big Earle was the Monroe County game warden. He made Joan blast felled trees with a 10-gauge shotgun. Five trees supplied all-winter kindling.

Her hometown curriculum. Dead, like her parents. Absent, like her sister and inbred cousins in Bilgewater, Scotland. Usurped by nursing school and grad work at Northwestern. Gone, like her numerous men.

Holy moly — this rain.

She barreled through. It’s what Convilles do. She chain-smoked. It fought her booze load. She slowed for an Army checkpoint. Saboteur Alert. She slowed for a cop checkpoint. Wetback Alert. White thugs smuggled wets in car trunks and flatbed trucks.

The cops wore blue serge and fat gun belts. They brought back this L.A. police captain. He all but swooned for her.

Northwestern. Spring 1940. This skinny sad sack with glasses. He followed her everywhere. He watched her shoot skeet off Lake Michigan. He eyeballed her at sock hops. She almost asked him to dance.

Nobody knew his name. He was in for some traffic cops’ seminar. He peeped Joan Woodard Conville in his spare time.

The seminar ended. The captain vanished. Here’s the weird epilogue. She saw him in L.A., three nights back.

Hollywood Boulevard. A war-bond rally. The Ritz Brothers grovel for laughs. Poof — she sees him. Poof — he sees her. Poof — he’s gone again.

The checkpoint cops waved her through. One cop whistled. Joan blew him a kiss and floored the gas.

Rain came down vertical. Wind kicked it horizontal. Rain brought back Big Earle — a forest fire casualty.

Big Earle, firefighter. Big Earle, shitkicker and drunk. Big Earle, friend and foe of migrant Indians hooked on bathtub juice.

He hired them to fight forest fires. They blew their pay on hooch and started more fires for more wampum. A big blaze hits — April 9, ’38. Maybe it’s the Indians. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s premeditated arson.

E. E. Conville, dead at forty-nine. Her father, burned alive. The U.S. Forest Service investigates. Their call: “No evidence of arson extant.”

Joan disagreed. She switched grad-school majors. She dropped premed for biology. She studied forensic biology. She haunted the blaze site. She studied soil and tree-wood samples. She interviewed Indians and compiled a suspect list. A soused Indian fondled her. She blew his left foot off with her shotgun.

She shredded her suspect list. It wasn’t liquored-up redskins. The fire felt deliberate — not haphazard.

She discovered an airplane-fuel spill. It was near the fire’s flash point. She examined fuel-laced soil. She determined the molecular content and the fuel’s brand name. She traced the fuel to a charter-airplane service in Duluth, Minnesota. The service pointed her to Mitchell A. Kupp.

Kupp called himself an inventor. He lived off of family money. He was pals with Charles Lindbergh. Kupp chartered a small aircraft on 4/9/38 and flew it over Monroe County.

She learned all that. Her case fizzled, then. Her fuel-spill evidence was erratically collected and logged. She could not attribute motive. She could not connect E. E. Conville to Mitchell A. Kupp in any discernible way.

Barrel through. It’s what Convilles do. Big Earle expects it.

She held down night-nurse jobs. She crash-coursed her master’s degree. She read extensively. She devoured monographs by L.A. coroner Norton Layman and police chemist Hideo Ashida. She took her degree and moved to L.A. She got a lab job and applied to the doctorate program at Cal Tech.

Joan barreled through. It’s what Convilles do. She’ll return to Wisconsin and avenge Big Earle’s death. Vengeance is thine.

Banzai. Pearl Harbor preempts her. She’s a sucker for hot dates. It’s her hot date with History.

Rain battered her car. Visibility decreased. Pooled water doused her low beams and cut sight lines down to zero.

Thunder boomed. Joan sighted in off lightning flare. She hit close-to-L.A. traffic. She chained cigarettes. She downshifted, fishtailed, swerved. She saw a sign for Venice Boulevard.

She pulled right. She went woozy and white-knuckled the wheel. She got light-headed. It’s that booze-catching-up feel—

Lights hit the windshield. Big full-on headlights. They violated blackout reg—

Joan went glare-blind. She rubbed her eyes and lost the wheel. She smashed the lights and this great big something.

4 Hideo Ashida (Los Angeles, 2:30 A.M., 1/1/42)

The Werewolf sleeps. He’s fetal-curled and looks pacified. Oblivion becomes him.

He has a one-man/vacant-tier cell. Jailers keep him penned up and sedated. Fujio Shudo/age thirty-eight/male Japanese. He’s bought and paid for. He’s down for four counts of Murder One.

A sanity hearing pends. It’s strictly rubber stamp. He allegedly killed the four Watanabes. It was a sex lust/pro-fascist caper. He’s green room — bound. He’ll be dead inside six months. Police chemist Hideo Ashida stands complicit.

Ashida watched the Werewolf sleep. Lee Blanchard watched and kibitzed. Big Lee. Kay Lake’s faux lover, ex — heavyweight contender.

“The Werewolf and the Wolfman. I don’t know the difference. Maybe it’s the actors who play them.”

They stood in the vacant-tier catwalk. Thunder echoed. Barred windowpanes shook.

Ashida said, “It’s one symbolic character, with differing narratives.”

Blanchard yawned. “I don’t mind bodyguarding you, Hideo. But the Central Station jail ain’t my idea of New Year’s Eve kicks.”

The Werewolf snored. The Werewolf twitched and sucked his thumb.

Blanchard said, “Talk to me, Wolf. Tell me something I don’t know.”

Ashida ventriloquized the creature. He kept the spiel internal. He mimicked the Werewolf’s pidgin-English/Japanese stew.

Dudley Smith framed me. Sensei Ashida assisted. Dudley Smith coerced him. Dudley Smith applied pressure and made the frame stand. Sensei Ashida fawns for Sergeant Smith.

Blanchard nipped off his flask. “Here’s to you, Werewolf. You want my opinion? You deserve the loony bin more than the gas chamber.”

Ashida grabbed the flask. “We should go upstairs. I’m on call to Traffic. Captain Parker might call in.”

“He was at the City Hall bash. Him and Kay were making with the big eyes.”

Ashida sipped brandy. He rarely drank. This small dose induced a small glow.

“I’m sure she makes you uncomfortable. She must be difficult to live with.”

Blanchard grinned. “My shack job’s ‘difficult,’ but my shack job’s Kay Lake, which has its compensations. She’s always off to something new. You want the latest? She’s fallen in with these classical-music types, out in Brentwood. Mostly Reds and Jews, on the run from der Führer. I don’t know how much time she’s got for Bill Parker.”

Ashida passed the flask. His eyes burned. The cold jail went warm. Ashida felt antsy. He was backlogged. Pearl Harbor put the lab in arrears. The Japanese roundups spawned massive confiscations. Evidence log-ins stood un-logged, back to mid-December.

He stood un-jailed. His family stood free. The roundups would resume, tomorrow. Dudley Smith’s patronage vouched his freedom. He lived in a Biltmore Hotel suite. His mother and brother had their own rooms. Dudley’s patronage carried a price. Call the Werewolf frame part and parcel.

Blanchard said, “You’re in a trance, Hideo. Maybe it’s all that caustic shit you been sniffing.”

Ashida smiled. They walked out to the jailside hallway. Ashida heard snores.

Blanchard went sssshh. He pointed to the Alien Squad cot room. They walked over and peeked in.

Confiscated swag covered the floor. Radios, flags, Nazi Lugers. Kanji script and English-language hate tracts. Hate the Chinks, hate the Jews, hate all Americans.

Plus three plainclothesmen, sprawled out on cots. They were stripped to their skivvies. Their sidearms and belt gear were piled adjacent. Brass knucks, leather truncheons, beavertail saps.

Three big guys. Cop heavies. On-call strikebreaker types.

Blanchard said, “Lunceford, Rice, and Kapek. You’ve got the Silver Shirts and the Thunderbolt Legion represented here. These dinks chasing down Fifth Column Japs? Don’t tell me I don’t know what’s ironic.”

A bluesuit walked up. He was blitzed. He wore a dumb party hat and a WELCOME 1942 button.

“Captain Parker called, Ashida. He needs you in Venice. It’s a vehicular homicide. There’s four dead wetbacks and some Navy woman in custody.”

Pole-mounted tarps held the rain back. A sawhorse barricade held off the looky-loos. It’s a Car-Crash Inferno and Car-Crash Holocaust.

Head-on collision: ’36 Dodge coupe hits jalopy. No visible skidmarks. Eastbound Dodge, westbound heap. Two front ends accordion-pressed.

The Dodge: minus the driver’s-side door. The heap: compressed to the rear seats and trunk ledge.

Flares marked the crash site. Prowl cars stood close. Two morgue sleds were parked snout-to-snout. There’s four sheet-draped stretchers, out in the wet.

Blanchard pulled up to the flare line. Ashida got out and eyeballed the site. He deployed Man Camera. Click, click — a wide-lens shot.

Click — no skid marks. Click — the rain erased them. Click — the blown door saved the Navy woman’s life. Click — there’s more damage to the heap. Click — the Navy woman was speeding. Click — the jalopy driver was slowing down.

Ashida walked up to the stretchers. Wind tugged at his hat. Rain stung his eyes.

All four sheets were blood-soaked. Ashida pulled them halfway down. Four clicks clicked. Let’s extrapolate.

Four male Mexicans. All dead. Two men in the front seat, two men in the back.

Head-on impact. The frontseat men sustain massive chest wounds. Their hearts explode. The backseat men sustain downward-thrust trauma and are thus disemboweled.

Ashida looked up. Bill Parker stepped out of his prowl car. An empty pint jug fell from his lap.

It clattered and rolled. Ashida looked away. He heard a muffled shriek.

He tracked it. He walked up to the jalopy. He flashed his Man Camera, in tight. The trunk lid’s ajar. Something’s in there.

He jammed up the lid. He saw a little boy. The boy was crushed dead under a spare tire. A little girl murmured and coughed blood.

She tried to say something. Ashida picked her up and held her close. She clawed at his face and died in his arms.

5 (Los Angeles, 3:15 A.M., 1/1/42)

Kwan’s Chinese Pagoda. It’s open-all-nite. It’s a cop haunt. It’s Hop Sing Tong HQ and the Chinatown hot spot.

Here’s Uncle Ace Kwan. He’s a PD puppet. He’s your warlord-restauranteur.

The rain killed business. Local Chinks and night owls stayed home. The boys hogged a prime table.

The Dudster held court. Ace laid on pupu platters and mai tais. He was sixty-six years old and too thin. He switchblade-skewered fried dumplings and snarfed them.

Oooga-booga. All-cop summit. It’s that botched stakeout. There’s this fugitive rape-o at large.

The boys noshed and boozed. Elmer chased two bennies with Bromo Seltzer and went aaahh! Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle sulked. Also present: Catbox Cal Lunceford, Wendell Rice, and George Kapek. Tag them shithead goons roused from sleep.

All eyes on Dudley. Elmer’s the most. This mick fuck sends him out to kill a man. That don’t sit right.

The Dudster played off-key. His voice fluttered. His arm sling seeped. His Army threads fit slack. Elmer eyed him surreptitious and tried to look contrite.

Dud passed out roust sheets. Tommy Glennon’s KAs and known haunts. Chink-o-phile Tommy. He perched in C-town. The sheet tagged juke joints, whore cribs, and dope dens.

The boys skimmed the sheets. Dudley tapped his fork. Achtung, meine kameraden!

“We’re here to redress tactical errors committed earlier this evening, and perhaps accrue collateral leads on the man who shanked me in the basement here three days ago. He was a slight man, well within the bodily range one expects to see in the Chinese. He also wore a lacquered-wood mask, one depicting Oriental features, such as the masks worn by Japanese actors in the Japs’ more arcane theatrical productions. I sense a baroque and oddly playful sensibility at work. You would honor me by bringing in this rare bird alive, as you would by shooting Tommy Glennon on sight.”

Mike and Dick fawned. They went Yeah, boss and dispensed grins. Catbox Cal cracked his knuckles. Rice and Kapek glared. Elmer scoped their belt shit. Per always — they packed saps and throwdown guns.

Elmer reskimmed his roust sheet. One column tagged locations. He noted boocoo spots nearby. Yeah — but where’s Eddie Leng’s Kowloon?

He’d memorized Tommy’s address book. It held damn few listings. Eddie’s joint stood out.

Rice said, “We should take these guys to the Bureau? Put the boots to them there?”

Dudley lit a cigarette. “Brace them where you find them. Bring your likely suspects here.”

Ace knifed a fried shrimp. “You bring to basement. We put balls in vise and burn with cigarettes.”

Elmer gulped. His windpipe bobbed. Dudley clocked it. Elmer clocked his clock.

Kapek said, “Say we get us a whole shitload. Call for a whore wagon then?”

Dudley said, “Shackle chains. Hook them up and march them down Broadway. Create a stir. Make a statement. The PD stands with Hop Sing. Four Families chingasos y putasos.”

Lunceford said, “Dud’s practicing. He’s Mexico-bound.”

Ace knifed a rumaki. “Viva the Chinaman and white man! Kill all jigaboos and Japs!”

Elmer yukked. Ace was a moondog psycho. He ran afield sometimes.

Breuning drained his mai tai. “Tommy’s tonged up the ying-yang. Him and Four Families go way back.”

Elmer unwrapped a cigar. “We should issue an APB and call the Immigration cops. Tommy used to run wetbacks. He’ll have a green sheet, sure as shit.”

Dudley smiled. “No. You precipitated this fuckup, Elmer. Now, go forth with your grand colleagues and remedy that.”

Two squads swamped C-town. They wore rain slickers and packed shackle chains and belt gear. Lunceford went with Breuning and Carlisle. Elmer went with Kapek and Rice.

North Broadway was all bars and slop chutes. Local Chinks and white stiffs hobknobbed. New Year’s increased foot trade. The big rain decreased it. Both squads trekked north.

Elmer’s squad took the west flank. Elmer packed his .45 and a buckshot-stitched sap. He walked point and carried the billy club. It was Chink sweep de rigeur.

Rice and Kapek lugged the shackle chains. They were six-two beefcake types and well suited. They shoulder-draped the chains and went hunchback. It pissed them off.

The PD was Hop Sing — allied. Uncle Ace was Jack Horrall’s #1 Chink. Hop Sing joints were sacrosanct, Four Families the converse. Fuck last month’s tong truce.

Elmer walked point. He smashed front windows and galvanized attention. He went in the door first. Rice and Kapek fanned out behind him. They ignored eeeeks, shrieks, and flustered women. They braced blue-kerchief tong guys and went in tough.

Elmer took the bar-stool guys. He sap-smashed hands on bartops and broke bones. He kicked over bar stools. He logged bilingual eeeeks and shrieks.

Rice and Kapek took the booths and tables. They donned sap gloves and broke faces. They dunked said mugs in tureens of shark-fin soup.

The boys hovered close and tossed questions. They pushed past eeeek and shriek. They got Don’t know nothing, don’t know nothing! They got Nobody know who slice Dudster — not us, not us!

Elmer stood by. He posed tough. He looked untough upside Kapek and Rice. He leaned close. He logged gibberish laced with rat-outs.

Tommy Glennon know Huey Cressmeyer! Tommy go queer up at Preston!

It was pidgin English. Elmer called it “Chinklish.” Sputters and nonsense talk. Some enticing tattle. Huey C. was a known Dudster snitch.

That’s it for bars and slop chutes. That’s it for North Broadway. It’s all lackluster leads. There’s no shackle bait yet.

The boys cut west on Ord. Elmer smashed clubhouse windows. Rice and Kapek kicked in doors. They tore down to basements and stormed opium dens.

They encountered noxious smoke and hopheads on pallets. Coolies packed pipes and lugged water bowls. You know Chiang Kai-shek, papa-san? You know famous sleuth Charlie Chan?

The dens served a Chink clientele. Some white swells made the scene. There’s a city council hump. There’s Ellen’s studio rival — ice-blond Veronica Lake.

Rice and Kapek thumped blue-kerchief guys. They imitated Jap Zeros. They knocked tong punks off pallets and hauled them down from Cloud 9. Elmer water-doused them. The noxious fumes messed with his gourd.

He clubbed “O” fiends. Ankle and wrist shots. Eeeek-and-shriek inducers. Rice and Kapek lobbed queries. Gibberish and half-baked leads accrued.

Tommy G. run wets from T.J.! Tommy G. supply truck farms in Imperial Valley! Don’t know who slice Dudster — don’t know, don’t know, don’t know!

Elmer laid on the hurt. Rice and Kapek worked their sap gloves. They got more eeeek and more shriek, and more Chinklish.

Tommy nancy boy! Don’t know where he is! Tommy poking some priest!

Elmer caught that one. It brought back Tommy’s address book. It underlined the St. Vib’s listing.

Rice and Kapek went pure rogue. They lifted wallets and plucked cash rolls. The fumes got to Elmer. “O” plus bennies induced all this weird wispy shit.

He went eeek his own self. He upchucked on some Chinaman’s shoes and made for the door. He bumped into Veronica Lake. She said, “Whoa, sailor.”

The rain felt good. It cleared his skull somewhat. All those colored raindrops went neutral again.

He lost his billy club. He still had his hat, badge, and roscoe. His watch said 4:35. It was still dark. It was still Chinatown and still Ord Street.

He recalled Tommy’s address book. He recalled that number for Eddie Leng’s Kowloon.

Kantonese Kuisine. Ord & Hill. Your gracious host, Eddie Leng.

It’s a block up. Why not? Maybe Veronica’s there. Maybe she’ll smile at you. Maybe she’ll sleep with you. You won’t know till you try.

He walked over. The rain felt good. There’s Eddie’s place. It looks dark. That plays wrong. It’s a 24-hour dive.

Elmer pressed up to the window. He left nose prints on the glass. Okay — the kitchen doorway’s lit up.

He shook the doorknob. The door was ajar. He walked in and shut the door behind him. His eyeballs adjusted. He popped through the dining room. He smelled something all scorched up.

He knew from scorched. He’d flamethrowered Nicaraguan insurgents. It dispersed crowds good. Those humps got their tail feathers singed.

Elmer weaved toward the kitchen. He bumped tables and chairs. He made the doorway and saw all the stoves and deep-dip fryers. Well, shit — it’s fried flesh, not scorched.

Eddie Leng was rope-cinched to a four-burner stove. He was barefoot. Charred anklebones extended from two fryer thingamajigs. Residual grease and blood bubbled. Eddie’s feet got deep-fried.

Elmer reeled and caught himself. He double-scanned the stiff. Eddie wore reet-pleat pants and a Hawaiian shirt. Some fuck folded his hands on his chest.

Note the tattoo. It’s there on the right forefinger-thumb web. It’s an “SQ” circled by snakes. Remember Tommy Glennon’s tattoo stencil? It’s flat out just like that.

6 (Los Angeles, 4:45 A.M., 1/1/42)

Opium.

His private room at Kwan’s. The tar, the match, the pipe. It’s a tainted locale now. He was knifed in this selfsame spot.

Dudley smoked opium. It stamped his travel visa and whooshed him off to wispy locales. Stopover, Baja. Seaside Ensenada appears.

There’s shoreline coves. There’s Jap subs stashed out of sight. Nitroglycerin explodes. There’s Carlos Madrano — now particulate waste.

There’s Tommy Glennon. He’s wearing a sombrero and bullfighter chaps. Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle mewl. They’ve been transmogrified to dos perros. There’s no dead prey for their master. There’s Elmer Jackson, bad shot and bumptious trash.

Dudley smoked opium. He succumbed to pictures and colors. His mind still logically tracked.

Stopover, Beverly Hills. Claire De Haven’s Colonial manse. The Red Queen spars with the Cop Arriviste.

They express inimical views. They walk upstairs. There’s the too-bright bedroom sun. He counts the freckles on Claire’s back.

Stopover, Dublin.

His trek to the New World. Joe Kennedy and Father Coughlin wave. Uncle Joe donates gun money. J. J. Cantwell funnels it to Republican causes. It’s 1921. Dudley Liam Smith’s a schoolboy killer. Uncle Joe says he’ll sponsor American citizenship.

There’s a Grafton Street skirmish. Schoolboy Smith shoots three Black-and-Tans. Their faces explode.

Dudley trembled. He dropped the pipe, the pallet shook, the colors and pictures dispersed. He saw Tommy Glennon as he looks today.

Another wayward Irish lad. A Coughlinite, a rape-o, a snitch.

Tommy at that costume party. Brentwood, winter ’39. The Jewish Maestro’s home, sublet. Nazi antics reenacted. Orgiastic overtones. Sturmbannführer D. L. Smith injudiciously attends.

Dudley fought back jitters. He reached for his pipe. He saw an envelope on the floor.

Popped through a door crack. A colored envelope. A Western Union telegram.

Dudley slit the envelope and read it. The tone was brusque. The gist was this:

It’s an active-duty summons. We’re calling you in, early. Report to the Special Intelligence Service command post in Ensenada, NOW.

7 (Los Angeles, 6:30 A.M., 1/1/42)

Thumps. Muted squeals. Dream fade — you’re half in, half out.

Murmurs now. Singsong voices. You’re more out than in.

They’re foreign voices. They’re all female and all Jap. It’s a movie encore. It’s that film they show Navy recruits.

Know Your Foe. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Jap Women Report to Jap Men.

Joan woke up. She assessed it all, quicksville.

Booze blackout. You’re driving up the coast road. Then something happens. Now you’re HERE.

A jail cell. A hard bunk. Her scuffed palms. Her rumpled uniform.

She heard real voices. She distinguished them and counted five altogether. There were five Jap matrons, crammed in a cell down the tier.

Joan stood up and stretched. The Jap ladies stared at her. Joan stared right back.

They looked down and went I’m so humble. Joan looked past them. She saw dawn out a window and more goddamn rain.

No purse, no cigarettes. This goddamn cell. Odd aches and pains.

Joan tucked her blouse in. She flexed her hands and smoothed out her coat and skirt. She stood by the front bars and willed panache.

A door clanged. A uniformed cop walked up. He was midsized and slight. Joan loomed over him.

Captain’s bars and three hashmarks. Wire-rim glasses. They magnified his dark brown eyes. He’d never be handsome. He’d always be unnerving.

So, it’s you. Northwestern — spring 1940.

He said, “Lieutenant Conville.”

A prairie drawl. The Dakotas, maybe.

Joan said, “We haven’t met, but I’ve seen you before.”

“My name’s Parker. I’m with the Los Angeles Police Department. I command the Traffic Division.”

“Acknowledge me, will you? ‘I’ve seen you before.’ ”

Parker gripped the bars. “You might well have. I checked your enlistment file. We attended Northwestern concurrently.”

Joan gripped the bars. Their hands were close. Joan moved hers away.

“Can you be more emphatic? You seemed to be surveilling me then.”

Parker got out his cigarettes and offered the pack. Joan took one. Parker lit it.

Joan tossed her head and exhaled. It telegraphed vamp move. She felt stupid and out of her league.

“What happened? Why am I here?”

Parker lit a cigarette. “You’ve been arrested for four counts of vehicular manslaughter. Four men are dead because you drove inebriated in a heavy rainstorm. If you’re lucky, you’ll do five years at Tehachapi.”

Joan stepped back. She grazed the bunk ledge and almost tripped. She caught herself and stepped back up to the bars.

“I need a lawyer. I’ll be charged and arraigned, and there’ll be a trial.”

Parker said, “I’ve had some experience with this sort of matter. Most inebriate killers evince regret or remorse and ask questions about the people they killed. You went to your own survival immediately. I don’t know whether to be impressed or appalled.”

Joan gripped the bars. Her hands brushed Parker’s. She kept them there.

“Tell me about the people I killed. I’ll react, and you can decide whether to be impressed or appalled then.”

Parker said, “They were Mexican illegals. They were transporting marijuana, and had extensive criminal records. Their offenses included strongarm robbery, aggravated assault, kidnapping, white slavery, and first-degree extortion.”

Joan dropped her cigarette and crushed it. “I’m evincing regret now. I can’t quite embrace remorse.”

Parker grinned a tad. “You’re a cum laude forensic biologist. A prison sentence would scotch whatever degree of success you might ultimately achieve.”

“You’re leading me, Captain. There’s something going on here.”

“Oh, really? And what would that be?”

Joan winked. “Really, sir? It wasn’t that long ago.”

“Lieutenant, now you’re lead—”

“I was shooting skeet off the Evanston Bridge. You were watching me. I thought, That man should go home and be nice to his wife, because his attention has surely strayed.”

Parker blushed. It was almost but not quite endearing.

“You rid the world of four vicious thugs. I’ll extend muted bravos, and add that all opportunities carry a price. If you resign your Navy commission, I’ll see to a dismissal of all charges against you. I’ll secure you a position with the PD’s Central Crime Lab and personally vouch your wartime employment.”

Booze blackouts, skeet guns, cop voyeurs—

“Is this your métier, Captain? Have you made a career out of entrapping young women?”

Parker said, “I’ve only done it once before.”

“And when was that?”

Parker said, “Last month.”

Joan laughed. “I’ve read monographs by your Dr. Ashida. I greatly admire them.”

“Would you like to meet Dr. Ashida?”

Joan said, “When?”

Parker said, “Now.”

8 (Los Angeles, 7:45 A.M., 1/1/42)

The bash felt stale now. ’41 was old news. ’42 was au courant.

Nobody danced. Count Basie’s boys dozed in their chairs. A few cops and dates schmoozed. A buffet dispensed Bloody Marys and stale bagels.

Lee Blanchard was out cold. He topped out his bodyguard shift. The dead kids got to him. He hit the party and drank himself insensate.

The day-shift man was due. Elmer J. always ran late. Blanchard said he had late work with the Dudster.

Thad Brown circulated. He ran the Homicide Squad. Kay Lake circulated. She was the PD’s favored seductress. Brenda Allen table-hopped. She ran call girls with Elmer. Jack Horrall and Fletch Bowron dozed on a couch. The Count dozed with them. His head brushed the mayor’s shoulder.

The dead kids.

Ashida teethed on it. He teethed each and every split second. He sipped coffee and stayed alert.

Bill Parker issued a gag order. No reporters, no public exposure. Four male wetbacks, muerto. It stands at THAT. The Navy woman must not know.

Parker called Catholic Charities. He had oomph there. A private hearse hauled the kids off.

Parker admonished Blanchard and Ashida. I demand silence. Do not talk about this.

Ashida trawled the room. The Count was up and bleary-eyed. He chatted with Kay. La Grande Katherine looked up-all-night fetching.

Brenda Allen blew a kiss. Ashida waved back. Colored sax men fish-eyed him. Yeah — we ain’t white, but you’re a JAP.

Elmer walked over. He straddled a chair and drained Blanchard’s highball.

“Sorry I’m late. Dud had us hopping.”

Ashida sipped coffee. “You tend to be overextended.”

Elmer said, “It’ll get worse, starting tomorrow. The roundups’ll kick in again, and your few remaining countrymen on the loose’ll be headed for the pokey.”

“We’re backlogged on your confiscations. You’re bringing in more than we can process.”

Elmer relit a cigar. “You’re lucky we got thieves on the squad. Georgie Kapek and Wendell Rice got your swag appropriated.”

Ashida laughed. Elmer eyeballed the room. He said, “Kay looks swell, don’t she?”

“Are you in love with her?”

“I’m entranced. That’s worse. You acknowledge that you ain’t got a chance, so you act even dumber than you usually do.”

Ashida jumped topics. Romantic intrigue bored and vexed him.

“I read a Teletype from Fourth Interceptor. There’s allegedly hidden air bases out in Indio and Brawley. The command picked up coded pay-phone calls from here to Baja.”

Elmer shrugged. “Dud’s headed south. He’ll nip that grief in the bud. ‘Knock, knock, who’s there? Dudley Smith, so spies beware.’ ”

Ashida smiled. Elmer scoped the doorway. Ashida tracked his gaze.

Bill Parker walked in. He wore a fresh uniform and looked all spruced up. He brought a date.

A Navy lieutenant. Rumpled blues, red hair, quite tall and statuesque. Vehicular manslaughter/six counts/two counts unacknowledged.

Elmer waggled his eyebrows. Elmer wolf-growled.

Ashida deployed Man Camera. He framed Parker and the redhead. He panned to Kay Lake and caught her reaction. He zoomed in for a close-up. Kay and Parker shared This Big Freighted Look.

Parker and the redhead hit the buffet. They ignored the food and mixed high-test Bloody Marys.

They clicked glasses. Their hands brushed. Kay saw it all.

Thad Brown walked up. He ignored dozed-out Blanchard. He braced Ashida and Elmer.

“Let’s go. We’ve got mud slides in Griffith Park. They’ve dislodged a body by the golf course.”

9 (Los Angeles, 8:30 A.M., 1/1/42)

They ran Code Three/red lights and siren. It goosed squarejohn drivers curbside. Thad Brown hauled. Ashida rode shotgun. Elmer hogged the backseat.

First reports state this:

The stiff is a long-term decomp. That means all bones. It washed up on the par-3 golf course. Said course adjoined Mineral Canyon — i.e., the spot where Wayne Frank Jackson died.

Elmer agitated it. Elmer segued to more pressing shit. Eddie Leng’s deep-fried feet. Tommy Glennon’s address book.

He’d dropped the book on the day-watch Vice clerk. He’d slipped him a yard and told him to run a phone-number check. Chop, chop. I need results, pronto. And don’t blab on this.

Brown hauled up Vermont. Rainwater jammed the wheel wells. The car belly-flopped and drifted. Brown veered right and caught a flat surface. They shimmied down a golf course access road.

Elmer saw two black-and-whites and a prowl sled. Plus a snack hut. Plus green fairways and the dump site.

There’s two harness blues and two plainclothesmen. They’ve got arc lights and a rain tarp set up. They’ve got a steep hillside all lit.

Brown fishtailed over and yanked the brake. They all went whew. Elmer bundled into his hat and trench coat. They all got out and ran.

Elmer got there first. He saw Al Goossen and Colin Forbes — Hollywood Squad hard-ons.

Nods circulated. The tarp fluttered and dripped rain. Brown and Ashida caught up. The arc lights lit this:

Soaked grass up the fairway. The mud spill and all this loose soil. A big dirt hole. Exhumed mud sluicing down to this flat spot.

The spill dislodged a box. It tumbled down the hillside. It’s a pine box — six-six by two feet.

It’s charred black. They’re char marks, for sure. Intermittent marks — mud-and-root-matted.

The lid was warped and soil-eroded. The mud slide sprung it off, clean. It’s a jig-rigged casket. There’s green goo caked inside. There’s skeletal remains.

Ashida pointed to the goo. “That’s congealed quicklime. It serves to speed decomposition.”

Elmer relit his cigar. Forbes and Goossen lit cigarettes. Brown spit tobacco juice.

“That tags it Murder One.”

Ashida leaned in close. Elmer said, “Genius at work.”

Bluesuit #1 rolled his eyes. Bluesuit #2 said, “Like Charlie Chan.” Elmer said, “Charlie Chan’s a Chinaman, dipshit.”

Bluesuit #2 blanched. Ashida foot-tapped the box.

“Note the width of the pelvis and the overall length and breadth of the remains. The victim was male, tall, and heavyset.”

Brown said, “Talk to me, dead man.”

Forbes said, “Who killed you, boss?”

Ashida futzed with the stiff’s jawbones. They went creak. He pulled them loose.

“The killer knocked his teeth out. Note the mandible fractures. The uppers and lowers are unidentifiable stubs.”

Elmer studied the box. The fire aspect gouged him. October 3, ’33 — the Griffith Park blaze.

Ashida tapped a shattered rib bone. “It’s a knife-thrust homicide. The killer hit hard, went in deep, and twisted the knife.”

Brown leaned low. He studied the skull. He pointed out a hole and faint cracks adjacent.

“He was shot once. You’ll find a spent round embedded.”

Elmer looked up the hill. Lightning backlit the whole golf course.

“You remember that big fire, back in ’33? I’m thinking it could have whooshed over the box and caused all the charring.”

Ashida said, “I don’t think so. There’s too much mud for the fire to have gone that deep.”

Brown poked at some rags. They were quicklime-caked and bore singe marks.

“That green shit dissolved the clothes off the body.”

Forbes said, “Who killed you, dead man?”

Goossen said, “It’s a missing-person job. That stuff puts me to sleep. Give me a nigger homicide any day.”

Brown said, “You’re out of luck there. Get the box and the stiff to Doc Layman at the morgue.”

Forbes and Goossen sulked. Elmer chewed his cigar. He recollected Wayne Frank. He felt all razzle-dazzle.

“Here’s what gets me. Some of the box is burned, but some ain’t. I don’t see no special flame pattern on the wood.”

Forbes said, “Elmer’s brother died in that fire. He’s got fires on the noggin.”

Goossen said, “I remember that day. Fire trucks were backed up all the way down Los Feliz.”

Forbes said, “It was the Reds. They never proved arson, but some Red cell was supposed to be good for it.”

Ashida studied the box. Genius at work. All eyes on Ashida now.

He said, “Elmer could be right. I think the box was burned concurrent with an aboveground fire. 1933 might be a good guess.”

The rain let up. Black clouds hovered. Thad B. drove Elmer and Ashida back downtown. L.A. was hungover. Shops closed, nil traffic, local yokels sleeping it off.

Ashida hopped out at the Biltmore. Elmer snagged his civilian sled at City Hall. That Vice clerk delivered. He’d stuck the phone-call list under the wiper blades.

Elmer had a bachelor flop at 1st and Saint Andrews. He drove by and fed his tropical fish. Brenda had a house up Laurel Canyon. He part-time shacked there. Brenda might be home. She might toss him some New Year’s woof-woof.

He drove over and let himself in. The place was done up Spanish Hacienda. Brenda scrounged used sets from The Sword of Zorro. Some homo art director went nuts.

Elmer built a highball and buzzed the call-service switchboard. The dispatch girl delivered the dish. She knew Elmer was het up and voyeurizized.

Dig tonight’s roster:

Fletch Bowron booked a threesky. DA Bill McPherson booked a colored cooze. Sheriff Gene Biscailuz booked a tall blonde.

The service featured house calls, plus three fuck flops. Apartment-building tryst spots. Replete with hidden wall peeks and cameras. Folks paid to peep bedroom action. The camera shit doubled as potential shakedown gear.

The Chapman Park flop was booked tonight. Cary Grant, Butch Stanwyck, and Ruth Mildred Cressmeyer were tricking with “Ten-Inch” Tony Mangano.

Tony tricked switcheroosky. He turned Ruth Mildred straight in one-night allotments. Ruthie was a disbarred physician and scrape doc. Ruthie was tight with Dudley Smith. Ruthie recruited lez girls for Brenda.

Fourteen peepers had booked seats for the show. The peepers peeped anonymous. They paid fifty scoots a head. Butch and Tony commanded top dollar.

Also, on tonight’s roster:

Mickey Rooney booked a girl. Likewise John “Cricket Dick” Huston. Eight girls for a USC frat bash. Six boys for a Brentwood hen party.

Elmer signed off the call. The phone rang and startled him. He snagged the new call.

“Talk to me.”

“It’s Kay, Elmer.”

“Well, then. Some weather, huh? It’s like the flood in the Bible. You think it’ll ever stop?”

Kay laughed. “I didn’t call to discuss the weather.”

Elmer laughed. “Well, it sure ain’t the war, because we hashed all that out the last time we talked.”

“Don’t be a C.T. You know what I’m angling for.”

“Oh, yeah? And what’s that, pray tell?”

Kay stage-sighed. “Come on, Elmer. Give.”

Elmer stage-sighed. “The party? The big redhead with Bill Parker? That catch your eye?”

“Now, he gets to it.”

“Hard not to notice, huh?”

Kay laughed. “I’ve known William Henry Parker the Third for twenty-seven days, and during that time he has repeatedly cast his eyes about for tall, red-haired, naval-officer women.”

Elmer said, “You’re counting the days since you’ve met him. What’s that tell you about yourself?”

Kay said, “You’re deliberately tweaking me.”

Elmer said, “I don’t know no more than you do, except how much you love that man.”

Kay blew him a kiss and hung up. The ten-second phone call was her standard MO.

Elmer yawned and kicked his shoes off. He got out the Vice clerk’s list. He studied Tommy G.’s address book and put shit together.

St. Vibiana’s Church. He decoded that one already. It’s the home of papal poobah J. J. Cantwell. He’s the Dudster’s old pal.

The Deutsches Haus. 15th and Union. Pro-Nazi hot spot. Kraut regalia for sale.

Let’s backtrack. We’re in Tommy’s hotel room. There’s that tattoo stencil. It features swastikas and an “SQ” circled by snakes. The “SQ” snake job was embroidered on the late Eddie Leng.

More names, more phone numbers. Huey Cressmeyer. A Hollywood phone exchange. That’s no surprise. He’s Ruth Mildred’s perv-o son and a Dudster informant. C-town tattle: Huey and Tommy were reform-school chums.

Monsignor Joseph Hayes. A West L.A. exchange. More C-town drift: Tommy and “some priest” travel the Hershey Highway.

Jean Clarice Staley. A Hollywood exchange. That rates a Huh? She’s a woman — but Tommy runs Greek. He rapes women — he don’t call them.

That hot-box pay phone. It’s right upside the Herald. It’s drilled for slug calls. Plus this head-scratcher. It rates a big Huh?

Fourteen pay phones. All down in Baja. All in Ensenada. All eighty miles south of T.J.

Let’s backtrack. Tommy ran wetbacks for Carlos Madrano. That Spanish-language book in Tommy’s room.

Head-scratchers. Brain-broilers. Code 3 Alert. Look out, son. You’re brushing upside Dudley Smith.

Rain kicked up hard. Elmer walked to the front window and looked out. He saw fresh mud slides. He saw storm crews on Crescent Heights.

Let’s backtrack. The Griffith Park slide, the old-new DOA. Let’s backtrack. The 1933 fire.

It’s October 3. It’s 103 degrees in L.A. Santa Ana winds change course. CCC workers are out cutting brush. Wayne Frank’s among them.

Thirty-four men die. It gets ambiguous here. There’s sloppy rosters and files and fly-by-night work crews. Who died and who didn’t? There’s un-ID’d bodies. There’s Wayne Frank — ID’d off old dental charts.

Arson or not? It gets ambiguous here. It’s the Depression. There’s Red revolt in the vox populi. Garment workers agitating. Labor marches. Kreepy Kremlin prophecies. Fires, tidal waves, storms.

Elmer dug out his scrapbook. Wayne Frank pix consumed four pages. Wayne Frank in a boxer’s pose, 1924. Wayne Frank in a Klan sheet, 1926. Elmer V. in Marine green, 1930. Wayne Frank giving him the horns.

Wayne Frank was taller and handsomer. Wayne Frank was smarter and meaner. Elmer V. was slow to rile. He could kick big brother’s hate-dog ass all day long.

What made Wayne Frank tick? Nobody knew. Wayne Frank was whimsical. Wayne Frank imagined impossible shit and convinced himself that it was true. Wayne Frank developed this big gold-heist fixation.

May ’31. A mint-train job. A Frisco-to-L.A. gold-transfer run. Gold bars. A small number. Triple-locked in a cage. Shackled passengers under guard. San Quentin convicts bound for retrials in L.A.

Chaos attends a track switch in Monterey County. All eight cons escape. Seven men are hunted down. They’re shot on sight faaaaast. One man remains at large still.

More grief. A downed-track snafu two hours south. Chaos atop chaos. Guards and crew succumb to frayed nerves. The heist occurs then. The heister or heisters are smart. Just one box’s worth of bars leaves the train.

The train treks south. Santa Barbara’s a coal stop. The theft is discovered then. Suspicion falls on Leander Frechette. He’s the train’s odd-job man. He’s dim-witted, Negro, fucking-A strong. The Santa Barbara cops posit a single-o heister. He walked the bars off the train two or three at a clip. It had to be Frechette. Nobody else had the strength. Somebody bossed him. He was too dumb to concoct the plan himself.

The Santa Barbara cops beat Frechette baaaaad. He refused to confess. A colored preacher with cop clout intervened. Frechette was released. The case fizzled out. It went to open-file status, stale bread.

Wayne Frank hoarded news clips and treasure-magazine pieces. He studied the heist and worked himself up to fever pitch. Wayne Frank, the dreamer. Wayne Frank, the fantasist. What makes Wayne Frank tick? He’s a news-clip hoarder and treasure-magazine collector. He’s an all-time fabulist.

“Oh, Lord. He’s in a fugue state. He’s got his scrapbook out, and he’s gone stir-crazy from the rain.”

Elmer flinched and spilled his highball. Brenda walked soft. She snuck into her own house. It was some trick on high heels.

“You know what Kay says. ‘Keep referring to me in the third person. It sends me.’ ”

Brenda shut the door. “Katherine Ann. She’s the first thing out of your mouth. She’s the only one you’ll ever love, in case you ain’t figured it out.”

Elmer checked his watch. “It’s almost noon. The party must have run long.”

“I spent some time with Jack. I’ll tell you, so you won’t ask. It was a paid date, and Jack said he wants you to run bag to some city councilmen. Him and Fletch got worries on that phone-tap probe. They’re buying forgiveness in advance.”

Elmer smiled. “Let’s hit the kip. We ain’t spent time there in a coon’s age.”

Brenda said, “The weekend, maybe. You know I do my best work by appointment.”

Elmer scoped the world at large. Hard rain hit, palm trees wiggled, palm fronds flew.

“There’s too much going on out there. God’s telling us something.”

Brenda said, “You’re at loose ends, Citizen. You’re looking to louse something up and put yourself in a jam. Go see Ellen and get your ashes hauled. You’ll do us both a favor.”

Ellen tapped his forehead. “You’re broody. Something’s going on in there. And don’t tell me it’s the Fate of Mankind, because you’re not that deep.”

They were naked. Ellen’s mattress sagged. Her baby boy dozed one room over.

Elmer said, “It’s too warm in here. You get that with these big buildings. They don’t leave you no choice with the heat.”

Ellen lit a cigarette. She sat up crossways and blew smoke rings. Their sweat was all mingled up.

“That’s not a real answer. I could turn down the heat if I wanted to, but I keep it warm for the baby.”

Elmer said, “We’ve got this rule, remember? We’re not supposed to talk about him.”

“You’re broody. Give me a hint. There’s the war, the draft, and you blew that stakeout, so maybe Dudley Smith’s peeved at you. You don’t like harassing these so-called innocent Japs, and you wish you could go back to Vice. Give me a little clue.”

Elmer relit his cigar. Smoke fumes fumed the room up good.

“One little clue. I’ll hold you captive here until you tell me.”

Elmer said, “That’s a swell inducement not to talk.”

Ellen said, “And that’s a swell compliment. But tell me something, or I’ll start brooding on adultery and kick you out.”

Elmer touched her hair and kissed her. Ellen nuzzled his hand.

“My life’s too easy. I got the world by the dick, but it don’t sit right with me.”

Loose ends. The New Year’s blahs. Elmer hit the road.

He drove to City Hall and prowled corridors. The Hall was holiday dead. The PD ran a light crew. The Air Patrol guys stuck to the basement. The mayor’s office and City Council chambers were dark.

Elmer had keys and a briefcase. He hit Call-Me-Jack’s office and unlocked his desk drawers. Jack left four envelopes. They were marked with initials. They were probably five-yard payoffs.

The mayor’s office ran swank. Walnut panels and a Mussolini-size desk. Elmer unlocked Fletch Bowron’s drawers. He grabbed four more envelopes. He saw that familiar green binder.

His binder. Brenda’s. Their merchandise book. Nude pix of their girls.

He leafed through it. He got titillated and broody, simultaneous.

He replaced the binder. He hit the Council chambers and divvied up the gelt. The 4th District guy kept a desk jug. Elmer helped himself. He sat in the guy’s green leather chair and put his feet up.

Loose ends. The New Year’s blahs. Elmer hit the road.

The hard rain subsided. A drizzle held in. Central Station was close. Elmer walked over.

The crime lab was locked. The main squadroom was locked. The Alien Squad pen was lit bright. Elmer poked his head in. He saw Wendell Rice and George Kapek. They were in their skivvies. They were tossing dice and snarfing pizza pie.

Elmer said, “Happy New Year.”

Rice said, “You up and took off last night. Dud wondered what happened to you.”

“You and George started lifting wallets. I got a burr in my tail.”

Kapek said, “You’re pious, Jackson. That, and you don’t need the money. You got your girl racket, and you’re Jack Horrall’s favorite Okie.”

Elmer waved his cigar. “I’m a cracker, not an Okie. There’s a distinction.”

Rice raised his hands. “Peace, brother. We’re all white men, and we’re going back to rousting Japs first thing tomorrow.”

Elmer made the jack-off sign. Kapek said, “Last night was a bust. We got no good drift on who sliced Dud, and nothing ripe on Tommy Glennon.”

Rice said, “Dud’s hipped on Tommy. Something’s going on there that I don’t comprehend.”

Kapek said, “Dud’s right hand don’t know what his left hand is doing.”

Elmer gauged the chitchat. Nothing gored him. Fucking Eddie Leng gored him. There was no dead-body call. These humps would have heard. There was no Herald headline: DEEP-FRIED CHINAMAN FOUND! COPS SIFT CLUES!

Kapek rolled snake eyes. He crapped out and moaned. Rice snatched the dice. His undershirt hiked and exposed his left arm. Note the thunderbolt armband.

Still life. Geek cops at play. Exiled from home and hearth. Jap hunters in repose.

Elmer fought off the New Year’s blues. Elmer hit the road.

The hard rain revived. He drove through swamped intersections and sewer floods. Who snuffed Eddie Leng? Who’s the dead man in the box?

Elmer drove to the Gordon Hotel. Tommy’s “SQ” tattoo stencil tweaked him. He braced the desk clerk. Let me retoss Tommy’s room. Tommy’s a fugitive rape-o.

The clerk went Nyet, sahib. He said two cops just tore through here. They tossed Tommy’s room. I’m not repeating that grief with you.

The clerk described Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle. They retossed his first toss. That scotched toss #3.

Elmer drove back downtown. He hit 11th and Broadway and parked. He recharged with bennies and Old Crow. He got electricized.

He eyeballed that hot-box phone for no damn good reason. It stood outside the Herald. It was just some coin booth.

But:

Tommy called it. Maybe mucho times. Tommy’s address book. Think fast, now. Tommy called fourteen Baja pay phones.

Elmer glanced across the street. He spotted a Fed sedan. Ed Satterlee was tucked in. He was eyeballing the booth.

Cop life. Circle jerk. Who you know, who you blow. Satterlee bossed the Fed probe. Satterlee tricked with the Brenda-Elmer service. Satterlee was tonged up.

Elmer stared at the hot-box. Baja calls. That’s a head-scratcher. Ain’t the Dudster Baja-bound now?

10 (Tijuana, 3:30 P.M., 1/1/42)

Border cops saluted and waved them through. Bienvenidos, señor y señora.

They were Falangista thugs. They were Francoesque in dress and demeanor. They saw the staff car and Army jefe. They noted the comely mujer. They fawned and clicked their heels.

Mexico. Our grand, if raucous, neighbor. A properly subservient hello.

Dudley and Claire breezed into T.J. Claire drove. Dudley’s arm sling precluded. A late sun lit rain clouds.

They cut inland and south. The coast road detoured through T.J. proper. It’s muy feo. Let’s see how Claire reacts.

The child-beggar swarms. The cat-meat taco vendors. The women-fuck-donkey clubs. The open-air farmacias. Voodoo health cures and sub-rosa dope.

Liquor stores. Niteklubs. Prowling sailors and Marines. Strolling putas. He-she’s in bullfighter garb.

The cops wore mismatched uniforms and drove mismatched cars. Jackboots, jodhpurs, tunics — all Nazi black. Der Führer — style purveyor to the world’s great unwashed.

Chevy prowl cars, Ford prowl cars. U.S. confiscations. Wait, there’s a Packard. Note the coyote-pelt seats.

Claire said, “I left Beverly Hills for this. It must mean that I love you.”

Dudley laughed and squeezed her knee. His bad arm ached. Claire caught a lane back to the coast road. To the east: scrub hills and abandoned-car encampments. To the west: cliffside coves and sea swells.

Claire hit the gas. Dudley read her. She wanted to get there and dose herself. She wanted to craft her rich-leftist-among-the-peons persona.

She brooded her way down from L.A. He brooded in inimical sync. He concentrated on Tommy Glennon.

Mike and Dick tossed Tommy’s room. A clerk told them that another cop had already tossed it. The clerk described the doltish Elmer Jackson.

He caught a noon radio broadcast. It stressed “Chinese restauranteur slain.” There was no “victim Leng tong affiliate.” There was no “close pal of Thomas Malcolm Glennon.” Both facts should have been stressed.

Tommy’s missing now. Mike and Dick saw a Spanish-language text in his room.

Dudley scoped the terrain. Eyes left: hills and Jap fishing towns. He’d raid them. He’d roust Fifth Column Japs and plain old Japs set for internment. Eyes right: the cliffs, the coves, the sea.

Storm-tossed now. Like last month. Shallow beachfront/glide-in spots/perfect sub concealment.

Like last month. Like the botched dope raid. Like the Jap sub and blown-to-shit Carlos Madrano.

Claire said, “You’re clenching, dear. Your jaw is trembling.”

Dudley lit a cigarette. “I’m considering failure and the means not to repeat it. Mexico redefines opportunity, and I must not stumble here.”

Claire smiled. “You’re a war profiteer.”

Dudley winked. “Bright lass. I knew you’d figure it out.”

Ensenada.

Fishing spot, tourist trap, lovers’ hideout. Cliffside hotels and sportfishing piers. Slum piers crammed with tuna boats and bait shops. Streets named for saints and notable despots.

Claire turned off the coast road. Avenida Costera hugged low cliffs and offered up jazzy views. The Army usurped the Hotel Pacifico del Norte. The third floor was all SIS.

Officers billeted in sea-motif suites. Enlisted men lived in off-site barracks. They were jerry-rigged, post — Pearl Harbor. Convict laborers toiled, posthaste.

The hotel was Moorish-mosque adobe. Eight stories, thick walls, tile roofs. The front entrance was sandbagged. Howitzers and tripod Brownings flanked the doors. Mex Staties stood guard. They held tommy guns at port arms.

Claire pulled into the porte cochere. Greedy valets swooped. Beaners in movie-usher attire. Coolie hats à la Grauman’s Chinese.

A full-dress major broached the car. He was forty-five, short, and porcine. He leaned in on Dudley’s side. He expelled booze fumes.

“Captain Smith, Mrs. Smith. I’m Ralph Melnick, and I’ll escort you to your quarters, and show you around before you can say ‘más rápido.’ ”

Dudley grinned and stuck out his hand. Melnick bone-crushed him. Claire saw something. She ignored the exchange and glanced streetside. Dudley tracked her eyes.

It’s a waif girl. About fifteen, tattered coat and skirt, scuffed Army boots. Dark hair, glasses, feral élan.

Dudley touched Claire’s arm. She turned back and smiled — a dazzler.

“I’m not Mrs. Smith, Major. I’m Miss De Haven.”

The tour, then.

The gringo was king here. Army personnel and swank turistas capered. Statie drones worked the desk and switchboard. They wore starched fatigues and packed sidearms. Mix-blood mestizos fetched drinks and scrounged tips. Dark indios slaved.

Three restaurants. Seaside lounge. Private fishing pier and Rose Bowl — sized lobby. Dolores del Rio, engulfed by fawning fans.

Captain Smith’s billet: the Plutarco Calles Suite. Dudley roared — the Red priest-killer, conmemorativo.

Two bedrooms, living room, dining room/kitchen. Ocean-view balcony, mounted trophy fish throughout. Bathrooms with five-foot-deep tubs.

Claire decamped to explore the suite and geez morphine. Major Melnick blushed and curtsied good-bye. He walked Dudley down to 3. The floor had been wartime-gutted. Arriba, SIS. The U.S. Army has arrived.

One massive squadroom. Forty-odd cubicles and desks. Floor-to-ceiling corkboards and file banks. U.S./Baja wall maps.

Switchboard. Forty phone lines. Eight Teletypes. All-new photostat. Coding room and armory. Two dozen men on duty. Twenty-four-hour work shifts.

Captain Smith got a full office. He got a large desk and green leather chairs. The FDR wall pic had to go.

Melnick produced a flask. They traded pops. Dudley turned the FDR pic facedown. Melnick yuk-yukked.

“So, right now Mexico’s ‘neutral,’ but it’s just a pose, because El Presidente Camacho’s a dick tease, and he wants to extract all the U.S. aid he can get his mitts on before he comes onboard with the Allies. Baja’s full of Japs, with a sprinkling of Krauts, and Camacho’s been dragging his heels on that, while he keeps up his neutrality pose. We’ve got to get these Jap boogers detained and interrogated. We’ve got eight hundred and fifty miles of coastline here, beach coves up the ying-yang, and Jap fishermen with Fifth Column sympathies and the wherewithal to guide a goddamn armada of subs in.”

Dudley passed the flask. “My special duties, sir?”

Melnick said, “You’re my executive officer, with all corresponding authority. You’ll serve as liaison to the Mexican State Police and the California-based police and civilian authorities. You’ll supervise inland airplane searches and shoreline sub checks. You’ll round up Japs and see to their U.S. deportation and internment, because the spic powers that be haven’t got the manpower and facilities to intern the fuckers here, and the Mexican government’s out to steal all the Jap money it can. The Baja governor is a Kraut-Mex breed named Juan Lazaro-Schmidt. He’s another heel-dragger. He kind of likes Hitler and Tojo, and thinks they just might win the war. So, we try to work around this guy. Our big asset in north Baja’s the new boss of the Statie boys here. José Vasquez-Cruz. He’s coming by to see you at 1800. He’s an honorary white man in my book.”

Dudley swiveled his desk chair. He took two full spins. The office went wheeee.

Melnick said, “Miss De Haven sort of bushwhacked me. Your personnel file said you were married.”

Dudley said, “Miss De Haven bushwhacked me. She wasn’t the first woman to contravene my vows, but she may well be the last.”

Dusk hit early. They kept the terrace doors open and the bedroom lights low. Storm clouds brewed just past the harbor. More rain was due.

Claire sat up in bed. Dudley cradled his bad arm. The sling tanked their lovemaking. They laughed it off.

Claire scootched down and got their eyes level. Dudley plumped pillows and drew her in close.

“We’re here now. Are you aware of how much things have changed?”

Claire kissed him. “We of the Left see our lives as History. I find myself counting the days since Pearl Harbor, and chalking all change up to the novelty of the war.”

Dudley kissed her. “We’re both unruly. The war will serve as our justification until we tire of the falsehood. We’ve both endured failures of late. I failed in business, but it has not derailed my resolve. You succumbed to the infiltration efforts of William H. Parker and Kay Lake. They succumbed to war fever and a desire to hunt Reds, and took it out on you. You succumbed to your idealism and susceptibility to fetching waifs, as evinced by Miss Lake. This war will advance our individual and often antithetical agendas. If we remain candid and strong, we will not derail ourselves.”

Claire hooked a leg over him. They were this close.

“Grant me a concession, darling. Merge our agendas just a little bit.”

Dudley laughed. “Hitler is every bit as bad as Stalin. That’s as far as I’ll go tonight.”

Claire laughed. “Quid pro quo, then. Stalin is every bit as bad as Hitler, and in case you’re wondering, it was Kay Lake who first got me to concede that.”

“Then concede this. It’s our war.”

“Yes, love. It is surely our war. And it’s Kay’s war, as much as I dislike her.”

Rain drummed the terrace. Lightning flashed. Claire lit a cigarette and blew smoke rings.

“I’m in the market for a new waif. I might go looking for that girl we saw.”

The coast road, southbound. It’s a rain sieve and slalom course. There’s thunder. There’s wave smash. It’s eerie-beautiful in the dark.

Captain Vasquez-Cruz drove. He proposed the excursion. Here’s his windup and pitch:

“Captain Smith, I have something to show you. It is on the beach a fair way from here. I think it will amuse and confound you.”

They drove due south. Vasquez-Cruz wheeled a Cadillac impound. He called it a “Jew canoe.” He expressed regard for Adolf Hitler and defamed nun-raping Reds. He knew El Dudster’s rep and toiled at rapport.

He was snazzy. He was thirty-two or — three and ever bemused. He wore Statie blacks and spit-shined jackboots.

They comported in a merry monsoon. Vasquez-Cruz sped through it. Dudley futzed with the radio.

He tuned in XERB and Father Coughlin. The pulsing padre praised the Sinarquistas and Salvador Abascal. Static ditzed the broadcast. Dudley skimmed the dial. He caught more static and a coon jazz quartet.

Vasquez-Cruz doused the sound. “I’m glad that you killed Carlos Madrano. It secured me his position.”

Dudley said, “And how did you secure this information?”

“I tortured his ichiban. Scorpions attacked his small dick. He revealed that you and your policeman colleagues attempted to steal Madrano’s heroin cache. You blew up Madrano with nitroglycerin you uncovered at the cache site, but failed to get the heroin.”

“Because you got it?”

“Yes. You killed Madrano, but I commandeered his soul. I assumed his State Police command and appropriated his dope racket. If he had a woman, I would have fucked her or killed her.”

Dudley laughed. “You embody the beating heart of machismo.”

Vasquez-Cruz went tee-hee. He embodied the vicious-bantamweight aesthetic. He tittered in the near-soprano range.

“You and your policeman friends discovered a Jap sub at the Colonet Inlet. You interrogated members of the crew and determined their Fifth Column intent. They were going to pass themselves off as Chinese and perform sabotage in Los Angeles.”

Dudley popped his holster flap. His raincoat featured fast-draw pockets.

“Madrano’s ichiban told you that?”

“Yes, just before I killed him.”

Dudley smiled. Vasquez-Cruz swung a hard right and hit a beach-access road. The Jew canoe brodied on loose mud and sand. He skidded up to the shoreline. His headlights strafed ocean swells.

He set the brake. “We are near the Colonet Inlet. This must seem familiar to you.”

Dudley popped the glove box. He saw two flashlights, straight off.

He grabbed one. Vasquez-Cruz grabbed one. He stepped out of the car and walked ahead. Dudley lagged five yards back. He unbuttoned his raincoat and unholstered his piece.

Low cliffs deflected the rain. They kicked through wet sand and skirted the wave line. Dudley reholstered. Vasquez-Cruz turned on his flashlight. He aimed it at a rock cove. It was shallow — about eight feet deep.

Dudley smelled it and saw it. Dudley noted the drag marks and counted the stiffs.

Sixteen Jap sailors. Not yet decomposed. Close-range gunshot wounds. Shots to the head. Probable close-range ambush.

Tangled bodies. Facial powder burns and jawline stippling. Exploded bridgework and shattered teeth.

Vasquez-Cruz flashed his flashlight ten yards north. There’s the beached sub.

Dudley said, “The Colonet Inlet Japs were a first wave of saboteurs. I would call this a second wave. They were killed by rival Fifth Columnists or rogue State Police. I’ll need to interrogate any and all men you might suspect.”

Vasquez-Cruz bowed. Sí, mi capitán.

Dudley said, “The contact man for the Colonet saboteurs was a Chinese plastic surgeon named Lin Chung. He lives in Los Angeles. The rest of the cabal are wealthy white men, too powerful to touch. Please permit me to work the Los Angeles end of this. I have thoughts already.”

Vasquez-Cruz bowed. ¿Qué, mi capitán?

Dudley lit a cigarette. It smothered the death stink.

“A Chink restauranteur was murdered in Los Angeles last night. He was a tong affiliate, and I’m sure he knew Lin Chung. They were both Jap-haters and committed rightists. This war of ours is breeding some rare birds.”

Vasquez-Cruz said, “Yes. You and I among them.”

Dudley bowed. Sí, mi hermano.

“Do you have access to a capable crime lab? I would like all of this assessed.”

Vasquez-Cruz shook his head. Dudley said, “I know a man in L.A. It may amuse you to know that he’s Japanese.”

11 (Los Angeles, 8:30 P.M., 1/1/42)

Captain Parker was late. Joan nursed a highball and killed time. She felt bushwacked and adrenalized.

She wore a clean uniform. Last night’s blues were a mess. She’d go back to civvies tomorrow. Navy commission, adieu. She’d unpack her lab smock and white shoes.

Pinch me.

The party in Dago. The smash-up and dead men. “Cholos” and “wetbacks” in cop parlance. The City Hall party. All those politicos and policemen.

She meets ex-Chief “Two-Gun” Davis. She meets the L.A. mayor and the current chief, “Call-Me-Jack” Horrall. Count Basie says, “Hi there, Red.”

Now she’s here. Mike Lyman’s Grill, 8th and Hill streets. A long oak bar and red leather booths.

Parker chose the spot. The PD had its own private room. Parker laid out the gist.

You had couches, chairs, and a Murphy bed. A police Teletype and phone line were laid in. Mike Lyman supplied free cold cuts and liquor. Married cops “poked” their girlfriends there. “Famous madam” Brenda Allen supplied high-class prostitutes.

Pinch me.

Joan lit a cigarette. Her booth faced the bar and the front door. Lyman’s was packed. War chat bubbled.

Jap atrocities. FDR’s draft quota. I heard Hitler’s really Jewish. The Jews started this boondoggle, if you ask me.

Joan sipped scotch and bitters. The Navy bash faded out, the cop bash faded in.

She almost met Hideo Ashida. He went out on a dead-body call as she arrived. She talked to a cop named Lee Blanchard. His girlfriend Kay something hovered. Blanchard ran down the Captain Parker gestalt.

He was “Whiskey Bill” and “The Man Who Would Be Chief.” He was a hotshot lawyer, juicehound, and devout Catholic. He was impervious, tough, and commanding. He was somewhat slovenly.

He’s married. He hides out from his wife and sleeps in his prowl car. The capper: “You’re too tall for him, Red.”

Men always called her “Red.” They thought it was hep. Said men were dinks and buffoons.

I ain’t jiving you, cousin. Hitler’s a lox jockey from way back. My wife’s cousin’s a full-blood Kraut. He knows whereof he speaks.

Parker walked in. He wore a fresh uniform. He’d trimmed his hair. He primped and slid into the booth.

He wore piss-poor lime cologne. He sucked a hide-the-hooch lozenge.

He tossed his cigarettes on the table. A waiter materialized. Parker pointed to Joan’s glass and held up two fingers.

Joan slid the ashtray over. “Am I officially employed by the Los Angeles Police Department?”

Parker lit a cigarette. “Forty-two hundred dollars a year. You’ll work Central Station, under Ray Pinker and beside Hideo Ashida. Learn what you can, while you can. Pinker’s looking at an indictment in this Fed-probe megillah, and Ashida will probably be interned next month. You’ll be logging property, as well as processing evidence.”

Joan snapped her fingers. “Just like that?”

Parker snapped his fingers. “I called in a favor. We don’t have to discuss it. You’re in means you’re in.”

“Yes, but you’ve got me at a disadvantage. You’ve placed me in your debt, and you know a great deal about me, while I know virtually nothing about you.”

Their drinks arrived. Joan let hers sit. Parker bolted his.

“You’re being disingenuous, Lieutenant. You read men like you read chemical tables. You met Lee Blanchard and Jim Davis at the party and solicited information. You gauged their bias and arrived at conclusions. You’re as up to speed on me as I am on you. I’ll concede my crush on the lithe Northwestern coed, if you won’t labor the point.”

“I’ll concede the scope of my debt, then, and refrain from judging your motives.”

Parker said, “Let’s go see Nort Layman and Dr. Ashida. They’re working late at the morgue.”

Dr. Nort lived at the morgue. Dr. Nort lived for his work.

Corpse gurneys flanked clothes racks. Formaldehyde bottles lined bookshelves. A cot and booze cabinet covered one wall. A charred box lolled on an autopsy table. A skeleton was jammed within.

Parker played emcee. The drift was meet your new colleague. She’s credentialed. She’s qualified. She swapped her Navy commission for a crime-lab gig.

Dr. Nort blushed. Dr. Ashida bowed Oriental. They stood by the table. The box deterred small talk.

Dr. Nort said, “These damn mud slides dislodged this box on the Griffith Park golf course. Our late friend here was stabbed, shot, and put to rest. We’re trying to determine the source of the fire and when it occurred.”

Joan studied a dirt clod jammed under the rib cage. She saw desiccated roots and granular ash.

“The box has been suspended in dirt for a very long time. I would posit that the killer or killers dumped the man in the box with that dirt mound stuck to his upper posterior, while he was still clothed. Those rags rotted off the cadaver, and the passage of time was accelerated by the application of the quicklime that remains visible on those cloth fragments. I think the box has been covered by heavily rooted soil for close to ten years.”

Ashida said, “A fatal brush fire in ’33 most likely caused that charring.”

Joan examined the box. “Look at the flame pattern. The box was surely buried on a hillside, and the flames leapt irregularly and scorched through to dry, freshly excavated dirt, at some point in time before the seeding that produced grass on that hillside. I would conclude that the box was buried immediately before the 1933 fire that Dr. Ashida mentioned, or at the time of the fire itself.”

Dr. Nort gawked. Ashida half-grinned. Joan tickled the dead man’s chin.

“Run molecular-compound tests on the charred wood, and check the grain markings against the photographic records kept at local lumberyards. You might be able to match the grain to a presold lot.”

Parker weaved a tad. Joan caught his booze breath. She reached in his pants pocket and tossed him a lozenge. Ashida slack-jawed the move.

12 (Los Angeles, 6:00 A.M., 1/2/42)

Man Camera. Attach your reverse lens. Become the object you observe. Deploy this Hans Maslick technique.

Maslick the Mystic. At one with nature and the material world. Organic specimens and objects live. You must assume their perspective.

Ashida rigged a microscope and dialed it in tight. He examined old dirt particles. He saw Miss Conville’s stripped roots.

He one-upped Miss Conville then. He added ionized water and bonded the particles. He dialed down and caught petrified ash. It theoretically confirmed the nine-year-old-fire assessment.

Maslick propounded time-travel theories. Place yourself in immediate context. You were there and you saw it. You observed and/or committed the crime.

He was alone. He beat the day-shift chemists in. He savored early-morning work. Juxtaposition. Bright lab lights and a black sky outside.

He time-traveled. He buckled into his time machine. It’s 10/3/33 now. It’s that very hot day.

He was at Belmont High. He was watching Bucky Bleichert toss a football. He indulged daydreams. Bucky needs a postpractice shower. You can kibitz and throw him a towel.

He watched Bucky dry off. A radio blared: BIG GRIFFITH PARK BLAZE!!! They got in Bucky’s car and drove over. Fire trucks stopped them short at Riverside Drive.

Ashida shut his eyes. It shuttered his Man Camera. He placed himself in Griffith Park. It’s still that very hot day.

Mineral Canyon. Dry dirt and scrub. It’s undeveloped. There’s no par-3 golf course yet.

The dead man. The killer or killers. The pine box, stashed. A hillside hole, at least partially dug.

Spontaneous blaze or covert arson. One gunshot. One stab wound. A hasty burial as the flames spread.

Thirty-four dead. The killer or killers might have survived. The killer or killers might have perished.

Ashida opened his eyes. His time machine lurched. His recollection lurched in sync.

He read Maslick in high school. He invented his own Man Camera. It was a trip-wire photo device. He shamefully deployed it. He snapped pictures of Bucky in the Belmont High locker room.

He updated the device. He deployed it at a robbery scene late last year. The forensic application backfired.

Dudley coveted the device. Dudley broke into his apartment and covertly studied it. He found the picture stash. Dudley ran the Watanabe job. Dudley blackmailed him and co-opted him to the Werewolf frame.

Ashida rubbed his eyes and cracked a window. Cold air rushed in. He felt wind-deflected rain.

Thad Brown put two detectives on the boxed-dead-man job. It was perfunctory. Here’s a postscript: Elmer Jackson’s brother died in that fire.

A radio blared down the hallway. Sid Hudgens blared his a.m. Herald piece.

Chinatown torture snuff. Jap-hater Eddie Leng. Fifth Column Japs on Chinatown rampage?

Ashida shut the door and muzzled the Sidster. Miss Conville was due. She seemed competent. Dr. Nort and Captain Parker were dazzled. Parker quashed Manslaughter Two and got Miss Conville a job. She knew she killed four Mexicans. Parker quashed her knowledge of the dead kids in the trunk. Lustful men and corrupt women. It was ghastly business.

The phone rang. The noise startled him. Ashida snatched the call.

“Crime lab. Dr. Ashida speaking.”

Dudley said, “Good morning, lad. It has been entirely too long.”

13 (Los Angeles, 8:45 A.M., 1/2/42)

Today’s B-Squad roust sheet. It’s all J-town and nearby. There’s three likely Tojoites.

The squad pen was drafty. The day-watch guys honked their snouts and skimmed their roust summaries. Elmer unwrapped a cigar and crib-noted his sheet.

Yanigahara, Willy J. Age 47/tavern employee. Rat-off by: Agent Ed Satterlee. Noted Chink-hater. Spotted at bund rallies. Has white girlfriend.

Yamazaki, Robert/AKA “Bad Bobby.” Age 34/railroad employee. On Federal rat list. Deutsches Haus habitué. Has Negro girlfriend. Frequents jazz clubs and tokes maryjane.

Matsura, Donald L. Age 41/metallurgist/gold broker/imports samurai swords. Rat-off by: Agent Ed Satterlee. Has Jap Navy KAs. Wears zoot suits. Has Mexican girlfriend.

Per above suspects:

No wants/no warrants/no parole holds. Inventory domiciles and transport to Lincoln Heights Jail. Today’s B-Squad pair off: Kapek, Jackson, Rice.

Elmer lit his cigar. He got unlucky today. Kapek and Rice gored his gourd. Lee Blanchard got A-Squad/Lunceford and Moss. He notched the relative luck.

The boss took the lectern. Noted nosebleed Lew Collier. The squad humps straddled chairs and snapped to.

Collier said, “Go easy on your confiscations. The lab’s overloaded. Inventory the flops and tape-seal them. This squadroom is not a pawnshop. Don’t bring stuff in, thinking you can hock it later on.”

Lunceford said, “No tickee, no washee.”

Kapek said, “That’s what you call a mixed metaphor. The Chinks say that, not the Japs.”

Blanchard pulled his cheeks taut. He did the squint-eyed Chinaman — always good for laughs.

Ha-has rose and subsided. Elmer said, “What about plain old stealing, boss? You might direct your answer to Kapek and Rice.”

Kapek sput-sputtered. Spit bubbles popped.

Rice said, “Jackson’s a Bolshevik.”

Lunceford said, “He’s a Jap-lover, you mean.”

Blanchard said, “How come we’re not rousting the dagos and the Krauts?”

Moss said, “They’re in this here war, the last time I heard.”

Collier rolled his eyes and held up the Herald. “You all know this, right? Eddie Leng bought it New Year’s Eve. Safe to say you also know the Japs hate the Chinks. The Chief wants you guys to keep your ears down in J-town.”

Blanchard said, “Who’s working it for the Bureau?”

Collier said, “Nobody. The Chief’s kicked it over to Ace Kwan. Let the Chinks police the Chinks, he always says.”

Elmer said, “Eddie Leng was Four Families, and Ace runs Hop Sing. You see a certain hypocrisy there?”

Rice said, “Jackson’s a Bolshevik.”

They walked to J-town. Unjailed Japs voodoo-eyed them. Oooga-booga. It’s B-Squad, on the hoof.

They wore civvies and carried pump shotguns. Rock-salt rounds replaced buckshot. Rock salt knocked you down and pocked your ass bloody. It stopped short of instant death.

Kapek and Rice dwarfed Elmer. They hoofed three abreast and dwarfed all known Japs. Yanigahara lived on East 2nd. Yamazaki lived on East 1st. Kapek hit a call-box phone and summoned a whore wagon. The wagon met them outside the Yamazaki crib.

Bad Bobby went peaceful. Elmer wrote the inventory and gave him a cigar. There was no evil swag extant. Bad Bobby owned boocoo jazz records and zoot suits. Plus pulp westerns and a Packard-Bell radio. Nix on hate tracts and guns.

They tape-sealed the door and dumped Bobby in the wagon. They hit East 2nd Street. Willy J. Yanigahara went peaceful.

Elmer wrote the inventory and gave him a cigar. There was no evil swag extant. Racy swag, though.

Kapek found a stack of girlie mags. Rice bootjacked them. Elmer found a locket stuffed with blond pubic hair. A note was jammed in. It read “To Willy, love always, Lorene.”

Elmer bootjacked it. They tape-sealed the door and dumped Willy in the wagon. The wagon trailed them south on San Pedro.

Donald Matsura lived at 219 3rd. His pad was upstairs rear. There was no elevator. B-Squad hoofed it up and back.

Rice banged the door. Music snapped off inside. A skinny Jap opened up.

He was TB-ward thin. He had gassed hair topped by a jigaboo hairnet. He had pinned-out, darty eyes.

Oooga-booga. He put out dat fear stink.

Elmer said, “Son, don’t you rabbit.”

Matsura squealed words, Jap-talk falsetto.

Rice and Kapek grabbed him. They smashed him against the door and cuffed his hands behind his back.

Matsura squealed squeal words. They verged on crazy-man squeaks. Rice grabbed his hair and smashed his face into the doorjamb. Matsura screeched falsetto. Elmer ran through the crib and eyeball-tossed it.

He saw ratty furniture and a fly-swarmed kitchen.

He saw a console radio and smelled burned-out tubes.

He dumped a hamper full of sock-padded jockstraps.

He dumped a nightstand full of gold swastika paperweights and Goldlover magazines.

He saw a terpin hydrate still. It was hooked up to a four-burner hot plate. It featured feeder vats and four yeast spouts.

He saw a take-out menu for Eddie Leng’s Kowloon.

He opened a closet. He saw samurai swords up the wazoo.

He ran back to the front room. Rice and Kapek had Matsura pinned to that wall.

They wheeled and saw Elmer. They stopped rabbit-punching Matsura. They dropped their mitts and went Well?

Matsura squirmed loose and ran out the doorway. Kapek gave him a ten-yard lead and raised his shotgun.

He let three rounds fly. Rock salt shredded the shirt off Matsura’s back and scalped off most of his hair.

14 (Ensenada, 8:00 A.M., 1/3/42)

Dudley said, “I’ve issued a blanket arrest order. All Japs registered in the ’40 census. Noncoms and State Police have been dispatched.”

Coffee klatch. Strict dress code. Olive drabs for SIS. Statie fasco black.

They perched in Ralph Melnick’s office. The boss served coffee and sweet rolls. His ODs were crumb-flecked.

“Captain Smith lets no moss grow under his feet. Isn’t that right, José?”

Vasquez-Cruz winked. Dudley winked back. They sat in Chinese lacquered chairs. Melnick worked the Asia desk back in the Ming dynasty.

“No, Major. He does not. Captain Smith is not here to coddle Fifth Columnists or view the notorious donkey show at the Blue Fox.”

Melnick slapped his knees. Almond flecks flew. Desk knickknacks rattled.

Dudley said, “I’ve reserved cells and interrogation rooms at the Statie barracks. The coastal site has been sealed and is now under guard. My police chemist will be driving down later today. He’ll forensic the sailors and the submarine itself.”

Melnick said, “¿Qué pasa, amigo? What did you make of it all?”

“I think Mexican leftists killed the sailors, sir. I’ll investigate with that in mind.”

Vasquez-Cruz smirked. He knew the truth. Or thought he did.

Melnick slurped coffee. “We’ve got sixteen dead saboteurs. You could say we got lucky, and let it go at that.”

“They were Fifth Column, sir. That’s undeniable. I’ll be grilling our in-custody Japs, with an eye toward turning leads along those lines.”

Melnick checked his watch and went Shit-I’m-late. He saluted and booked out the door.

Vasquez-Cruz smirked anew. Smug little shit. His mother cavorts with El Burro. He was born at the Blue Fox.

“ ‘Mexican leftists,’ hardly. You told me something quite different.”

Dudley lit a cigarette. “Let’s discuss money first.”

“We should begin with Carlos Madrano. You blew up his car, and a great many burned U.S. dollars were found amid the wreckage. Madrano had just left the Colonet Inlet, where the first sub had berthed. Now we have a second beached submarine. I’m thinking there may be additional monies hidden onboard.”

Dudley said, “I searched the Colonet sub and found ten thousand dollars U.S. My friend Hideo Ashida did the bulk of the work. We gave the money to Madrano, in exchange for our safety. I think we will find a similar amount in this newly beached craft. We will split the money, of course.”

Vasquez-Cruz pulled his chair up. “There is more to tell me, I’m sure.”

Dudley pulled his chair up. Their knees bumped. Burro Junior winced.

“There’s a fugitive at large in Los Angeles. His name is Tommy Glennon, and I know him rather well. I think Tommy killed a Chinese restauranteur, Eddie Leng, that I told you about. He disappeared the night Leng was killed, and they were both known to be jungled up in the Four Families tong. I also consider it likely that Tommy knows Lin Chung, a dubious physician who is surely privy to both sub berthings and sabotage plots. Tommy ran wets for Carlos Madrano and was dunning me for information about the man, when I last saw him. I think Tommy is part of all this, but he had to have had considerable help here in Baja.”

Vasquez-Cruz oozed delight. He fluffed his cravat and tee-heed.

“Such strategic insight. You are Robespierre, reborn.”

Dudley laughed. “Our mandate is to foil sabotage and make money.”

Vasquez-Cruz stuck his hand out. Dudley bone-crushed it. Vasquez-Cruz went Caramba — such strength.

Claire was out. Dudley patched switchboard calls straight from the suite.

He got Mike Breuning. They bypassed amenities. Mike reported this:

Drift per Tommy Glennon. Tommy owed Eddie Leng money. Eddie was crowding him. Jack Horrall palmed the Leng snuff off on Uncle Ace. Jack hated Chink snuffs. Their heathen customs fucked things up. Chinks should arbitrate Chinks.

The Alien Squad popped a Jap named Donald Matsura. He was a terp man and renaissance lowlife. He showed up in dead Eddie’s KA file. Matsura knew Tommy and Chink sawbones Lin Chung.

The phone rang. Dudley jiggled the receiver. The switchboard patched out Mike B. and patched in Uncle Ace.

Ace gibbered. English and Chinese overlapped. He talked himself dry. He pooped out and coughed himself hoarse.

Dudley said, “Good morning, my brother.”

“My Irish brother. I have missed you.”

“Eddie Leng, my brother. Jack Horrall has appointed you judge and jury.”

Ace said, “No leads, Dudster. I make piss-poor Charlie Chan. That why white man play him in movies.”

Dudley laughed. “There’s a Jap named Donald Matsura at Lincoln Heights. Lean on him, and confirm or eliminate him. I think Tommy Glennon killed Eddie, but I could be wrong. Put this matter to rest, my brother. We should seek to avoid a tong war as we pave our way to the money.”

Phone static hit. Ace talked over it: “Fuck”/“shit”/“money, how?”

The line cleared. Dudley said, “We run wetbacks. We smuggle heroin in Army vehicles transporting Baja Japs to U.S. internment camps. There’s a sell-Japs-as-slaves scheme I’m pondering.”

More line hiss. More garbled Ace: “Fuck”/“shit”/“cocksucker.” The line cleared. Ace said, “Jap beast must die.” It was his boffo signature close.

15 (Los Angeles, 9:00 A.M., 1/3/42)

The lab smock clashed with her hair. Her sensible shoes lacked panache. Navy blue and gold, farewell.

She waltzed on the war. She served notice at the Fed Building and cabbed to Central Station. She lugged her gear by the muster room. Short cops ogled her.

Anchors aweigh.

Joan schlepped two suitcases. They contained her microscope and textbooks. She trudged the stairs. The lab was unlocked and unoccupied.

She surveyed it. She smelled luminol and gun oil. The ballistics chute leaked asbestos.

PD chemists worked sardine tight. Her desk adjoined Dr. Ashida’s. They shared bookshelves and burner plates. Joan unpacked and stashed her suitcases in a closet.

Dr. Ashida kept his desk tidy. The charred box was propped up against it. Dirt-packed jars sat three across.

They were evidence-tagged. Mineral Canyon/Griffith Park/1-1-42.

The case intrigued her. It merged human passion with elemental forces. The rain, the mud slide, a precipitant fire. Possible-probable arson. Her specific métier.

She went by the L.A. Times yesterday. She flashed her police ID and wheedled a set of page scrapbooks. They detailed the Griffith Park blaze. Santa Ana winds and scorcher heat. A firebug arrested and released. A Communist cell scrutinized. No arrests. No firm forensic determination.

She should reread and annotate the scrapbooks. She should discuss the case with Dr. Ashida. Catastrophic fire was her métier. Dr. Ashida was prissy and domineering. She should establish crime-lab parity.

Joan unscrewed a dirt jar. She sniffed the dirt and placed a small clod in a beaker. She filled a stopper with liquid ammonia and squeezed in eight drops. She added sink water and placed the beaker on a hot plate.

She brought up a flash boil. The heat induced blue coloration. She checked her organic chemistry text and found a color chart. She got a perfect match.

She studied the charred box. She memorized the wood grain and consulted her woodlot text. There’s one more perf—

Hideo Ashida walked in.

He glared. He stomped one foot. Joan preempted him.

“This batch of wood derives from late summer ’33. It was cut by the Anawalt Lumber Company. My book lists Anawalt’s key 1933 customer as Los Angeles City Parks and Recreation. The dirt I tested contains traces of a four-to-one solution of oil-diluted kerosene, which has been known to be employed as a secondary accelerant to spread already-lit fires. I talked to Dr. Layman and did some newspaper research. Accordingly, I would surmise that the killer had knowledge of an impending arson in Griffith Park, or started the overall fire himself. The box was unearthed in a canyon that was then nearly invisible from the warren of canyons at the apex of the blaze. I would surmise that the killer knew his victim would be in that nearly invisible canyon or lured him there, then killed him, boxed him, covered him in deep, soft earth, and then set the secondary fire.”

Ashida slack-jawed it. Mr. Brain was struck dumb. Bill Parker lounged right behind him. Joan smelled his dumb lime cologne.

16 (Tijuana, 2:00 P.M., 1/3/42)

He knew the look. It said YOU’RE A JAP. It vexed him in L.A. This border variant scared him.

Mexican cops. With their hate glares. With their soiled uniforms and hand-tooled gun belts. Swastikas and coiled snakes carved in.

Dudley wrangled him an Army pass. A slew of border guards perused it. They hemmed and hawed. Cars piled up behind him.

Horns blared. A man yelled, “Goddamn Jap!” Time stuttered and stalled flat.

A guard returned his pass. A guard pointed south. A guard grabbed his crotch. A guard spit on his windshield.

Ashida floored the gas. He detoured through T.J. and hit the coast road. He counted days backward. He stopped Christmas Day.

It was his first Baja visit. He joined Dudley, Mike B., and Dick C. He survived the botched dope raid. He survived the Statie jail and mucho torture. He caught the first beached-sub incursion. He questioned captured sailors and beat them with sap gloves. A fat sailor called him a swish.

He searched the sub. Dudley assisted. They found a cash stash and bought their freedom. They hog-tied the sailors and dumped them in the sub. He started the engines and got the sub out to sea.

It was explosive-rigged. Twenty-four men fired shotguns and tore out the hull. The sub detonated. The sailors burned alive.

They drove back to L.A. then. He sat in the backseat. Dudley sat beside him. Their legs brushed. He fluttered, all over.

Ashida drove south. Rain clouds gathered off the coast. He brought an evidence kit. He left notes for Elmer Jackson and Lee Blanchard.

He called off their bodyguard schifts. He fed Elmer a P.S. It laid out Joan Conville’s charred-box diagnosis. “I know about your brother. This new wrinkle’s a non sequitur. It shouldn’t bother you.”

Ashida drove south. He played the radio and caught a news broadcast. “Recent Jap aggressions” blared. He turned the radio off.

Ensenada came and went. Low clouds seeped rain. He saw Statie goons perched on a beach bluff.

He pulled over. The goons came on servile. They pointed him down a steep roadway. He skidded on hard dirt and sand.

The beachfront was right there. He brodied in tight. He hit his headlights and framed the scene.

Low tide. A beached sub. Dead sailors stacked on wood pallets. A cove entry right behind them.

Rain tarps at the ready. Two generators. Dry ice, dumped in wire-mesh buckets. It foils decomposition. We’ve got fans rigged. They’ll blow cold air on the stiffs.

And there’s Dudley. He’s dashing in his olive drabs. He’s with a Statie captain. Note the jodhpurs and peaked Nazi hat.

Ashida walked over. El Fascisto clicked his heels.

Dudley embraced him. Dudley said, “Hello, my dear friend.”

He surveyed the scene and went in close. Statie goons held spotlights. The tarps deflected light rain.

High tides eradicated drag marks. Storm tides hit the cove and wrecked his trace-element search. A Statie van backed down to the tide line. The tailgate gave him a flat place to work.

Ashida examined the bodies. He saw the facial powder burns that Dudley saw first. He studied a rock outcropping. He found three dead flashbulbs. He restudied the dead men and examined their tunics and exposed upper chests.

The goons held their spotlights tight-close. Ashida saw silencer threads and noted varied formations. He tweezer-plucked three representative batches and placed them on slides. He carried them to the tailgate and dialed his microscope tight-tight.

Dudley hovered. Ashida studied the threads. He saw three individuated formations. He looked at Dudley. He smiled and bowed.

“There were three gunmen. They stood at that near outcropping and hit the sailors with flashbulb glare. They ran up and shot them while they were blinded, and they used silencer-fitted guns.”

Dudley smiled and bowed. Ashida walked back to the pallets. The goons snapped to. He pointed to the sailors’ heads. He said, “Se siente todos.”

The goons flashed their spotlights. Ashida went in with a surgeon’s ax and knife.

He cracked skulls. Eyeball sockets collapsed. He scooped brain tissue and dropped it in the sand. He dug out forty-eight spent bullets, todos.

The goons looked ill. They murmured prayers. Ashida was blood-spattered, blood-smeared, blood-flecked.

He walked back to the van. Dudley and Vasquez-Cruz hovered. Ashida sprayed his hands with 100-proof alcohol. He dipped the spents in gasoline and blotter-dried them.

He clamped sixteen spents to microscope slides. He dialed the scope close and passed the slides under his lens. He studied fragmentary striations.

Dudley and Vasquez-Cruz hovered. They chain-smoked and eyed the process. Ashida ran through said process three times.

“The lands and grooves are obliterated, but I can state that the bullets themselves are surely of U.S. manufacture. Based on what I can see of circumference, my best guess would be Smith & Wesson Police .38s.”

Dudley said, “Ambush. Three capable men, identically armed.”

Vasquez-Cruz went tee-hee. He spoke baritone and tittered soprano.

Dudley winked at Ashida. “The submarine, lad. We’re looking for money, of course.”

Ashida worked straight through. He felt energized. Dudley worked beside him. Vasquez-Cruz supplied tools. They replicated their first inch-by-inch search.

They unscrewed bolts and looked behind panels. They unwired instrument clusters. They disassembled the periscope mount. They scuffed their knuckles and gouged their arms. They pulled up loose floor plates and found MONEY.

It was duffel-bagged the first time. It was attaché-cased tonight. Vasquez-Cruz tee-heed and cut through the locks. The yield: twenty grand, U.S.

Dudley grabbed half. El Fascisto grabbed half. A fat goon grabbed the attaché.

On to photographs. Let’s capture the dead and shoot for long-shot IDs.

El Fascisto tipped his goons. He was one high-stepping jefe. He dispensed C-notes. The goons genuflected. They went Sieg Heil and called Vasquez-Cruz “Führer.” Dudley dog-bayed and laughed himself hoarse.

It was full dark now. The goons erected arc lights. Ashida loaded his lab camera and close-up shot the stiffs.

He went through sixteen flashbulbs. He dumped bulbs and duplicated the pix. He shot two full sets. One for the Staties, one for SIS.

On to fingerprints. That was a long shot. The sailors were surely native-born Japanese. Their prints were filed in Tokyo and nowhere else.

Ashida hustled up the goons. They were half-tanked on mescal. They weeeaved through more arc-light work.

Ashida numbered sixteen print cards and inked thirty-two hands. Rigor mortis worked against him. The goons supplied weavy light. He placed the cards on a wood plank and maneuvered stiff fingertips.

Some were too stiff. He knife-severed those fingers and rolled them free and clear.

Dudley’s staff car stood cliffside. Ashida washed his hands and walked up. Dudley and Vasquez-Cruz worked in the backseat.

They dug through file carbons. Resident-alien files. Baja-resident Japanese/pickup orders issued. They trawled for Japanese Navy KAs.

Ashida sat up front. Dudley passed him a file stack. Ashida trawled for KAs. He trawled twelve files and tapped out. He hit on file #13.

The file tapped one Kyoho Hanamaka. He was an “Imperial Navy attaché.”

Ashida said, “I’ve got a man named Hanamaka here. He’s tagged as a naval attaché, but he’s got very few KAs, and none in the Navy.”

Vasquez-Cruz said, “He’s one slippery eel. He’s quite the friend of Juan Lazaro-Schmidt, the Baja governor.”

Supper at the Hotel del Norte. The beach-view dining room served late. Picture windows and wave crash. Your host, Dudley Smith.

In civvies now. Blue blazer, gray slacks. Claire De Haven sat to his left. She satirized this arrangement and tossed barbs at El Fascisto. Vasquez-Cruz indulged her and laughed.

He wore his black uniform. He came off sinister. Ashida cleaned up and changed in his room. He showered off brain matter. He scrubbed off fingerprint ink.

Pacific lobster and champagne. Convivial Dudley. No man should be so handsome. Ashida tried not to stare.

Talk flowed. Ashida sipped club soda and ignored his food. He counted days back to Pearl Harbor. He hit the Bill Parker/Kay Lake pogrom.

His role was Kay’s lover. He failed at it. Claire threw a party. Leftist Los Angeles bickered and preened. Kay caused a scene. She deployed her Jap paramour and overplayed the pose. Claire saw through Kay. Claire teethed on her nonetheless.

Dudley dropped a bon mot. Vasquez-Cruz laughed. No El Fascisto titter. He laughed deep baritone.

He played to Claire. He moved his chair close and leaned in.

“You must not judge neutral Mexico too harshly, Miss De Haven. This dinner conclave proves my point. We have a Latin man and a Japanese man. We have an Irish-Catholic immigrant and a landed Protestant lady.”

Claire lit a cigarette. “I converted to the Roman Church, Captain. I’m an apostate in my faith as well as my politics. You’ll have to cite pithier examples if you wish to make time with me.”

Vasquez-Cruz went Salud. “Perhaps I should cite Mr. Leon Trotsky. He fled Stalin’s death squads and found asylum nowhere but here. President Cárdenas provided him with a home when no one else would.”

“Only as a means to counter accusations that he was a Stalinist, Captain. And, of course, Trotsky was assassinated in your selfsame country, under that selfsame capitalista poseur.”

Vasquez-Cruz smiled. “Spanish and French in one sentence. Aaay, caramba.”

Claire blushed. Ashida caught her dope-pinned eyes. Dudley winked at him. It conveyed subtext. If El Fascisto gets too frisky, I’ll kill him.

Ashida laughed. It verged on a squeal. He covered his mouth and muzzled himself.

Claire said, “Is something amusing, Dr. Ashida? Something you forgot to tell me when you were a much-welcome but finally intrusive guest in my home last month?”

Ashida said, “I’m quite tired, Miss De Haven. I’ve spent a busy day in Captain Smith’s employ.”

Claire glanced away. She looked out the window and stood up. Ashida clocked the window. He saw a raggedy girl on the beach. The girl picked up a starfish and cradled it to herself.

Vasquez-Cruz stood for Claire. Call him Señor Decorum. She touched his hand — un momento.

She walked out. El Fascisto watched her go. He clicked his heels and bowed to Dudley. He pivoted and walked off.

Ashida said, “He’s going to check on Claire. He must have police friends in Los Angeles.”

Dudley said, “You’re a very bright penny tonight.”

Ashida blushed. He looked out the window. Claire engaged the raggedy girl. They fussed over the starfish and had quite a chat.

Dudley rocked his chair back. “My Claire has an enormous and impetuous heart.”

Ashida went dizzy. The dining room tilted. Spots popped in front of his eyes.

“What is this? Why am I here?”

Dudley tapped his knee. “There’s my ex-snitch Tommy Glennon, and a dead Chinaman named Eddie Leng. There’s our old friend Lin Chung, and the scent of money.”

“Yes, but what’s in it for me?”

Dudley said, “I intend to rescue you and your family from the internment. Would a U.S. Army commission and a posting here suit you?”

17 (Los Angeles, 10:00 P.M., 1/3/42)

Elmer doodled. It soothed his gourd and vitalized his brain cells.

Lyman’s was jam-packed. He nursed a highball and worked at his table. He scribbled up napkins. He drew pit dogs with sharp fangs and big dicks.

He wrote, “DUDLEY SMITH EATS SHIT!!!!!” He laughed. He scoped the bar and saw Thad Brown and Two-Gun Davis. The highball kicked in. He quit futzing around and got to it.

He wrote, “D.S. & T.G.” He underlined it and added question marks. He wrote, “T.G. to E.L. (murder vict)” and underlined it.

He wrote, “Donald Matsura & E.L. — ???” He wrote, “Can’t talk to Breuning & Carlisle — D.S.’s goons.” He wrote, “Kapek & Rice — too corrupt.”

He circled. He underlined. He drew arrows and Xs and stitched all this shit up. He got bored and periscoped Lyman’s.

He saw Kay in a back booth. He saw Bill Parker’s redhead at the bar. She wore civilian vines now. Jim Davis crowded her. He blathered and sprayed pretzel gack.

Elmer wrote, “E.J. & J.C.” and drew a heart around it. He added Cupid’s arrow and got back to work.

He wrote, “T.G.’s address book—???” He wrote, “Hot-box phone calls—???” He wrote, “Calls to 14 Baja pay phones—???”

He drew an SQ circled by snakes. He drew more question marks. He drew Eddie Leng’s death rictus and french-fried feet.

Kay hopped in his booth. There she is, her all-time self.

Elmer scooped up his doodles. Kay laid down her Manhattan. Elmer plucked out the cherry and ate it.

“Tell me something I don’t know. And make it interesting, because it’s Saturday night, and the world’s got me batshit.”

Kay laughed. “Thad told me about the DB call New Year’s morning. I thought, Uh-oh, Elmer’s brother died close by there. That’s the chickens come home to roost.”

Elmer spit the cherry pit in an ashtray. Elmer jiggled Kay’s hands.

“I got no dish on this one. It’s ’42 now, and Wayne Frank cashed out back in ’33. I don’t see no hook between him and this here DB. And if I did, I wouldn’t know what to do, because I’m really just a whore-peddler, a bagman, and a strongarm thug. I might be the world’s luckiest white man, but I sure as shit am not much of a detective.”

Kay lit a cigarette. “There’s a look you get. Your jaw sets a certain way, and your eyes go flat. It’s like you’re saying, ‘The comedy hour’s over.’ ”

Elmer snatched her drink. He plucked an orange rind and waved the swizzle stick.

“The Dudster sent me out to kill a man, but I couldn’t do it. I been reading some C-town files, and it looks to me like that selfsame geek killed himself a tonged-up Chinaman.”

Kay looked him over. She had well-known X-ray eyes. Elmer squirmed and relit his cigar.

Bar chat escalated. Elmer caught threads. Jim Davis called FDR “Double-Cross Rosenfeld.” Joan Conville took offense.

Kay caught the kerfuffle. She X-ray-eyed Joan. Elmer said, “There’s your gossip.”

“If you mean vehicular manslaughter, I’ve already heard it. Lee told me. He said it’s worse than the dead Mexicans, but he wouldn’t say why.”

Elmer shrugged. “You know everything that I know. If there’s more to it, you could ask Bill Parker.”

Kay jiggled his hands. Elmer laced up their fingers.

“Kick Lee out. You don’t sleep with him, anyway. Tell Parker to leave his wife and marry you. If he nixes it, I’ll marry you. I’ll get a cop job in Bumfuck, Indiana. We’ll live fat and sassy on a farm someplace.”

Kay laughed and unlaced their fingers. She scanned the bar and X-ray-eyed Big Joan.

He got itchy. He stayed batshit. He fought the Saturday Night Blues.

Elmer drove to his place and fed his tropical fish. Said fish ignored him. Itchy feet pushed him back out. L.A. was blackout black. He drove straight to Brenda’s place.

He almost walked in. Oooh-baby grunts stopped him dead at the door. He peeped the front window. Shit — Brenda’s shtupping Jack Horrall on the floor.

Elmer drove to Ellen’s place. He parked outside her building and reconnoitered. He elevatored up to her floor. He climbed out on a fire escape and peeped the front room. Shit — Ellen’s shtupping her husband on the couch.

More loose ends. More fucking rain. Mama, dem blues gots me baaaaaad.

Elmer drove to Chapman Park. Brenda’s fuck flop overlooked the Ambassador Hotel. Tonight, at the Coconut Grove: Glenn Miller and the Modernaires.

He parked and elevatored up. He let himself in and stormed the kitchen. He built a ham sandwich and a highball. He pondered dumb moves.

Send Kay flowers. Send Big Joan flowers. Take her to the Coconut Grove. Mess with Bill Parker.

Elmer guzzled his highball. He unlocked the wall peek and checked the camera gear. He skimmed the play-for-pay girl book.

Charlotte, French expert. Dirty Diane, striptease. Call the switchboard. You’re the boss. You get the woof-woof for free.

Or—

Hit the Lincoln Heights Jail. Brace Crazy Don Matsura. Remember? He had that menu for Eddie Leng’s Kowloon.

The rain got worse. He snail-trailed up the Parkway to 19th Avenue. The jail stood upside the off-ramp. He hooked right and sluiced up to a PD space. He got out and ran in.

The entrance hall was bare bones/all gray cement. Elmer brushed off his raincoat and shook himself dry. A night cop lounged by the gate racks. He wore that I-hate-this-job look. He beady-eyed a cheesecake book.

Elmer walked up and badged him. The night cop said, “So?”

Elmer said, “I’m with the Alien Squad. You’ve got a frisky Jap named Donald Matsura here. I know, because I brought him in.”

The night cop said, “He ain’t so frisky now. Banzai, if you know what I mean.”

“Why don’t you explain what you mean?”

“I mean, Chief Horrall called the watch commander. He said Ace Kwan would like a few words with your boy. As in, ‘Put him in a sweatbox and then walk away.’ ”

Elmer slipped the dink twenty. “Ace and I go way back. Call-Me-Jack, likewise. If Ace is still at it, I’d like to watch the show.”

“Well...”

Elmer doubled up the bribe. The night cop went Mum’s the word and racked the front gate. Elmer took the main catwalk back. Crisscrossed catwalks extended. Japs were packed in six and eight to a cell.

He hit a bisecting hall. He saw recessed doorways. Oh, yeah — it’s sweatbox row.

Four twelve-by-twelve rooms. All the same. Look-see mirrors/floor-bolted tables/two screwed-down chairs.

Elmer cut straight left. He peeped three mirrored doors and got bupkes. He peeped room #4 and got the real shit.

There’s Demon Don. There’s Uncle Ace. It’s the well-known third degree.

Ace was a known rubber-hose man. His hose looked heavy-duty. It was friction-taped. It stood straight up. It had to be ball bearing — packed.

Matsura was chair-cuffed. Ace swung the hose. He threw tight shots — arms, rib cage, legs.

Elmer popped the door. A shit and piss stink hit him. Matsura screamed. He bucked his chair. The floor bolts shimmied. One bolt pulled loose.

Ace saw Elmer. Ace said, “Jack H. give okay.”

Elmer said, “You mean Dudley did.”

Matsura dribbled blood on the table. Ace threw a head shot. Matsura screamed. Gold bridgework flew.

Ace gibbered. Matsura dribbled blood. Elmer saw gum flaps laced in.

Ace shrieked, trilingual. He went Chink/English/Chinklish. Elmer caught this:

You Jap fucker/you tonged up/Four Families/sell terp/winos and dope fiends. You sell pharmacy hop/with Lin Chung/you know Tommy Glenn—

Ace stopped. Ace went Oops. Ace shut his fat fucking mouth.

Elmer went Oh shit.

Ace swung the hose. He threw rib shots and leg shots. Elmer heard bones break. Matsura dribbled blood. The hose cracked down the middle. Ball bearings flew—

Elmer grabbed Ace by the neck and hard-shoved him. Ace bounced off the back wall and hit the floor flat on his ass. Matsura bucked his chair and tore out all the floor bolts. The chair capsized.

Ace keened and screeched. It was some heathen curse. He got to his knees and pulled out his dick. He piss-polluted this big pool of Jap blood.

18 (Ensenada, 9:15 A.M., 1/4/42)

That cretinous redneck. That Klan-klique bumpkin. That maladroit buffoon.

The telephone exploded. Dudley dropped the receiver. It cut Mike Breuning off.

Bad news. Elmer Jackson muscled Ace Kwan and caused a big upscut. Tough tiff at the Lincoln Heights Jail.

Dudley lit a cigarette. His office spun. Squadroom noise went cacophonous. The temperature zoomed.

He wiped his face and roused the switchboard. He got more bad news. All Baja-to-L.A. circuits — full up.

He should call Jack Horrall and demand reprisals. That could boomerang. Jack was thick with Brenda Allen. That fact mandated circumspection.

Dudley rubbed his bad arm. The sling came off yesterday. An Army doc checked him out and pronounced him okay.

Minor aches persisted. They induced flutters and sweats. They derailed his concentration. His mind wandered. He teethed on the inconsequential. Little things set him off.

His wife called. She wanted to chat. He forgot his eldest daughter’s name. Claire eavesdropped on the bedroom phone. It enraged him.

Claire missed Mass this morning. It vexed him. Claire was off with her fetching, if feral, new waif. The girl vexed him no end.

Joan Klein was age fifteen. She was a New York runaway and a Zionist Jew. Her immigrant kin veered hard left. Claire found the girl très enchanting.

She bought the girl clothes. She got her a room down the hall. The girl told tall tales. Labor agitators clash with Fed thugs. Mayhem results.

He humored Claire. He said, “You’re underemployed, darling. You’re picking up strays and grasping at straws.”

Claire lashed out. She defamed the “effete” Hideo Ashida. She excoriated the harmless dilettante Kay Lake. Young Kay shivved him in Kwan’s basement. Claire fell prey to her most fleeting whims. The charge was preposterous.

José Vasquez-Cruz gored Claire. She thought she gored him. That was très Claire. She confused enmity with mild contempt. She said, “I think I’ve seen him before. Somewhere — perhaps a demonstration.”

That felt spot-on. Vasquez-Cruz was a chameleon. He tee-heed to his Army pals. He low-growled to provocative women.

Dudley flexed his bad arm. He made a fist and squeezed it tight. He tore through the pain — and laughed.

Statie HQ:

Three dank buildings inland and south. Slave labor built them. Jail, trooper barracks, administration. They were plopped down beside an arroyo. Lettuce fields stood close by.

Shackled inmates toiled there. Stoop labor. Lift that barge, tote that bale. The jail featured sweat rooms and torture dens. Scorpions nested there. They ate bugs and stung recalcitrant spics.

Admin featured file vaults and cramped office suites. Dudley called ahead. He talked to a lieutenant named Juan Pimentel. They gabbed at length. Lieutenant Juan reported this:

He braced their in-custody Japs. They possessed nada knowledge of the beached sub and dead sailors. He developed Hideo Ashida’s film. He cross-checked it against mug-shot files and resident-alien sheets. He got more nada there. He got no fingerprint matches. Sixteen dead Jap sailors? Es mucho mierda.

Juan Pimentel was muy bueno. He jumped on all the small shit.

He head-counted jail Japs. He got 44 in custody/182 still loose. He prepped admin suite 214. He stacked the custody files and made a pot of coffee.

Dudley drove over and parked outside. Prowl cars hemmed him in. Statie bossmen custom-fitted them. Note the hood-mounted flamethrowers. Note the hand-painted saints and giant rodents emitting death rays.

Dudley entered the building and found 214. Lieutenant Juan delivered. He had the homey touch.

The desk, the chair, the coffee. The ashtray and ceiling fan. The worm-in-the-jug mescal. Forty-four files laid out.

Dudley read through them. He chain-smoked. He read from this spark point:

Kyoho Hanamaka. He’s a naval attaché. Hideo skimmed his file and nailed a big inconsistency.

There were very few KAs. There were no naval KAs. It startled Hideo. Hanamaka was still on the loose. That fact troubled him.

Dudley reread the file and studied the clipped photograph. Hanamaka looked psychopathic.

Born in Kyoto, 1898. Career Navy man. Intel background. Toured Europe, ’35-’36. Toured Russia, likewise. Brilliant student at the German Naval Warfare School.

There were three male KAs listed. They were all fishermen. That was enticing. Jap Navy man, the Baja coast, beached submarines.

Three KAs. Hiroshi Takai, Hector Obregon-Hodaka, Akira Minamura. All coastal fishermen.

Dudley thumbed custody files. He checked name tabs and hit Obregon-Hodaka.

He read the file. The man was a Jap-Mex half-breed. He spoke English. His moniker was “Big Tuna.” He had a valid U.S. travel visa.

Dudley snatched the desk phone and dialed double ought. A jail noncom picked up. Dudley said, “Inmate Obregon-Hodaka. Room 214, please.”

“I know I’m headed for the shithouse, boss. What I’m angling for is a nice internment berth up near L.A. The Chino work farm, maybe. Dexter Gordon’s there. He blows tenor. You’ve got to gas on his chord changes for ‘Ol’ Man River.’ ”

Hector the hepcat. More Mex than Jap. He knew the type. They bred like rats in L.A.

“Quite the jazzman, are you?”

“You ain’t lyin’, daddy. I know L.A. niggertown like I know the coast here. All the coons on Central Avenue call me ‘El Tojo,’ ’cause of my mixed bloodline. I’m the Big Tuna here, and El Tojo in L.A.”

They sipped mescal. Dudley got a glow on. 160-proof. Satanic worms afloat in the jug. No drink for nancy boys.

“Do you possess strong political convictions, sir?”

“Well, I’m not Fifth Column, if that’s what you’re getting at. I’m a live-and-let-live, hold-for-the-downbeat sort of cat. I’m looking to get interned at some amenable spot, sit out the war and go home.”

Dudley smiled. “I wish you well in that regard, sir.”

Hector sipped mescal. His eyes buzzed. He looked halfway blitzed.

“I’ve got a colored girlfriend in L.A. She’s a waitress at the Club Alabam. They’ll let me out once Uncle Sambo wraps this war up. I’ll marry her and have some whelps with her, even though she’s got four pups with Coleman Hawkins already.”

Dudley bowed. “You have convinced me of your political solvency and your allegiance to the Allied cause, sir. Now, please describe your relationship with the Japanese naval attaché, Kyoho Hanamaka.”

Hector made the jack-off sign. “That cocksucker owes me money.”

“Sir?”

“I’d been supplying him with prime tuna for over a year — and by that I mean boatloads. He skipped town owing me mucho dinero.”

“So, your relationship with Hanamaka was entirely professional?”

Hector plucked a worm from his glass and ate it. Hector evinced great style.

“We’d bat the breeze sometimes. I knew he was pals with the governor, Juan Lazaro-Schmidt, who’s a Nazi sympathizer and a big Jew-hater. So what? World conflicts breed strange bedfellows. I could live with that, but not with him stiffing me for three big boatloads of fish.”

Dudley said, “Did the quantities that he purchased in any way arouse your suspicions?”

“Yeah, they did. After Pearl Harbor, I started thinking, What’s he want all that fish for? You follow me, boss? Fish, submarine crews, sailors with hearty appetites?”

Dudley lit a cigarette. “We are having parallel thoughts, sir.”

“Okay, so I’ll wrap it up, then. I was having these suspicious thoughts, and Hanamaka owed me money. He lives up in the Baja hills, so I drove up there to collect. It was December 18 — I remember because it’s my birthday. I drove up there, but the house had been cleaned out.”

Dudley said, “Take me there. We’ll leave now.”

Hector said, “This jungle juice has got me hopped up. I might try to escape.”

Dudley said, “I’m prone to whim, sir. I’ll either shoot you dead or bid you sayonara.”

They cut inland. They hit half-paved roads and breezed through lettuce fields and scrub hills. Bugs bombed the windshield. Dudley tapped his wipers and scraped them to pulp.

They hit low mountain ranges. Low clouds blurred the view. Hector was blitzed. He blathered out his hopes and dreams and extolled jigtown L.A.

He’d get a soft internment berth. He’d deflower Jap virgins and learn to play the bass sax. He’d teach the virgins to play skin flute. He’d rent his boat out to full-blood cholos while he was inside.

Central Avenue. Está the most. Ivy Anderson’s chicken shack. Minnie Roberts’ Casbah — the best spook gash in the West. Club Alabam, Club Zombie. Stan Kenton, mud shark. He’s got twenty-eight Congo cuties on the string.

Jam sessions. Back-to-Africa mosques. Political clubhouses. Zoot-suit pachucos, zorched on Sinarquismo. These two rogue cops and their craaaaaazy crib on East 46th. Crap games and cooked terpin hydrate. Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes.”

Maybe he’ll learn the bass clarinet. Maybe he’ll open a seafood dive — Hector’s Hacienda. Bring la familia. He’ll import that Cuban guy with the two-foot dick. El Cubano will poke your mujer while you watch and jack off.

Dudley half-heard it. He took rickety bridges across arroyos and climbed more scrub hills. Hector switched gears and jabbered: right there, it’s right there!

Dudley swung a tight left turn. Dudley braked and saw it:

A mock ski chalet. Two stories/pitched frame/big glassed-in view. Front carport and no cars extant.

Dudley pulled into the carport. Hector smiled at him. So, Ichiban? What have we got here?

Dudley winked. Dudley slipped him a border pass and a ten-dollar bill.

Hector took off. He amscrayed, vamoosed, and vanished in five seconds flat.

Dudley stepped from the car. He sniffed the air. He felt raindrops. He pulled his piece and walked up to the door.

It was locked. He stepped back and threw his weight. He slammed hard and shouldered the door in.

He looked right and saw dumped furniture. He looked left and saw a blood-spattered wall.

19 (Los Angeles, 4:30 P.M., 1/4/42)

Morgue Powwow. One forensic agenda. ID the Charred-Box Man.

Morgue personnel: Joan, Dr. Nort, Hideo Ashida.

They measured Box Man. Joan stifled a yawn. She’d indulged a late night at Lyman’s. She’d hit the sack at 5:00 a.m.

Ashida placed the bones on a gurney. Dr. Nort unrolled his tape. Joan steadied Box Man. Dr. Nort marked the height at seventy-five inches.

Joan said, “He was six-three. If we factor in erosion at the joints and the compression of the spine that comes with age, we can posit that he was as tall as six-four and a half in his youth.”

Dr. Nort poked odd bones. “He was tall, and heavyset. Note the pelvic width.”

Ashida measured the back-to-front rib cage. He got a fifty-two-inch circumference.

Joan said, “Big man.”

Dr. Nort said, “He must have gone two forty-five. His spine’s crunched. Note the socket frays. You carry that much weight, you pay a price. I’ll go out on a limb. He went DOA in his early forties.”

Joan jiggled the foot bones. “Hey there, cutie.”

Ashida flushed. He balled his fists and glared.

“We’re having a scholars’ lark here, Miss Conville. I should add that our late friend in no way constitutes a breaking case, while the lab is currently backlogged with breaking-case evidence, which demands our more immediate attention.”

Joan flushed. She balled her fists and glared back.

“We’re backlogged with Japanese-property confiscations, Dr. Ashida. I think you might feel a certain ambivalence about that aspect of our work. I deem that understandable, and I can hardly condemn you for dragging your feet and exploiting our late friend’s reappearance, so that you might abstain from facilitating your own countrymen’s misfortune.”

Oooh — hear that pin-drop silence? Now, hear it streeetch.

Joan glared at Ashida.

Ashida glared at the floor.

Dr. Nort said, “Children, enough.”

Joan lit a cigarette. Dr. Nort, ditto. Ashida looked up. Joan blew smoke in Box Man’s face. Dr. Nort laughed.

They all stretched and unclenched. They put out some small talk. Safe topics — the weather, the war, the ’42 congressionals. The PD’s Fed-probe travails.

Ashida coughed. “We can check CCC worker lists and DB lists in the newspapers. We’ve got report carbons stored somewhere, and the fire department Arson Squad must have a comprehensive file.”

Dr. Nort said, “That’s assuming our late friend was a CCC worker.”

Joan said, “We can cross-check the death lists to height listings on California drivers’ licenses and CCC registration cards. We can cross-check those names against missing-persons reports.”

Dr. Nort tapped Box Man’s skull. He’d extraction-bored the bullet hole last night.

“I dug out the spent. It’s flattened and badly decomposed.”

Ashida said, “I’ll examine it at the lab. I might determine a partial make on the lands and grooves.”

Joan said, “We could try for a match to ballistics bulletins from ’33. We could run test fires with old custody guns.”

Dr. Nort slow-cruised Joan. She knew the drill. The cruise ran head to toe. It was half-leer comprehensive.

“How did you get this job anyway?”

Joan laughed. “I was drunk New Year’s Eve. I hit a car and killed four Mexicans. Bill Parker goes for me, and I’m sure you can fill in the rest.”

Dr. Nort went oooh-la-la. Ashida balled his fists and glaaaared.

Oooh-la-la? Well, not quite.

Joan walked to Lyman’s. She was cash-flush. She’d hit an Alien Squad crap game and won forty scoots.

The game ran most Sunday nights. Wendell Rice and George Kapek draped the squadroom floor and steered the show. Bluesuits and Bureau men rolled.

Lee Blanchard and Elmer Jackson rolled hot. Joan put five on the pass line and let it ride. She cashed out right on cue. Forty clams — Man-O-Manischewitz!

The boys called her “Red.” That’s a new one. Elmer slipped her a mash note. She ruffled his hair and laid one on him. Rice and Kapek wolf-howled. Catbox Cal Lunceford roared.

Joan cut south on Hill. She counted back to New Year’s Eve and ran highlights. Her Navy life then, her PD life now. The show ran four days, door-to-door.

She liked the PD. She liked Mike Lyman’s Grill. She perched there and eavesdropped most nights. She rebuffed passes and logged scuttlebutt. She learned the personnel.

There’s Two-Gun Davis. He’s tonged up. He speaks Chinese and drills underage slash. There’s Lee Blanchard — shacked with PD siren Kay Lake.

Big Lee did not drill Kay. His abstinence stemmed from old grief. La Kay scorched for Bill Parker. Whiskey Bill scorched back. He refused to pounce. His abstinence stemmed from his dead-dog marriage and prim Catholic guilt.

Rumors. Barroom scuttlebutt. The skinny, the dish, the drift.

Lyman’s back room. The PD’s haven and redoubt. Here’s how it commenced:

A beaner exposed himself to Mike Lyman’s niece. Sensitive Mike was distraught. Sergeant Buzz Meeks shot Whipout Juan dead. Grateful Mike bestowed the back room.

She joked with Buzz at Lyman’s. They had a running shtick. “I’m too tall for you, sweetie.” “Yeah, but I know how to climb.”

Joan hit 8th Street and breezed into Lyman’s. She clocked tableside traffic and breezed to the back room.

There’s Oooh-La-La Bill. He’s Two-Fisted Bill now. He’s wolfing a highball and a club sandwich. His uniform’s a mess.

Joan said, “Don’t spoil your dinner.”

“That can’t be an invitation.”

“I’m rich tonight. You should take advantage.”

Parker tossed his sandwich and brushed off stray crumbs. The wastebasket thunked.

“You’ve got me thinking there’s a catch.”

“ ‘Catch’? Me? As catches go, you’re the master.”

“Well...”

“Come on. I owe you dinner, at least.”

Parker blushed. It was almost endearing. Joan almost swooned.

They ate at the Biltmore. It was swank meets plush de-luxe. Joan had roast sirloin. Parker had apricot duck. Their table overlooked Pershing Square.

Soapbox pundits declaimed. Partisan crowds egged them on. Fistfights ensued. White winos shrieked at colored winos and vice versa.

A bar waiter brought cognacs. Parker lit their cigarettes. Joan said, “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Parker warmed his snifter. “That I should be fighting this war.”

“I’ve heard the stories. Chief Horrall won’t let you enlist, despite your stated intention to steal his job and enact reforms that might well land him in jail, if the Fed probe fails to do so first.”

Parker smiled. “You’re a quick study.”

“I am, yes.”

“What else have you heard?”

“Tales of your feud with Dudley Smith. Intimations that then-Sergeant Smith clashed with you on the Watanabe case, and perhaps rigged a convenient solution, abetted by Dr. Hideo Ashida.”

Parker sipped cognac. “Policemen run their goddamn mouths, with no sense of consequence.”

Joan crushed her cigarette. “I clashed with Dr. Ashida today.”

“He’s uncomfortable with women. I’ve observed it with...”

“With Kay Lake? The PD’s favorite round heels and all-around provocatress?”

Parker slugged cognac. “Can it, will you? I realize that you’ve had a heady few days, but you’re being quite indiscreet.”

Joan scanned the dining room. It was dinner-rush packed. She read faces. She sensed outrage and furious intent.

“It’s America’s moment, isn’t it?”

Parker said, “Yes, it is.”

“We’re going to win, aren’t we?”

Parker said, “Yes, we are.”

“We’re going to lay out the Japs and the Nazis, and woe be to the Russians if they try to crowd us then.”

Parker said, “Yes, you’re right.”

Joan got goose bumps. She felt all torn up. A cloudburst hit. Rain banged the picture window right beside her.

“This war is the shit, isn’t it? Doesn’t it make you want to get lost, make love, and go crazy?”

Parker said, “Miss Conville, you go from zero to sixty faster than any—”

Joan grabbed his face and kissed him. Water glasses capsized. Parker kissed her back. He leaned in and pinned her arms to the table.

He trembled. She felt it. It went all the way through her.

20 (Los Angeles, 10:15 A.M., 1/5/42)

The rain let up. The sky gleamed. The Central Station roof supplied views.

Ashida took advantage. He brought binoculars and trained them due east. He caught a roust at 1st and San Pedro.

He zoomed his lens and played Man Camera. The roust’s Alien Squad. There’s Wendell Rice and George Kapek. Catbox Cal Lunceford’s running backup. They’ve got four Japanese men, shackle-chained.

Rice waved a red-sun flag. Ashida supplied a thought balloon. “Say! This would make a swell crap-game blanket!”

Ashida swiveled south and scanned upward. Sun framed the Biltmore Hotel. He caught his mother’s bedroom window. He saw Mariko looking out.

Their elegant suite. Dudley Smith bestows gifts. His pending Army commission. Lieutenant Hideo Ashida.

Shakespeare, revised. I owe this bad man more tears than you shall see me pay.

Joan Conville was a briefly tenured Navy lieutenant. Bill Parker bestows gifts. He entraps comely women. The silly girl works with him now.

Parker bestows gifts and abrogates justice. Do you see the children in your dreams, sir? The reckless girl killed them. I see them every night.

Ashida turned northeast. He saw a foot procession. It was all male and mostly Chinese.

Tong thugs. Jap-haters astroll. They waved casket pix of Eddie Leng. The bigwigs marched up front. Uncle Ace Kwan, Two-Gun Davis, Dr. Lin Chung.

Ashida dialed a close-up. He caught Chung gesticulating. He knew Chung, secondhand. He’s the butcher plastic surgeon. He’s the mad eugenicist. He’s the bagman for last month’s sub approach.

This new approach feels somewhat different. It’s like the first approach, refined and revised. The first approach was oddball inclusive. The new approach could be much more or much less of that.

Right is Left and Left is Right. Dr. Chung is tight with a leftist eugenicist named Saul Lesnick. Dr. Lesnick is a psychiatrist and FBI informant. He is Claire De Haven’s analyst. Kay Lake knows Dr. Lesnick. He figured in Bill Parker’s anti-Red crusade.

Inclusion. Confluence. Wartime folly. The Fifth Column is everyone.

Ashida walked back down to the lab. Two chemists logged evidence. Ray Pinker and Joan Conville were out.

He caught something.

His photo device. He’d been oiling the parts. It was placed just so on his desk. He left the lab for twenty minutes. The device was set off-kilter now.

Mr. Pinker. He handled it. The device confounded and thrilled him. Japanese inventors can’t secure patents. Mr. Pinker wants to front the device. He wants half the money. This war spawns opportunities. Fair-minded men turn unfair.

A ruckus bubbled up, streetside. Ashida heard shouts and shrieks. He checked the window. Two cops wrestled Fujio Shudo into a van.

The Werewolf wore a straitjacket and jail khakis. A sanity hearing beckons. His gas-chamber trek begins. He’s a ready-made Jap. He’s been handpicked for prosecution. Dudley Smith, inquisitor. Hideo Ashida, forged-document man.

The chemists walked out. Ashida locked himself in. Gossip spritzed through a wall vent. The lab shared vents with the Alien Squad. Lee Blanchard and Cal Lunceford groused. The fucking phone-tap probe. What a crock of shit.

Ashida walked to his desk. Joan Conville had compiled reports. She supplied study stacks. They were squared off and pencil-marked.

Missing-persons bulletins. A tight geographic spread. Southern California, all police agencies. L.A. County, Orange County, San Diego County. Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. San Bernardino, Riverside.

A tight date spread. Late summer ’33 to early winter ’34. Tall men only. Heavyset men only. A tight age spread. Mid-thirties to mid-forties.

Plus CCC survivor lists. Grist for their thesis. Box Man died concurrent with the Griffith Park fire.

Miss Conville oversupplied paper. He didn’t need the dead-and-identified lists. He read through them anyway. He saw a morgue pic. It displayed Wayne Frank Jackson’s charred corpse.

Ashida scanned lists. He looked for matched names and compatible descriptions. He sifted reports. He eyeball-clicked. He got zero, zero, zero, and this:

A CCC living survivor. Karl Frederick Tullock/6'4"/235. Born 6/14/93. Forty in October ’33. A Santa Barbara County missing person.

An ex-cop. On the S.B. County Sheriff’s Department. Wife reports Tullock missing — 1/12/34.

It fits circumstantially. It’s a hot one. It’s a possible match.

Zealous Miss Conville. She oversupplies paper and supplies a possible match. And — she’s stuffed a box under his desk.

Ashida went through it. He saw off-the-corpse clothing patches. He studied them. He noted quicklime saturation and seed husks.

He saw a white cotton swatch. He identified collar points. The swatch tweaked him. It was hand-stitched Egyptian cotton. He placed the swatch under his fluoroscope and brought up a blurred laundry mark.

He got goose bumps. Box Man’s a CCC wage slave. Wage slaves don’t wear high-quality shirts. They don’t send them out to be laundered.

Ashida went through the box. He sifted cloth fragments. He pulled pieces. He grabbed a folded-over trouser cuff. It felt weighted down.

He dug into the fold. He pulled this out:

A small piece of gold. One-inch by one-inch. Small but hefty. Irregular-shaped.

It felt substantial. It felt pure-gold dense. It was mid-range nugget-sized.

It was bored through. A metal chain and key were attached. The key was stamped “648.” It looked like a locker stamp.

Ashida got goose bumps and flushed hot and cold. He rigged a microscope. He hook-clamped the gold chunk and dialed his lens close. He saw faint markings. “U.S.” and “023” stood out.

Mint marks. They had to be that. He was locked-in, dialed-in sure.

21 (Los Angeles, 11:45 A.M., 1/5/42)

Oooga-booga. Vile voodoo ascends. Eddie Leng goes out in style.

Pit dogs pulled Eddie’s casket. They wore tong kerchiefs and spiked breastplates. The casket was tiger-striped and rolled on tricycle wheels.

Spectators lined North Broadway. Car traffic was verboten. Boocoo Chinks trailed the casket. They waved REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR! and KILL THE JAPS! signs.

Elmer stood at Alpine and Broadway. Street vendors hawked ptomaine tacos and egg foo young. Elmer reeled. It was all of it — plus this shit:

Deep-fried Eddie Leng. These suffocation dreams. It’s really Wayne Frank and him in that charred box.

All that shit. Plus his fool stunt with Ace Kwan.

Said stunt got him cogitating. Ace blathered that night. He said Lin Chung and Don Matsura crossed hate lines and hobknobbed. They sold pharmacy dope. Matsura was tonged up. He peddled terp to winos and dope fiends. He knew Tommy Glennon. Lin Chung knew Tommy, likewise.

Cut to the Matsura roust. It’s him, Rice, and Kapek. There’s the terp still in Matsura’s dump. There’s the Leng’s Kowloon menu.

It got him cogitating. So, he did this:

He read Chinktown intel files at the Bureau. Thus, he learned this:

Lin Chung peddled opiate compounds. He supplied “O” dens in the San Gabriel Valley. He pushed pharmacy hop to herb quacks.

And, he saw this:

Fed routing stamps on Chung’s file. That was provocative. That meant this:

The Feds had Chung pegged as hinky and suspect. Thus, he did this:

He staked out Chung’s house. He saw Ed Satterlee staked likewise. He tailed Ed the Fed to the phone-probe stake spot by the Herald. The hot-box phone outside: listed in Tommy G.’s address book.

The hot-box was a bookie-call phone. Sid Hudgens purportedly used it. Sid scribed at the Herald. It all felt popcorn-fart tight.

Elmer watched the parade. He pondered a ptomaine-taco lunch. The casket rolled out of sight.

He felt something behind him. Some lurking beast. His fellow spectators veered, lurched, and scrammed.

Something/someone grabbed him. He got all smothered up. It was an octopus snatch. Six arms clamped him tight.

He squirmed and orbed the octopus. Tentacles became arms. It was Jim Davis and two Hop Sing shits. Our ex — police chief and two heathen slants.

They snatched him and scissor-walked him. Sidewalk geeks gawked. Yellow folks went White men claaaaazy! They gassed on the show. Jim Davis tossed them Chink bon mots.

They scissor-walked down Broadway. They hit Kwan’s and scissored through the dining room. Shit — it’s packed.

White stiffs quaffed mai tais and slurped pork fried rice. Shit — there’s Fletch Bowron, there’s Wallace Jamie, there’s fucked-up Father Coughlin.

They scissor-walked downstairs. They hit the basement. They pushed through the “O” den and Chinks reposed on Cloud 9. They hit a small office. Bam! — the tong shits depart.

Davis unwrapped him and plopped him down in a chair. The fat cocksucker was red-faced and all sweated up.

Elmer dredged savoir faire. “You don’t look too good, Chief. You look like a man in need of medical care.”

Davis caught his breath. “You’re still a pup to me. You’re still this lance corporal I befriended.”

Elmer said, “That was ’35, and this here’s ’42. And I’m recalling that I shot this loopy beaner trying to kill you.”

The office was smother-cramped. Desk, chairs, claaaazy wall art. Velour-flocked pictures. Fire-spitting dragons roasting Jap dragoons.

Elmer stood up. He smoothed out his coat and tie and redredged savoir faire. Davis said, “You’re still a pup. And pups require a rap on the snout when they misbehave.”

“It’s starting to dawn on me, Chief.”

“Okay, then you listen close. Jack Horrall’s pissed because the Dudster’s pissed, because you muscled Ace. You’ve got to desist on whatever it is that’s goring you and got you acting dumb. That means the Leng snuff, Tommy Glennon, and Donald Matsura — who just happened to hang himself in his cell last night. ¿Tú comprende, muchacho? The Chinks police the Chinks, and that’s straight from Jack H. Ace makes Matsura for the Leng job, and that’s the way it stands. Tommy G.’s long gone, and nobody cares.”

Uncle Ace walked in. He wore that steam-pops-out-the-ears look. He resembled the aggrieved Donald Duck.

Elmer said, “Hey, pappy.”

Davis said, “Jack Horrall wants you to apologize.”

Elmer said, “I apologize, Ace.”

Uncle Ace shrieked curses. Elmer feigned deep remorse. Ace whipped out his dick and pissed on his shoes.

Stakeout.

11th and Broadway. Upside the Herald building. Upside that hot-box phone.

Elmer sprawled in his prowl sled. He felt revivified. He went by the Biltmore first. He got a double-fine shoe shine and quaffed two Rob Roys. He lunched on salted peanuts and bought a one-dollar cigar.

Stakeout.

Elmer lit the cigar and eyeballed due south. Ed Satterlee sat in a Fed sled and eyeballed the hot-box. Elmer scratched his balls and kicked the seat back.

He eyeball-clicked. Click to the phone booth. Click to the Fed sled. Click to the Herald’s front door.

Stiffs fed the phone nickels. Nobody aroused suspicion. They made brief phone calls and scrammed.

Elmer savored the cigar. It was El Supremo Cuban. He watched the booth, the Fed car, the door.

He stuck at it two hours. Sid Hudgens walked out at 3:32.

He strolled to the hot-box. He waved to Ed Satterlee. He consulted a racing form and fed the coin slot. A four-minute confab ensued.

Sid hung up and waltzed. Elmer vacated his sled and hoofed back around to the alley. He popped a storm door and hit the lobby. He caught Sid at the elevator. They indulged some unfunny shtick.

Sid went I surrender. Elmer went Kid, you’re a sketch. Sid went ¿Qué pasa? Elmer flashed his hip flask and fed him two twenties. Sid walked to a mop closet and went After you.

Elmer stepped in. Sid joined him. The fit was tight. Sid cracked the door for air.

“Elmer the J. It’s been too long, bubi.”

Elmer passed the flask. “Let’s start with Eddie Leng. I’ve been reading your columns.”

Sid yodeled Old Crow. “All right, and here’s what’s unfit to print. Mike Breuning braced me, and said the Dudster would appreciate it if I killed the Leng series, which I summarily did.”

Elmer took a pop. “Don’t stop there.”

“Dud’s up to something, which don’t surprise me, and shouldn’t surprise you — but I don’t know what it is.”

Elmer went Give — don’t dick-tease me here.

Sid said, “About a week back, Mike and Dick Carlisle told me that Dud wanted his ex-snitch Tommy Glennon clipped, allegedly because he’s a rape-o, which don’t sit right with Dud and Jack Horrall. You were supposed to be part of that — but you, Mike, and Dick blew that stakeout New Year’s Eve. So, Eddie Leng gets clipped that same night, and Eddie was tight with Tommy. Conventional wisdom would have it that Tommy clipped Eddie for some farkakte reason, after he escaped your dubious clutches — but I heard that Eddie was low-rent Fifth Column, and tangled up with some unholy mélange of right-wing Chinks and Japs. I also heard that Ace the K. clipped this Jap fucker Donald Matsura, who allegedly killed himself at Lincoln Heights. And that’s as far as I can think it through.”

Elmer sucked on the flask. “Leng was a Jap-hater. It feels like a race job to me.”

Sid said, “Nix. I heard that Leng and Matsura were tight, and that Matsura manufactured terp, and Leng and Four Families peddled it to the Chinks, along with drugstore hop.”

“A doctor named Lin Chung. Ring any bells?”

Sid yocked. “Yeah. He’s a plastic surgeon, and he peddles nose jobs to all the Jew girls trying to pass for goyishe. Lin, the snout doctor. Strictly cut-rate.”

Elmer switched gears. “Leng had a tattoo on his right hand. A little ‘SQ’ with snakes curled around it. Tommy G. had stencils for that selfsame tattoo in his hotel room.”

Sid fingered his Jew star. “The ‘SQ’ means Sinarquista. It’s some kind of batshit Catholic, pro-Nazi movement in Mexico. Like Father Coughlin, only worse. I’m a hebe, so I don’t feature that shit.”

“I saw you wave to Ed Satterlee. What’s with that?”

“Open secret, bubi. Fey Edgar Hoover concocted this phone-tap schmear before the Japs tapped Pearl and put our great country in a tizzy, so now he’s obliged to see it through, but he don’t wet his pink lace undies for it. Some good-sized fish will get indicted, but only a few minnows will burn. This Wallace Jamie kid’s tight with some hotshot Republicans who want to run him for office, and his dad’s close pals with Fletch Bowron. The inside pitch is that Fletch, Jack Horrall, the Jamie putz, Ray Pinker, and a few DAs will get indicted and acquitted. Jamie will be revealed to be a secret Fed informer. He’ll turn State’s on some Hollywood Reds that Fey Edgar wants to fuck with, and goose his own career.”

Elmer went Oh, my cabeza. Sid yock-yocked.

“Why would Tommy Glennon have this hot-box number?”

“Why wouldn’t he? Everybody’s got this number. It’s a former bookie-drop call-in phone that used to take slugs, and for all I know, it still does.”

Elmer cogitated. “Why would Tommy G. have the numbers of fourteen Baja pay phones in his address book?”

Sid shrugged. “Why wouldn’t he? He’s a perv. Baja’s the Perv Capital of North America. Tommy’s pals with the Dudster’s snitch, Huey Cressmeyer, who ranks with Leopold and Loeb in the Perv Hall of Fame. Don’t be naïve, bubelah. Tommy pokes boys in the keester and rapes women. That spells P, E, R, V in my book.”

Elmer recogitated. “Can pay phones be tapped?”

“Supposedly, yes — at least the incoming calls. Some Mexican cop supposedly devised a plan.”

The closet shot heat waves. Warm, hot, too hot. Elmer wiped his forehead.

“There’s Fed routing stamps on Lin Chung’s DB file. Recent, with your boy Satterlee as the agent requesting.”

“Well, it don’t sound phone probe, so maybe the snout doctor runs Fifth Column.”

Elmer cracked the door wide. Cool air vitalized him. Lobby noise whooshed in.

“I don’t get where all this is going.”

“What’s not to get? God’s telling you not to fuck with Dudley Smith.”

22 (Baja, 4:15 P.M., 1/5/42)

Chez Hanamaka. It’s a magnetizing force. It mandates a second visit.

Drudge work ate up yesterday. Paper piles and phone calls deluged him. The bloodstained wall summoned him today.

Dudley studied the wall. He quadrant-scanned it. He made two eyeball circuits. Something felt wrong.

He saw three bullet holes. He pegged the tight spread and upper-right-side wall placement. He pulled his pocketknife and dug out the spents.

He studied them. He saw dried blood and dark-hair fragments on all three. The bullets were embedded per a left-to-right trajectory.

But:

The full wall was bloodstained. That was wrong. Only the upper-right quadrant should be spattered.

Late sun hit the living room. Picture windows threw glare. It enhanced magnification. That wall gleamed — bright, bright, bright.

Dudley brainstormed. Dudley got it. It had to be this:

There’s Mr. X. It’s probably Kyoho Hanamaka. He needs to paint a picture. It’s an urgent need. This wall provides a canvas and picture frame.

Mr. X gulps. The job entails self-mutilation. It puts him in a squeamish state. He must create a slaughter scene.

Mr. X holds his left arm up and out. He’s angled toward the right side of the wall. He holds the gun in his right hand. He employs an upward-right trajectory. He aims very closely and fires three flesh-grazing shots.

Thus:

The dark hair on the spents.

Thus:

The upper-right-wall slug placement.

But:

The entire wall was bloodstained. That surely resulted from this:

Mr. X squeezed blood from his superficial flesh wounds and flung it randomly. Thus, the wide spatters. Why did he do this? Here’s a theory:

Mr. X fakes his own death. He’s a Jap Navy man prone to Fifth Column mischief. He wants to vanish. His blood type is police-filed. He knows the estúpido Staties will peruse this wall and scrape samples. They will compare them to their file. They will thus conclude:

Hanamaka was killed here. His body was removed and most likely dumped in the sea.

No suspects present themselves. Case closed, finito.

Where’s Kyoho Hanamaka? Hector Obregon-Hodaka saw him here. That was December 18. It’s now January 5. The Staties have not been here. There’s no evidence tags or signs of a toss.

Think. Expand your theory. Layer in Hepcat Hector. He plays in here.

This hilltop home connotes hideaway. Hanamaka probably lives in Ensenada. His resident-alien file might list the address. The Staties would look for Hanamaka there first.

He’s scared. He’s afraid he’ll be interned soon. His friendship with Governor Lazaro-Schmidt will be rudely breached. He needs to vanish. He has Fifth Column duties. He needs this hideaway to be discovered inadvertently.

Enter Hector Obregon-Hodaka.

He’s a cat’s paw. Hanamaka brought him up here. He knew that Hector would be interned. Hector would suck up to his Statie captors and reveal that this place exists.

Hector was a patsy. Hanamaka rigged the faked-death scene all by himself. Hector got lucky. Captain D. L. Smith set him free.

It’s virgin turf. No tags, no tape seals. It’s a fresh toss.

Dudley checked the kitchen. He found a toilet plunger and plunged the two commodes. He brought up gauze strips and adhesive-bandage snips. The gauze showed water-bleached bloodstains. It confirmed his wall-tableau theory.

He emptied cupboards. He opened canned foodstuffs and dumped the contents. He dumped drawers and examined innocuous glut. He unscrewed sink drains and plunged standing water. He ripped apart stuffed furniture. He unscrewed light fixtures. The net yield was zilch.

The walls now.

He brought a stethoscope. He attached the earpieces and began downstairs. He walked room-to-room. He tapped the walls and listened. He got all solid thunks. He worked downstairs to upstairs and wall-tapped. He got all solid thunks.

He walked back downstairs. He retapped the walls, higher up. He turned down a side hallway and tapped the right-side wall. He got solid, solid, solid, solid, and—

Hollow thunks. Pitch-perfect — tap, tap.

He brought a pry bar. He ran to the living room and grabbed it. He ran back to the hallway and swung.

The wall was wood-reinforced plaster. Two hits crumbled it. The boards snapped. Plaster grit swirled. Twelve hits ripped a floor-to-ceiling hole.

A hidey-hole. Rendered inaccessible. There was no latch entry, no wall-panel hinges and slides.

The hole ran twelve by twelve. It was carpeted. There were light fixtures, clothes racks, and shelves.

Dudley brushed off grit and sawdust. He stepped in and tapped a light switch. Well, now. What’s this?

Mahogany walls. Well buffed and gleaming. A flag spray at the rear. Pole-mounted banners, elegantly fringed and draped.

Dudley unfurled them. They were smooth silk. They proclaimed stark alliance and devilish intent.

A swastika flag, a rising-sun flag, a hammer-and-sickle banner. Flags for Franco’s Falange. Ku Klux Klan flags. Redshirt Battalion flags. Flags ablaze with “SQ”s and coiled snakes.

Lovely silk twill. Bright yellow fringe. Lurid emblems, ablaze.

Dudley smelled mothballs. They hung from gauze sachets. They protected haute-KKKouture threads.

Nazi uniforms. Winter- and summer-weight wool. Gray Wehrmacht tunics and breeches. Black SS dress kit.

Collar and shoulder insignia. All field-grade rank. Creased trousers and puffed jodhpurs. Jackboots on foot racks. Peaked hats on a shelf.

Dudley time-machined. Brentwood, north of Sunset. It’s winter ’39 again.

That costume party. The Jewish Maestro’s house, sublet. It’s done up Bauhaus-moderne. He’s an SS Sturmbannführer. The party replicates a Nazi purge. The party swirls out of sync.

More uniforms. Jap Army and Navy issue. Cut small. Hanamaka is small. The yellow peril boys run tiny and shrill.

Soviet uniforms. Coarse olive wool. Drab beside Herr Hitler’s couture.

The People’s Army. Drab comrades. Godless Bolsheviks hooked on dead-Jew Marx and stiff potato brew.

Dudley plucked a Nazi hat and tried it on. It was too small for him. He saw a leather-bound diary, stuffed behind the foot rack. He grabbed it and leafed through.

Kyoho Hanamaka wrote in English. He introduced his historical memory book and stated that he saw it all firsthand. “Please be credulous. I witnessed the following events.”

He ignored chronology. He hopped locale sans explanation. He did not justify his presence at moments of pitiless terror. He remained mutely complicit then and broke his silence on these pages.

He witnesses the Rape of Nanking. Jap soldiers make Chinese fathers fuck their own daughters. Those soldiers behead one thousand Chinamen a day. Jap flyers toss Chinese children from airplanes at five thousand feet.

Witness Hanamaka heads northwest. He visits Hermann Goering. The Reichsführer drinks the morphine-laced blood of Aryan virgins.

El Jefe Franco needs help. He calls El Supremo Jefe Hitler and requests air support. Witness Hanamaka cozies up to the Condor Legion. He joins the bombing runs over Guernica. He describes the firestorm and Basque civilians burned alive.

Witness Hanamaka heads east. He drinks vodka with Joe Stalin and tours Red Square. Uncle Joe predicts the Nazi pact back in ’36. He murders the army brass and Party apparatchiks he deems potential refuseniks.

He kills 100,000 men. Witness Hanamaka views mass murder. NKVD death squads burst into homes and blast perceived traitors. Wives and children scream. The death squads blast them point-blank.

Hanamaka views Stalin’s booze-blitzed rages. Uncle Joe issues five hundred death decrees a day. Hanamaka views torture sessions at the Lubyanka prison. He’s there for the Moscow show trials. They couch all loose talk as sedition.

Stalin orders up slaughter. He’s the psychopathic god to rival Auden’s Hitler. Show-trial defendants stand mute. They are condemned and shot in their cells. Their last words are often “What for?”

Witness Hanamaka hops back to Deutschland. It’s now summer ’34. It’s the Night of the Long Knives.

Hitler’s purges are small scale beside Stalin’s. They are intimately conceived and plotted on the q.t. Brownshirt boss Ernst Röhm is a boy-buggering bully. He’s holed up in a spa hotel outside Munich. He’s there for an all-boy bacchanal. Witness Hanamaka and some SS lads fly down.

They tear through the hotel. It’s a rude disruption. It’s sodomy and soixante-neuf interruptus. There’s death shots to the head. There’s slashed genitalia.

Dudley stopped there. Winter ’39 tore through him. The party reprised the Night of the Long Knives. Tommy Glennon witnessed Sturmbannführer Smith’s nadir.

Maestro Klemperer’s house. The Maestro’s recording of Tristan und Isolde. The prelude soars. The costumed guests caper.

Dudley fondled Nazi uniforms. He touched silver thunderbolts and death’s-heads. He kissed stiff black wool. He loved beautiful clothing. Claire joshed him about it.

He’d sweated through his clothes. He felt dizzy. He reached behind the foot rack and pulled out an oak box.

It was two feet long and weighty. It looked ceremonial. A hinged lid lifted up.

Dudley opened the box. A bayonet had been placed on black velvet. Swastikas were carved on the handle. The bayonet glowed.

Dudley picked it up and cradled it. He gauged the weight as eight pounds. The bayonet was pure gold.

23 (Santa Barbara, 12:30 P.M., 1/6/42)

Dissemble now. You’re here ex officio. It’s just a scholar’s lark.

The probable widow played slow. Joan played off of that. Dr. Ashida authored the text. Joan improvised.

I’m with the L.A. Police. This is strictly routine. Your missing-persons report. I’m compiling a lab-file update.

Ellen Marie Tullock. Fifty-five and too thin. The wife of Karl Frederick. He’s on the CCC survivor list. He’s the probable Box Man.

“I don’t quite understand what you do, young lady.”

“I’m a biologist. I work in the crime lab, and we’re reviewing our missing-persons files. We’re up to January 1934, the month you submitted the query on your husband.”

Mrs. Tullock frowned. “Are you a policewoman? I don’t understand why they didn’t send a man.”

Joan smiled. “My immediate superior is Japanese. Given the times, he thought you’d rather speak with me.”

Mrs. Tullock blinked. Joan plainly vexed her. The front parlor broiled. Heating vents audibly hissed.

The house induced claustrophobia. It ran hot and overfurnished. Doilies and tchotchkes abundant. Too many too-stiff chairs.

“Did you know that your husband was present at the Griffith Park fire of 1933? Many men died, but he survived.”

Mrs. Tullock tugged at her skirt. “No, I didn’t know that. What month was this fire?”

Joan said, “October.”

“Well, Karl took off in August of ’33, and I’ve never heard from him since.”

“You waited five months to report him missing. Was there a reason for that?”

“Well, Karl just took off, and it took a while for me to start to miss him.”

“Do you know why he took off?”

Mrs. Tullock smirked. “He took off to pursue buried treasure, which was the onliest thing he ever did when the Sheriff’s Department canned him.”

Joan said, “Could you explain that?”

“Well, Karl was a treasure seeker. If you don’t know the type already, you should take heed. Brazilian diamonds and pearls in Jamaica. That gold robbery off that train, back in ’31. Karl worked that one for a little bit, which is why it had such legs for him.”

A memory popped. Joan recalled bar chat. Lee Blanchard talks to Wendell Rice. They discuss Elmer Jackson’s dead brother.

He was torched in Griffith Park. He was this nutty rumdum. He was torqued by that big mint-train heist.

“Young lady, are you all right?”

Joan smiled. “Mrs. Tullock, are you saying that your husband was a wanderer? And that he had an untoward interest in that mint-train robbery?”

Mrs. Tullock tugged at her skirt. She wore tennis shoes with threadbare tweeds.

“I’m saying he read treasure magazines written for bums with big dreams, and he believed everything he ever read. The amazing thing is that he only got in trouble the one time — but it up and cost him his job.”

“Would you explain, please?”

“That gold robbery. Karl worked on the Santa Barbara end, and he got this fool notion that this dimwit colored boy was the thief. He did some beating on that boy, but some colored preacher with police friends in L.A. went to bat for the boy and got him released, and Karl got the ax for the whomping he did.”

Joan sifted it. “Did Karl ever mention any friends he might have had with the CCC in Los Angeles?”

Mrs. Tullock sneered. “Karl didn’t have friends. He had treasure magazines.”

Hot potato. The old girl tossed it. Catch it — don’t drop it.

Joan left the Tullock house and reparked down the street. Some sidewalk boys showed off for her. They chugged sneaky pete. They strutted and posed.

A cloudburst drove them indoors. Joan sat it out. She chain-smoked and fumed up the car.

She reprised the conversation. It ran circuitous. She sat in Lyman’s, two nights back. Lee Blanchard and Wendell Rice shot the shit.

Kay’s in with these Jew exiles. Longhair-music types. Otto Klemperer. She dotes on him.

Elmer the J. His dipshit brother died in the Griffith Park fire. This alky drifter. Always the big dreams. This big hard-on for that gold-train heist.

We have proximity. We have Karl Tullock and Wayne Frank Jackson. We have two men and one fire. One dead man has been ID’d. One dead man has been unearthed. We have a probable identification.

One ex-cop, one drifter, one idiot dream. Two violent deaths in concurrence. The ex-cop worked the gold heist. That event preceded and might have precipitated catastrophic arson.

And she kissed Bill Parker. And Bill Parker kissed her back.

I blew my shot at the war. Who cares? My new life’s aswirl.

24 (Los Angeles, 9:30 A.M., 1/7/42)

A college kid approached. He glared and flashed his fangs. His intent beamed.

He closed in. He leaned down. He said, “Filthy Jap.”

The library was dead still. The kid employed stealth. He made like a Jap Zero. No one else heard.

The kid strolled off. Ashida scanned his page book. He’d ordered up the L.A. Times. A clerk brought him bound photostats.

From May 19–23, 1931. From October 4–12, 1933.

Joan Conville called him last night. She described her talk with Ellen Tullock. They discussed death-by-fire and death-by-knife-and-gun proximity. Was it design or coincidence?

He told her not to talk to Elmer Jackson. Elmer might go off half-cocked. He described his lab findings. He omitted just this:

I found a gold nugget in that box you left me.

He found it. He’s hoarding the lead. He’s studied under Dudley Smith. He’s learned to lie. He’s a Jap. He’s shifty and stealthy.

He called Thad Brown last night. Thad was brusque. The dislodged-body job’s a dog. Chief Horrall wants it reburied. It puts a stink on the PD.

He withheld from Thad. He omitted the gold nugget and two-dead speculation. Karl Tullock and Wayne Frank Jackson died at the same time and place. Both were gold heist — fixated. He knew the full Wayne Frank story. Joan had picked up bar scuttlebutt.

The library was dead still. College kids studied and evil-eyed the Jap. Winos dozed in rock-hard chairs.

Ashida skimmed news stories. He read the heist accounts first. The stat sheets printed out white on black. The coverage ran threadbare.

The Frisco-to-L.A. mint train. Eight Quentin cons on board. There’s a track-switch snafu. Four masked men swarm the train. They overpower the crew. The cons escape en masse. The escape precedes the robbery. Seven men are hunted down and shot and killed that day. The unwritten law holds sway. Escape mandates death.

One man eludes the dragnet. He’s still at large. Fritz Wilhelm Eckelkamp. DOB 10/12/98.

He’s German-born. He’s a Great War stalwart. He wins the Iron Cross. He goes bad in ’20s Berlin. He toes the Sparticist line and skirmishes with Brownshirt thugs. He robs banks and jewelry stores. He stows away on a steamship and comes here. It’s ’27 now. He migrates to California and settles in Oakland. He reverts to armed robbery.

Liquor-store jobs. There’s always cash on hand. It’s high risk for low yield. Fritz falls behind multiple counts. He gets twenty-five to life at Big Q.

Fritz becomes a virtuoso jailhouse lawyer. He learns to write Federal writs. He secures a retrial. The Federal court’s in L.A.

Fritz Wilhelm Eckelkamp. Missing since 5/18/31. Karl Frederick Tullock. Reported missing 1/12/34.

Ashida chalked brain notes. He reviewed his stat sheets and compiled a checklist.

Secure Eckelkamp’s Oakland police file. Secure his Quentin file. Secure Tullock’s Santa Barbara Sheriff’s personnel file.

The mint train resumes its southbound journey. There’s a second track snafu. The heist occurs then. The theft is discovered at the Santa Barbara stop. Leander Frechette is grabbed for it. Karl Tullock “beats on him.” A Negro preacher intercedes and greases Frechette’s release. The preacher has “cop friends in L.A.”

Frechette drops from sight. Where is he now? Who’s the preacher? What cop friends in L.A.?

Ashida switched page books. He jumped from gold to fire. He logged more sketchy coverage.

It’s late September ’33. We’re into Indian summer. It’s hot in L.A. The heat provokes unrest. There’s leftist agitation and a garment workers’ strike.

It’s now October 3. The blaze occurs. The death toll mounts. It may or may not be arson. A pro forma query goes down. The Young Socialist Alliance proves suspect. The leader’s one Meyer Gelb.

YSA sloganeers “prophesied apocalypse.” Their rants ran from mid-September to the blaze. Meyer Gelb urged “a workers’ revolt.” “One line burned memorably at a Pershing Square stump speech.”

Gelb railed. He called out, “This storm, this savaging disaster.”

The line drew oohs and aahs. The Times got pissy here. “The flowery sentence might have been lifted from a noted British poet of the homosexual ilk.”

Ashida flipped pages. The fire was initially tagged “a spontaneous conflagration.” The death toll fluctuated daily. CCC workers tagged dead showed up alive. They’d been on booze binges and deserted their wives for a spell.

A well-dressed man was glimpsed in Mineral Canyon. Eyewits described him as “Chinese or Japanese.” He vanished as the blaze whooshed. A studio carpenter got popped the same night. He set a blaze in Fern Dell Park. Eyewits nailed his car’s license plate.

His name was Ralph D. Barr. He was a known firebug and public jack-off man. He was alibied up for the big blaze. He worked at Paramount all day.

That was it. The PD tapped out. The fire department tapped out. Nobody proved arson or disproved it. Local leftists were grilled and released. News coverage fizzled.

Ashida restacked his books. He stood up and stretched. He chalked more brain notes.

Get more on the YSA. Get more on Meyer Gelb. Track the gold chunk. What does “648” mean? Does the attached key correspond to a storage locker someplace?

He walked to the drop-off desk. A college boy waltzed by. He said, “Stinking Jap.”

Dark clouds blew in. They unzipped and leaked rain. Ashida drove to Griffith Park and trekked the golf course.

He was killing time. He needed privacy at the lab. The day-shift chemists clocked out at 6:00.

Gale winds hit. Cloudbursts followed. Fairways and sand traps flooded. It occurred just like that.

Ashida walked into it. He sketched brain pictures and transposed newspaper maps. He crafted a then-to-now terrain.

He noted incipient mud slides. Hillsides with thin turf planes and exposed roots. He employed Man Camera and assumed killer and victim perspectives.

It’s four-burner hot and dry. A Santa Ana wind fans flames. He set the fire/a cohort set the fire/the fire started itself. It’s deliberate arson or crime of opportunity. The box stands ready, either way.

He lures the probable Karl Tullock someplace secluded. He shoots him and stabs him and dumps him in the box. He buries the box. He chokes on thick smoke. Approaching flames singe his eyebrows. He runs. He gets away or burns to death.

The converse now.

He’s lured. He’s stabbed and shot. He’s the probable Karl Tullock. He’s dead in the box. He did or did not know Wayne Frank Jackson. Rest in peace. The two men die the same day.

Ashida walked back to the parking lot. The wind pushed him along. He saw a phone booth by the snack hut.

He ducked in and went through the Yellow Pages. He tore out all the storage-locker ads.

There was still time to kill. He had two hours to clock-out and assured privacy.

Ashida drove to Central Station. He went down to the cellblocks and watched the Werewolf sleep.

The jailer brought his son’s Scout troop down. They goofed on Fujio Shudo. They finger-poked him through the bars and squealed. A boy stared at Ashida. He read the kid’s mind. Hey, mister — aren’t you a Jap?

He walked up to 3. A crap game whooped and hollered. It was Alien Squad SRO.

The players rolled on rising-sun flags. Wendell Rice and George Kapek wore Wehrmacht helmets and green eyeshades. Lee Blanchard and Cal Lunceford rolled.

Chief Horrall stopped by. He chatted up the boys and dropped off pizza pies and beer. The boys whoop-whooped and cheered.

Call-Me-Jack winked at Ashida. He said, “Chin up, kid.”

Rice passed Ashida the dice. He told him to roll once, for grins. Ashida rolled a big six. The boys stomped and cheered.

He rolled again. He came up seven and crapped out. The boys stomped and booed.

6:05 p.m. The lab was off-shift dark. Ashida walked over and locked himself in. Miss Conville had left ballistics bulletins on his desk. He slugged cold coffee and got to it.

He worked the gold first. He got out the nugget and naked-eyed it. The mint marks went naked-eye unseen. The chunk was rough-cut. Buff swirls were present. The chunk felt talismanic. It was pure brag. Look what I’ve got, look what I did.

Ashida boiled an acid-phosphate solution. It would create faint abrasions and scrub the buff swirls.

He dropped the gold in the beaker. The solution fizzed and turned the liquid black. He timed the dunk at three minutes. He turned off the burner and scooped the gold out.

He’d preset his microscope. He put the chunk on a clamp slide and studied it. The swirls had abraded and sloughed off.

He studied the chunk. He moved it around on the slide. He hit four separate angles. A fifth angle gave him this:

The letters L.U.S.

It was scratched on. It was diamond-scratched. The scratcher scratched the letters below-the-surface deep. He bought a rough diamond and carved, assiduously. The abrasive dip raised the letters. It had to be that.

He had the gold chunk/the L.U.S./the key fob marked “648.” He had storage-locker listings. He’d pulled two pages’ worth.

The pages were half wet and crimped. Ashida smoothed them out on his desk. He started at A and eye-scanned.

A-1 Storage, Albright Storage, All-Nite Storage. He read subheads and caught the gist.

Store your belongings. Safety and privacy assured. Your key unlocks your locker. Front-door key provided. We’re open-all-nite. There’s no questions asked.

He knew these places. He’d read Burglary and Robbery reports. They were extra-legal stash holes. You had lockers rented short-term, long-term, and lifetime.

You had transient renters. You had come-and-go traffic. You rent 648 in ’31. You rent it lifetime. There’s no-questions-asked. It’s still your locker today.

Ashida scanned listings.

Bring-Your-Key Storage. Capitol Storage. Carthage Storage/open-all-nite. He jumped to page two. He quick-skimmed to the L’s. He hit Larry’s Lockers, Len’s Lockers, Lucky Lon’s Locker Vault. Wait, now—

Lock-Ur-Self Storage. 829 North Glendale Boulevard. “U Store, U Karry the Key.”

Lock-Ur-Self. L.U.S. Open-all-nite. Locker 648.

Ashida burned hot and cold. Sweat ran into his eyes. He flexed his hands and steadied them. He grabbed a lab towel and wiped his face.

It’s 8:06 p.m. It’s still too early. Folks are still out and about. Lock-Ur-Self might be packed.

The bullet now.

It was skull-smash/up-close flattened. He naked-eyed six impact crimps. He attached bullet forceps to both ends and pulled.

The clamps held. He got a half stretch. Four crimps flattened out. He naked-eyed very faint lands and grooves.

The microscope now.

He studied the bullet. He eyeball-measured millimeters between the stretched crimps. He slide-clamped the bullet and dialed his lens deep.

Magnification meets imagination. It’s forensically haphazard. Yes — but sound guesswork sometimes results.

He imagined his way to full lands and grooves. He memorized the fragmented patterns. He imposed a crimp-point differential.

The bulletins now.

Ignore the crime summaries. Go straight to the microscope pix. Juxtapose your imagination and extrapolate.

Miss Conville had arranged the stack chronologically. Ashida went to January ’32 and quick-skimmed.

He got through ’32. No full land-and-groove reads tweaked him. He skimmed into ’33. Winter, spring, summer—

Wait—

The bulletin was dated 8/12/33. It summarized four liquor-store heists. “UNSOLVED” was stamped on four bulletins. “STILL UNSOLVED” was stamped on 8/12/36. The summary brief detailed this:

Wilshire Division. Four near-southside locations. No gunshot wounds. Shots fired into wood-plank ceilings.

Flat, flatter, flattened. Like his skull-flattened spent.

Brainwork now.

Take your skull-flat spent. Compare it to your plank-flat-spent photos. Add your imagined differential.

Ashida did it. Ashida brainworked this:

Five spents. All time and sheer-impact degraded. Four from the liquor-store planks. One from Karl Tullock’s skull. Consider all angles. Stir it all up, you get this:

Almost three-to-one identical markings. Call it 72 %. It’s a possible, if not probable, match.

He knew the block. It was just north of Belmont High. He brought a celluloid shim. He possessed B and E skills. Dudley Smith taught him well.

It was 1:00 a.m. He parked a block down and walked over. The building was two-story stucco. The parking lot was empty. He heard thunder and felt light rain.

He approached the front door. It was glass-paneled and wood-jambed. The interior was full-lit. He peered inside. He clocked an entryway and bisecting hallway.

Open-all-nite. U-keep-the-key. Make-like-you-belong-here.

Ashida stood at the door. He patted his pockets. Where’s my key? I’m Mr. Flustered. I’m Mr. Jap in disguise.

He shimmed the lock-jamb juncture. The door wiggled and popped wide. He stepped inside and shut himself in. He walked back out of sight.

There were no first-floor lockers. They were all upstairs.

Ashida walked up. The steps creaked. He almost shrieked. He clamped his mouth and held it in. Shrieks made him sound effete.

There’s the lockers. There’s rows and rows. It reprised Bucky at Belmont. The boys gym, the showers, the locker room.

He walked the rows. He pegged 648. He strolled the rows and saw no one. He walked back to 648.

The boy’s gym, redux. The same gray metal locker, the same padlock.

He slid the key in the keyhole and turned it. The padlock snapped.

He opened the door. It was right there on the shelf. May ’31, redux. Memo to Karl Tullock and Wayne Frank Jackson.

You’re dead and I’m not. I’ve got what you don’t. It’s solid gold and weighs thirty pounds. You died for this.

25 (Los Angeles, 1:30 A.M., 1/8/42)

Late cocktails at Brenda’s. Three old pals and inveterate nite owls. Comfy chairs and ticker-tape dish.

The Japs take the Malay Peninsula. The Japs eye the Dutch East Indies. The PD slams local Japs. The Feds slam local cops.

Brenda said, “Jack Horrall’s scared, Citizens. The probe’s got his dick in a twist.”

Elmer said, “The probe’s a shuck. That’s straight from Sid Hudgens. Ed Satterlee’s J. Edgar’s straw man. They’ll let the probe fizzle out and put it to some Hollywood Reds.”

Kay said, “Satterlee’s in with Hop Sing. I picked that up when I was deep off in Bill Parker’s incursion. Bill told me he was selling leads on Japanese confiscations.”

Brenda said, “Katherine Ann reveals herself. She’s gone from ‘Captain Parker’ to ‘Bill’ in a hot tick. ‘Sweetie Pie’s’ warming up in the bull pen.”

Kay laughed. Brenda stirred the fireplace. Elmer relit his cigar.

“Ed Satterlee’s a drip. He wouldn’t cut it in our white man’s PD.”

Brenda lit a cigarette. “Elmer’s jealous. Ed’s spent notable time with his pal Ellen Drew, which I will readily concede that he pays for.”

Elmer said, “Let’s change the subject.”

Brenda sipped Cointreau. “It’s Citizen Kay’s turn to yak. As long as she don’t start extolling Maestro what’s-his-name and those Stalin lovers out in Brentwood.”

Kay lit a cigarette. “The Maestro’s name is Klemperer, and most of his friends are Trotskyites. There’s quite a rabid distinction.”

Elmer blew smoke rings. “The Reds are all rabid dogs. So’s Kay’s friend Bill. But he don’t hold with Roosevelt, much less the Russkies.”

Kay said, “I’m worried about him.”

Brenda said, “You’re jealous, Citizen.”

Kay bristled. “Tell me why I should be.”

Elmer said, “You’re front row at Lyman’s, so you’ve seen the big redhead. That’s one damn good ‘why’ in my book.”

Kay doused her butt in Elmer’s highball. Elmer woofed. There she is — Katherine Ann Lake, hopping mad.

“I know the rumor, Elmer. 502 PC and vehicular homicide. She’s working at the lab now.”

Elmer looked at Kay. Lamplight torched her eyes. Why euphemizize? He loved her past all hoo-ha and hurt.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said. I know how you feel about Captain Bill.”

Brenda said, “Look at you two. You’ll be spooning there on the couch sometime soon.”

Elmer laughed. Kay rolled her eyes. Brenda tossed an ice cube and missed her.

“Here’s a ripe rumor, Citizens. I saw Bill Parker kissing a big redhead outside City Hall, and he had to stand on his tiptoes to do it.”

Ellen said, “You keep forgetting our rules. ‘No shop talk in bed,’ ‘no talk about my husband or the baby.’ ”

The bed sagged. The headboard drooped. Elmer smelled cheap pomade on the sheets.

“He’s Elmer Jr. You can’t tell me he don’t resemble me.”

“You weren’t in play at the moment of conception.”

Nite-owl serenade. A 4:00 a.m. quickie. Elmer Jr. messed with Ellen’s sleep. Elmer Sr. capitalized.

“Toss me a little one. How dirty’s Ed Satterlee? I know you trick with him, and I’m not jealous.”

Ellen twisted up two fingers. “He’s like that with the Chinks.”

“Stale bread. Give me something hot off the griddle.”

Ellen mulled it. Thunder slammed the windows. Junior squalled one room over.

“He’s bragging about all this Fifth Column work he’s doing. Mr. Hoover wants to extort some key guys, and he wants Ed to run sex shakedowns.”

Lyman’s ran round the clock. They served select pols and cops after hours. Elmer cruised the bar. It was wee-hours packed. Select nite owls waved.

Lee Blanchard. Joan Conville. Thad Brown. Two-Gun Davis and Mike Breuning, Buzz Meeks from Robbery.

Elmer hit the back room. He evicted Catbox Cal Lunceford. He called chez Satterlee. He woke up Ed the Fed. He told him this:

“If this probe of yours is a shuck, why are you working it so hard?”

Ed said, “Shit.” Ed said, “I’ll meet you at Lyman’s in ten minutes.”

Elmer hung up and fixed breakfast. He chugged one ginger ale and gobbled three bennies. Ed showed in six minutes flat.

He snarled. You-redneck-fucker-you-fucked-with-my-sleep. He fixed himself a Bromo and drained it.

“Who told you it’s a shuck?”

“A little birdie.”

“A little birdie named Ellen Drew?”

“Talk circulates, Ed.”

Satterlee flopped on the couch. Elmer flopped beside him.

“Okay, it’s a shuck. Mr. Hoover’s putting a sheep dip on that punk Wallace Jamie. He’ll be off to Congress before you know it.”

Elmer tossed a curveball. It swerved low and inside.

“There’s a doctor named Lin Chung. Your name’s on his intel file. The routing stamp’s recent.”

Satterlee lit a cigarette. “If there’s something in this for me, let me know. If it’s we’re brothers under the sheets, fuck off and let me go home.”

Elmer relit his cigar. “You’ve got carte blanche with the service. One full month. I’ve already cleared it with Brenda.”

Satterlee held up two fingers. Elmer went Shucks and Okay.

“All right, here’s what this is. A, we’re picking up code intercepts from Baja. We think it’s some kind of subtle Jap-Chink Fifth Column gang, and we’re trying to separate the tract pushers and Sieg Heil boys from the real menace. B, I’m not naming names, not for two months’ or ten years’ worth of the best gash on the planet. C, Chung knows lots of well-heeled right-wingers, and he’s got a communist doctor pal that he talks eugenics with. D, I don’t care that he was jungled up with that dead Chink Eddie Leng, or that guy Don Matsura, who stretched his neck at Lincoln Heights.”

Elmer waved his cigar. “Have you got a file on a punk named Tommy Glennon?”

Satterlee shook his head. “No dice. Tommy goes back with Dudley Smith, and my policy with Dud is ‘hands-off.’ ”

“Tommy used to run wets. I’m thinking he ran them with Carlos Madrano.”

“He did, so I’ll issue a warning here. Tommy was very loyal to Captain Carlos, and I have it on good authority that it was Dud who blew up Carlos last month. I also heard that Ace Kwan warned you away from Tommy — which was very sound advice. Let Dud, Ace, and the Staties take charge of Tommy. You’re not equipped for it.”

Elmer blew smoke rings. “Does Dud think Tommy will come after him for clipping Madrano?”

“Well, there’s that. But mostly I think Dud’s afraid that Tommy will try to ingratiate himself with whoever took over Madrano’s wetback biz, which I bet Dud’s got his eye on himself.”

Elmer said, “That little birdie told me something else.”

Satterlee sighed. “You confide to a woman in the sack, and it’s on the Teletype within twenty-four hours.”

“Sex shakes. You want to put the squeeze on some Fifth Column geeks.”

“Es la verdad, daddy.”

Elmer said, “I’ve got a fuck spot, all wired up. Right on Wilshire, upside the tar pits. Wall peek — the whole deal.”

“I’ll take it. It puts you in contention for White Man of the Week honors.”

Elmer smiled. “Give me more on Tommy.”

Satterlee shrugged. “I don’t consider him a traitor, or a saboteur, or any kind of hot-blood seditionist. To me, he’s just a Sieg Heil boy, looking for giggles. He’s a Coughlinite, and he’s in with these Mex right-wingers called the Sinarquistas. They’re righteous Catholics and anti-Reds, and their boss is some cholo lawyer named Salvador Abascal. Tommy’s in with them, and he’s been poking Dud’s snitch, Huey Cressmeyer, in the keester since the year one. They called him ‘the Sheriff of the Brown Trail’ up at Quentin.”

Elmer slapped his knees. Satterlee said, “I’m ahead on this deal so far. What can I do to even things up?”

“Pick up Huey C. and rattle him. I’ll give you a script, so it don’t come back to me.”

“I’ll consider it. And, while I’ve got you, should I issue a formal warning on the Dudster?”

Elmer said, “I’d just ignore it.”

Harem hideaway. Lovers’ lair. Rendezvous redoubt. The spot radiated S-E-X.

Two rooms. One poontang parlor, one bootie bandits’ boudoir. Brocade walls and French postcard art.

Fake panels hid the peek. Stashed microphones caught the FUCK ME! and pillow-talk sound tracks. A spy mirror framed the bed.

Wall baffles soundproofed the crawl space. The camera guys worked with impunity. The fuckers and fuckees couldn’t hear shit. Special film lit in-the-dark ruts.

RKO hotshots rigged the place. Ed Satterlee would love it. His Fifth Column fuckers and fuckees were fucked.

Elmer hooked up a piggyback camera. He laced wires to the camera already aimed at the bed.

He’d see everything Ed the Fed saw. That meant Ed the Fed was fucked.

26 (Ensenada, 8:00 P.M., 1/8/42)

Polyglot. That said it. We’re this strange new alliance. We’re strange bedfellows all.

Joan Klein — Jewish waif extraordinaire. Red dress and Red Youthbund dialectic. Dos fascistas — José Vasquez-Cruz and Juan Pimentel. His dear Claire. Besotted by her new daughter. Kyoho Hanamaka — present but unseen.

The restaurant stood on the Malecon. Waves smashed below. Table talk flew polyglot.

In English and Spanish. Plus Claire and the Klein girl’s French.

Dudley ignored it. He was back at the hidey-hole. He revisited it at whim. Hanamaka cached his secret life there. That meant he’d be coming back. He might send a trusted stooge in his stead. Captain D. L. Smith crashed his secret life. Hanamaka must not know.

He found a second-floor trapdoor. It supplied quick access and was well devised and disguised. He refitted the boards and replastered the wall he broke in through. He celebrated his seamless job. He stole the gold bayonet.

Table talk droned on. It was trilingual and smug. Vasquez-Cruz flirted with Claire. Pimentel flirted with Joan. The girl found a big sister. Claire found a kid sister. Let’s discuss the war and sing the “Internationale.”

He weighed the bayonet. It ran 8.2 pounds. The swastika was stunningly embossed. He issued an APB. Kyoho Hanamaka/all Mexican states/hold and detain. He studied the photos in his Statie file. Hanamaka’s hands were burn-scarred. It was not explained.

He studied the file. No Baja address was listed. Hanamaka lived at the hideaway. That seemed certain now.

Hanamaka.

Fifth Column warlord. Es la verdad. Embroiled in two sub fiascos. Allied with leftists and rightists abroad. Es la verdad, as well.

The Fatherland and Mother Russia greet him. They present their indigenous horror. He crafts his memory book.

Hanamaka.

He might be in the U.S. His Jap visage would endanger him there. Someone abetted his flight. Governor Juan Lazaro-Schmidt might have pitched in.

The wall-panel cache lies intact. Lieutenant Pimentel is his watchdog. He’s ensconced in a nearby house. He’s got chez Hanamaka surveilled.

Lieutenant Juan’s a technical whiz. He developed a plan to tap incoming calls to Baja pay phones. SIS has shot him a hot work assignment. Decode suspect slug calls from the U.S.

Table talk droned. Young Joan spun tales. Garment strikes and Uncle Shmuel of the Yiddish Tagelblatt. The Jews proclaim their woes and boo-hoo the world’s vexation.

Vasquez-Cruz said, “Captain Smith appears to be bored.”

Pimentel said, “His women are ignoring him. Captain Smith requires their constant attention.”

Vasquez-Cruz twirled an ashtray. “Miss Klein’s regard for Leon Trotsky gets his goat.”

Dudley winked at the lads. “At least he was killed in Mexico. You’ll always have bragging rights there.”

“Trotsky” tweaked Young Joan. She raised her seltzer glass and pinged Claire’s wineglass.

“Comrade Trotsky, lady and gentlemen. The antidote to Fascism at home and abroad.”

Dudley raised his glass. Los fascistas went tut-tut. The whole gang imbibed. Musicians table-hopped and scrounged tips. They wore pink floral shirts and plaid cummerbunds. They carried trumpets and jiggled maracas.

Vasquez-Cruz ordered a rhumba and slipped the maraca man chump change. He bowed to Claire. She stood up and offered her hand. They walked to the dance floor and found their hip-popping fit.

Dudley watched. It sent him back. This spic’s hands on Claire. He recalled a precedent.

That dance in London. 1922. The Irish Citizens Army sent him in to plant bombs. A protty boy asked his date to dance. He said, “You don’t mind, do you, Paddy?”

The boy danced with her. He encircled her waist. Dudley Liam Smith, age sixteen. Here’s a dilemma.

The dance crowd dwindled. His date drifted off with her sister. He followed the boy down a dark road and blew his brains out.

Vasquez-Cruz held Claire’s hips and steered her. Pimentel watched Dudley watch. Young Joan watched it all.

She had small brown eyes. She wore glasses. She spoke Yiddish and French. She had long black hair with gray swirls. Gray hair at fifteen. Your call — benighted or possessed.

Pimentel said, “My captain has abridged the social code. I would not ask another man’s woman to dance without first seeking permission.”

Dudley lit a cigarette. “You abridge the officers’ code of conduct, Lieutenant. Your comment was impolitic, however well put and well taken.”

Pimentel smiled. “My captain appears to have misjudged you. You demand diffidence from your fellows. You offer loyalty and camaraderie in return.”

Young Joan walked out on the dance floor. She tapped Claire on the shoulder and cut in. Claire bowed and deferred. Vasquez-Cruz and Young Joan took up the beat. His hands went straight to her hips.

Claire walked back to the table. Pimentel excused himself and walked off. Good lad — such decorum.

Claire pointed to Vasquez-Cruz. “I’ve seen him before. I know it.”

Dudley pointed to Young Joan. She danced a mean rhumba.

“How does she get by?”

“She steals out of stores. She hasn’t asked me for anything, but she appreciates the clothes I buy her.”

Dudley said, “I’m going to have her tailed.”

They walked back to the hotel. Harbor lights blinked. Young Joan took Claire’s arm. They mimicked nineteenth-century daguerreotypes. Faux Parisians stroll Saint-Germain.

The Malecon cut inland. Shoreline hostelries loomed. They bucked a sea wind, three abreast. Alleyways bisected the sidewalk. Gaslamps lit narrow footpaths.

They walked single file. Claire said something. Young Joan slid on wet asphalt and went whee!

A man stepped in front of them. He moved alleyway to lamplight. He was unkempt and looked dissolute. He verged on raggedy-ass.

He’s got a revolver. He’s aiming it. It’s a hand cannon. The hammer’s cocked.

He yelled slogans. They were nonsensical. He braced his gun arm and aimed straight ahead. Dudley pulled his piece. His arm fluttered, his aim fluttered, he fired two shots wide.

A second man stepped out. He moved alleyway to lamplight. He’s young and sleek. Note the twill shirt and armband. He’s got a sawed-off shotgun.

He tripped two triggers. Muzzle flare lit the load:

Steel scraps/tight-packed/trench-warfare-slaughter weaponry—

The Slogan Man blew up. Such blood you’ve never seen. The scraps disemboweled him. His gun arm severed and flew.

Claire and Young Joan fell back. Dudley body-blocked them and covered their eyes. The Sleek Man dipped his fingers in the Slogan Man’s blood.

He said, “Comunista.” He spat on the corpse. He saluted Dudley and ran off.

Opium.

Kwan’s basement. His private den. The tar, the match, the pipe. His body anesthetized, his mind relinquished and adrift.

He drove to L.A., impromptu. He wanted to see Mike and Dick. He wanted to see Jim Davis. He wanted to conspire with Ace and cultivate Hideo Ashida.

Dudley smoked opium. He dipped elsewhere. He leaped time and rewrote History. He went with the tar and the pipe.

Stopover, Ensenada. All-too-recent History. Bleak moments, last night.

Statie Blackshirts arrived. They cased the stiff and called for a morgue van. He walked down that bisecting alley. He saw wet-blood artwork on a wall.

A garland of swastikas. An “SQ” wrapped in coiled snakes.

The Slogan Man remains unidentified. The Sleek Man, likewise. The attack might be premeditated. The attack might be happenstance.

His uniform denotes random target. The D. L. Smith persona denotes something else. Last month’s knife attack. Last night’s attack. Dudley Liam Smith attracts HATE.

Stopover, Europe and the eastern steppes. Here, you become someone else.

You’ve touched his uniforms and gold bayonet. You’ve read his diary. Don the attire, now. Live the History and wield the bayonet.

You’re Kyoho Hanamaka. You’re a little Jap with burn-scarred hands and a consuming appetite. You feast on horror as it disillusions you. Your diary exposits one great theme. Ideology is solely a means of entrapment and thus a barbaric shuck.

The Fascist Right. The Communist Left. Divergent in rhetoric. Identical at their core.

The Reds embrace wretchedness and promise peasants tasty gruel and a warm place to shit. They scapegoat capital and hoard it to build prison camps and tanks. The Nazis embrace Norse gods and exalt art. They extoll civilization as the Reds defame it as bourgeois. They scapegoat Jews because Jews contravene the all-is-beautiful Nazi aesthetic. The Nazis and Reds tell the selfsame lie in boldly diverse guise. Both lies indict the democratic West and defame it as naïve and effete.

Totalitarianism will win. The rabble will opt for conformed identity over chaos. Which lie will you accede to? Which hidey-hole uniform will you don?

Dudley Liam Smith, Sturmbannführer.

You donned the uniform at that party. You enacted the Night of the Long Knives. Now, wield your gold bayonet.

Stopover, Baja. Your Army duties summon you.

He read a Fed Teletype this morning. Agent Ed Satterlee wrote it. Now, hear this:

The rumors persist. Coded phone calls have been received. There’s been L.A. pay-phone to Baja pay-phone traffic. The Baja pay phone was tapped and thence transcribed. This was revealed:

There are hidden Jap airfields in San Berdoo County. No exact locations have been determined. Indio and Brawley are both rumored. He should talk to Juan Pimentel. Juan developed the phone-tap technique.

Opium.

The tar, the match, the pipe. His mind untethered, his imagination adrift.

He pictured a lineup stage. The lights remain bright. The height strips extend. The dead and the missing stand tall.

Eddie Leng and Donald Matsura. Tommy Glennon and Kyoho Hanamaka. They burn under stage lights. He interrogates them. They reveal their interconnectedness and tell him nothing else.

Ex-Chief Jim Davis. He’s vivid — if in decline.

He’s sclerotic and obese. He’s half-mad and ravaged by aphasia. He still packs two belt guns. He was a Great War doughboy. He’s tight with spic dictators and nativist hucksters. He’s volatile and sentimental. He’s mentored Elmer Jackson and Whiskey Bill Parker.

They dined at Kwan’s. Jim slurped shark-fin soup. His color was off. Malaria yellow meets dead-man gray.

“I was hoping I could ask a few favors, Chief.”

“For you the world, Dud. You say ‘Jump,’ I say ‘How high?’ ”

Dudley sipped tea. “Keep your snout down. There appears to be a Chink and Jap Fifth Column play afoot.”

Jim slurped soup. He dribbled up his suit coat. Dudley tossed him a napkin.

“And, I’d be grateful if you’d continue to watchdog Elmer Jackson. I realize that you and Ace leaned on him, but the warning might not have held.”

“I taught Elmer the whore business. He was a wet-behind-the-ears jarhead when I met him. I made him the man he is today.”

Dudley said, “He bears your imprimatur, Chief. He’s suave in the Jim Davis manner.”

Jim fidgeted. He blotted his necktie and pushed his soup bowl away.

“I’m going batshit, Dud. I’ll blow a gasket if I don’t tell someone.”

“Tell them what, Jim?”

“That Werewolf creep’s no killer. I killed the Watanabes.”

27 (Los Angeles, 1/9–1/23/42)

Fire and gold.

Scholar’s lark.

Ex officio quest.

Her father burned to death. It taught her to fight and think. That fire drove her to this riddle of two intertwined deaths. The possible-probable arson and the mint-train heist merged there. The gold symbolized her blown shot at the war.

She’s a treasure hunter. She’s the female Karl Tullock and Wayne Frank Jackson. She broods on gold. She’s bought books and done library research. She’s studied gold like she once studied fire.

She bought herself solid-gold cuff links. They cost half a week’s pay. She found treasure magazines in a used bookshop. She fell prey to Congolese diamonds and man-eating pygmies. She succumbed to gold artifacts in Malaysian caves. She’s a scientist. She stood outside her fixation and watched herself swirl. She’s a sensationalist. She fell prey because it felt good.

She’s studied PD and FD Arson Squad reports. She’s read up on the dead CCC men. No leads surfaced there. She’s logged morgue time with Dr. Nort Layman. No further leads surfaced. Dr. Nort formalized it. Karl Tullock is the man in the box.

The downtown library’s her refuge. It’s a brooder’s perch. Newspaper rolls report the gold and the fire. She’s gone from ignorant to expert. She’s a scientist trained to hypothesize.

Just like Hideo Ashida. He’s her scholar’s-lark confrere.

She hit the library late one night. She looked up and saw Ashida. He was studying her. The moment unnerved her. She realized this:

He’s omitting and dissembling. He’s withholding. He knows things that he will not reveal.

The gold consumes him. He craves it as substance and money. He may see it as the means to abrogate wartime injustice. He may crave it out of pure greed.

Gold is money. It would buy her a cabin in lake-bound Wisconsin. It would buy British shotguns and hunting dogs. She could shoot quail and sleep with her dogs. Provocative men might appear.

Scholar’s lark.

Treasure hunt.

Potent riddle.

The drudge work that pays her rent and counterweights her lust for the gold.

She works confiscations. The Alien Squad raids Japanese homes and impounds property. Appliances, guns, shortwave radios. Flags and political hate tracts. Ashida translates the tracts. She transcribes the dreary content.

They run ballistics tests on impounded guns and compare the results to custody pieces. They dismantle appliances and look for hidden explosives. They’ve found none to date.

The squad rousts are overzealous and waged against passive foes. The U.S. government has instituted full-scale internment. She’s observed brutal rousts and has a sense of the boys.

There’s Lieutenant Collier. He’s the permissive boss. Elmer Jackson and Lee Blanchard are the sweethearts. There’s Wendell Rice, George Kapek, and Catbox Cal Lunceford. They’re the Rodent Squad. They manhandle their prisoners and steal what they can.

Her work entails Lincoln Heights Jail runs. Ashida goes with her. They inspect the property of already-jailed Japs. Rank-and-file Japs hate Ashida. They hiss and spit at him. They curse him in Japanese. It started with Pearl Harbor and the Watanabe case.

He’s the white man’s slave. He’s the PD’s toady. He’s a tong shitheel. He sucked the big white dick and sidestepped internment. He’s a traitor and the real fascist. The big white woman is his whore.

She feels kinship with Ashida then. It dissolves fast. She’s always been good with men. Ashida’s the one man she can’t touch.

She’s assumed a role. She’s the handmaid to a cloistered patriarchy. She’s met Jack Horrall and Mayor Fletch Bowron. They radiate good cheer and casual corruption. The PD is rankly corrupt and headed toward rank incompetence. Good men go off to the war. Unfit “war hires” replace them. Cops fear the draft and the phone-tap probe.

She understands men. They’re seducible. Hideo Ashida is not.

She faked an excuse and dropped by his hotel suite. It was her sole visit. She angled her way in. Ashida’s living quarters impressed her.

The Biltmore. A large parlor and three bedrooms. Dudley Smith’s patronage and largesse.

She met Ashida’s affable brother and boozed-up mama-san. She went through Ashida’s bedroom en route to the john. She rifled drawers and found a boxed photo stash.

Candid pix. A boys’ locker room backdrop. A lanky boy in the foreground. He’s naked and toweling his hair.

She recognized him. He was Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert. She saw him fight in Milwaukee. He headlined a big card and knocked out a stumblebum.

The photos saddened and repulsed her. They force-fed her Hideo Ashida’s sickness and corruption. They backlit his complicitous bond with Dudley Smith.

Lyman’s. The all-night rumor mill. Here’s the tattle on Sergeant/now Army Captain Smith.

His blithe expediency. His axman-to-Jack-Horrall status. His rivalry with Captain Bill Parker. Their Watanabe-case clash.

She’s seen him at Lyman’s and Kwan’s. He’s a ravishing man. Hideo Ashida must be in love with him.

Which gives her pause. Which tells her to dissemble. Which tells her to withhold fire and gold leads. She knows that he’s omitted. He’s most likely up on her there.

Ashida underestimates women. He cannot see them. Let him underestimate you as he seems to underestimate Kay Lake.

They costar in the Male PD Drama. Joan Conville’s the handmaid. She’s PD-employed and has professional cachet. Kay Lake’s a specious seductress and brainy bawd. And William H. Parker stands between them.

Rumor: Kay Lake tears through men. Ask the long-aggrieved Lee Blanchard. Rumor: Kay and Whiskey Bill are yet to consummate. Rumor: Kay Lake shivved a bull dyke cop named Dot Rothstein. Dot’s pal Dudley Smith nixed reprisals. Rumor: Bill Parker and “Big Red” are madly enjoined.

No, it’s not true.

He’s an alcoholic voyeur. He abbreviates his marital vows. He does not trash them. They’ve kissed three times. Twice at the Biltmore. Once outside City Hall. Brenda Allen witnessed that last kiss.

He isn’t tall and handsome. His Catholicism gores her Protestant core. His wild grit mirrors her own and almost makes her love him.

Bill Parker knows from sin. It’s a shared papist-protty trait. Bill Parker revealed his great sin of omission.

They were half-gassed at Lyman’s. He told her that Two-Gun Davis killed the four Watanabes. Davis sat at the bar, a few feet away.

Parker solved the crime himself. Davis confessed to him. Parker withheld the solution from the at-large PD. The crime derived from Fifth Column intrigue.

Davis acted alone. His lunatic cohort did not participate. Rich America Firsters roamed the periphery. Japanese and Chinese saboteurs joined them. The band redefined Treasonous Alliance.

There was a Chinese physician. He was a plastic surgeon/eugenicist and very right-wing. There was a Beverly Hills psychiatrist. He was very left-wing. He pandered to film stars and socialites and snitched them off to the Feds.

Parker devastated her. She told him to reveal Two-Gun’s guilt and exonerate Werewolf Shudo. Parker refused. He cited Shudo’s sex-assault priors. He stressed this fact: Jim Davis indicted would destroy the PD.

She relented. Her protty guilt pushed her back. She got drunk and plowed the Mexicans. That meant two four-count indictments. Four dead wetbacks and four dead Watanabes.

It was her sin omitted. Bill Parker covered it up. Their shared complicity ran breathless deep.

She went to the library. She read Sid Hudgens’ series on the Watanabe case. Hudgens fawningly praised Dudley Smith. Equal praise went to Hideo Ashida.

Parker and Smith chat at Lyman’s and Kwan’s. She’s observed their brusque civility and the hatred underneath. They attend the same church. They drink with Archbishop Cantwell and confess to Monsignor Joe Hayes. They worship God, to the detriment of God’s law.

She drinks and jousts with Bill Parker. They drink, to their equal detriment. She worked a property-confiscation string with Hideo Ashida. They bagged a terpin hydrate still. The owner killed himself at the Lincoln Heights Jail.

She filched a dozen terp vials from Don Matsura’s apartment. She wanted to experience the effect. She consumed two vials in the back room at Lyman’s. She entered a vivid dream state.

She saw forest fires near Tomah, Wisconsin. She shotgunned a drunken Indian. She woke up on the couch. Dudley Smith looked down at her.

He said, “Hello, lass. You were extolling the wonders of gold in your sleep.”

28 (Los Angeles, 1/9–1/23/42)

Gold.

He stole the bar and stashed it in his hotel suite. He kept the key and called Lock-Ur-Self Storage. He learned the provenance of locker 648.

It was a permanent rental. A “John Jones” paid the full fee in June ’31. A file card listed John Jones’ address. It was a fake.

Dead end.

He reprowled Lock-Ur-Self and brought his evidence kit. He print-dusted 648 and got smudges and rubber-glove prints.

Dead end.

He wants the gold. Joan Conville wants the gold. He saw Joan at the library. She was reading old newspapers and jotting notes. He cruised the reference desk and scanned Joan’s request slip. The words fire and gold jumped out.

Joan knows most of what he knows. He’s certain of that. She knows nothing of Lock-Ur-Self. She has not seen the gold. He’s far ahead of her there.

The gold.

It’s Joan’s idée fixe. She wears gold cuff links. She works in the lab and fondles them constantly. She’s clocked him clocking her. Their omissions and suspicions reverberate both ways. She’s seen all the reports and news clips that he’s seen. She queried him per his ballistics tests. He laid out the liquor-store spree. Joan extrapolated. She said, “Fritz Eckelkamp. Liquor stores were his métier.”

She’s a natural detective. She knows how to cull facts and think. They have not discussed fire or gold since.

He subtly pumped Elmer Jackson. He quizzed him per Wayne Frank’s death and gold idée fixe. He curveballed “Karl Frederick Tullock.” Elmer deadpanned the name.

Wayne Frank and Karl Tullock. This simple conclusion. They converged in Griffith Park that day. This less simple question perplexed him. The gold nugget in Tullock’s trouser cuff. How did it get there?

He sought to buttress his fire-case logic. He set out to establish a certain Box Man ID. He recalled gossip. The Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Bertillon-charted their deputies.

The men were comprehensively measured. Hand spans/arm and leg lengths/twelve phrenological marks. He could measure Box Man. He would measure up or he would not.

He called the SB Personnel Office and stiffed the request. He said it pertained to a missing-persons job. The photostat arrived the next day.

He went by the morgue. Nort Layman was out. He consulted the Bertillon chart and duplicated the measurement regime.

He measured hand spans/arm lengths/distances between toes. He tape-wrapped the skull and plumbed the occipital sockets. Box Man and Chart Man measured up exactly.

October 3, ’33. The two gold seekers converge in Griffith Park and die there that day. Those are facts. The rest is conjecture.

He tracked conjectural logic. It led him back to the ballistics bulletins. He’d studied the spent lodged in Karl Tullock’s skull. He got that partial lands-and-grooves read. It partially matched the liquor-store spents.

He walked over to the DB and pored through Robbery files. He snagged a file for the ’33 liquor-store spree. He saw an eyeball-witness sketch. It vaguely resembled Elmer’s Wayne Frank wallet pic.

He walked back to Central Station. A basement storeroom housed misdemeanor files. He breathed dust and mold and tore his hands bloody. He wagered on this:

Alky Wayne Frank. At loose in L.A., summer ’33. It’s logical. He would have been popped for plain drunk or vagrancy.

He dumped file boxes and went through them. It was pure shitwork. He hit a July ’33 box. He caught a “Jackson, Wayne Frank” file tab.

Wayne Frank sustained a vag roust. Note the attached mug shot. It’s a more than vague/half-ass-good match. It veers toward the liquor-store sketch.

Tell Joan Conville none of this. She wants the gold, to your exclusion. Your probity exceeds hers. The gold will buy her a man-trap wardrobe and front-row nightclub seats. The gold is your racial bargaining chip.

You diverge in moral intent. She’s a round-heeled girl out for kicks. You’re out to ensure your family’s freedom. You converge as scientists. You both love gold as an entity.

He went to a jeweler’s. He bought two solid-gold second lieutenant’s bars. They brought Dudley Smith to mind. They warned him of Joan Conville. They told him not to underestimate her.

She’s gifted but erratic. She’s conjoined with the gifted but erratic Bill Parker. Their union comes off deluded. It may play out effective. It mirrors his own union with Dudley Smith.

Ever-gracious Dudley. His proffered Army commission. It carries a price. He’ll abet evil designs. He’ll enter the man trap that is Dudley Smith.

Dudley has usurped Bucky Bleichert. Dudley is now the naked man in his dreams. Dudley calls him twice a week. He always issues directives.

Brace Elmer J. Find out what he’s doing. Bring up Tommy Glennon. Mention Eddie Leng and Donald Matsura. Don’t forget the sketchy Lin Chung.

He quizzed Elmer. He was subtle. Elmer sloughed him off. He told Dudley that Elmer felt clean. He said the Glennon/Leng/Matsura/Chung alliance felt Fifth Column.

Dudley told him to scour J-town for Kyoho Hanamaka. He’s dubbed Hanamaka Baja’s spy king. Hanamaka runs Baja’s boss saboteur cell. Dudley wants to extort the cell and limit the extent of their damage.

Baja suits Dudley. He’s created a second family there. He’s got Claire and her street-urchin daughter. Dudley’s screen sleuth Charlie Chan. He’s Dudley’s #1 son.

He loves Dudley’s egalitarianism. He loves Dudley’s realpolitik. Dudley sees the internment as fear-spawned race hate. The Manzanar camp opens March 25. The Owens Valley broils in the summer and sustains winter’s deep freeze.

Dudley, the Irish arriviste. Dudley, ever strategic. Dudley, most chilling here:

“I’ve heard that Bill Parker and your colleague Joan Conville make quite the pair. I met lovely Joan at Lyman’s recently, and became somewhat entranced. Any friend of Bill Parker’s merits my attention. Please keep me apprised of Miss Conville’s activities.”

Dudley denotes equal measure. You love him and fear him proportionately. You submit to him because it delights him and proves your utility.

Lieutenant Hideo Ashida, Army SIS.

You will survive and exploit this war by Dudley Smith’s sole decree.

29 (Los Angeles, 1/9–1/23/42)

He’s scared. It crept up, belated. Oooga-booga. Dem demons done launched demselves his way.

He’s scared of the war. He’s scared of the draft. He’s scared of Jap infantry. He’s ex — Marine Corps. They’ll resnag his cracker ass and get his cracker ass slayed quick.

That’s surefire terror. It’s regulation issue. It’s standard for this shitstorm time and place. It pales before his fear of Dudley Smith.

Oooga-booga. It’s like he back in de ole south. He done ex-caped Parchman. De hellhound’s on his trail.

Dud won’t kill him. He’s too tight with Brenda and Jack H. Dud’s too savvy for Murder One. He’ll just nullify his redneck ass in some cagey way.

The hellhound’s got him pinned. The beast’s baying baleful. Elmer, why’d you pull all this meddlesome shit?

Well, it’s my case, hound. It’s my very own big-deal investigation. That means Glennon/Leng/Matsura/Chung et al. I’ve got to wrap it up for some special woman — and Dud just got in the way.

Who’s the woman, shithead?

I don’t know — but L.A.’s full of candidates.

He’s scared. He’s restless. Diverse shit’s coming and going. The Box Man job went pffft. Dr. Nort, Big Joan, and Hideo did what they could. He retooled memory lane and jawed with Wayne Frank in his dreams. But Wayne Frank’s still dead and buried. Who’s the Box Man? Who gives a shimmering shit?

There’s still his case. It’s breaking wide. Where will it go?

He’s got address-book names. Tommy G.’s oddball KAs. We’ll start with Monsignor Joe Hayes. He’s a mick priest and Dudster KA. That tong rumor: “Tommy’s poking some priest.”

There’s this Jean Staley twist. He ran her through R & I. File checks revealed this:

She’s thirty-three. She’s a carhop. She fell behind maryjane, back in ’36. She did six months honor farm and thenceforth kept her snout clean.

He might brace her. She might tattle Tommy for some scurvy misdeeds. She might be bored and het up and sleep with him.

Ed Satterlee might roust Huey Cressmeyer. Ed’s considering it. He’ll write Ed’s script and peep the sweatbox mirror. Ed’s a phone-book man. Huey’ll be hurtin’ for certain.

Huey might hold his mud. Huey might break. Huey might reveal Tommy’s whereabouts or some extraneous dish. Here’s for sure — Dud will get wind of it quick.

Ed hasn’t utilized Brenda’s trick spot. He’s checked the piggyback camera four times to date. Ed’s on some trap-spies crusade. He’s out to honey-bait Fifth Columnists. The wall peek could yield roundabout leads on his case.

Ed’s played out as a white man. It rebuts his nosebleed rep. Ed’s evinced high class per the phone-tap hullabaloo.

“You’re afraid we’ve got wires on you, right? Okay, I’ll give you the chance to listen to any calls you might be on. You can erase them, if we keep it on the q.t.”

Wartime camaraderie. Spy chasers afield. Plus, new folks orbiting through.

There’s Hideo Ashida. He’s all-time tight with El Dudley. There’s Big Joan. She allegedly scares Hideo. Joan haunts Lyman’s and trades looks with Kay Lake. Oooga-booga — she de hellhound on Kay’s trail.

The war’s shifting things. The draft’s depleting the PD. The phone probe’s an undulating undercurrent. Jack Horrall wants to ride the war and probe out and retire. Let Thad Brown or Bill Parker take over then.

He braced Jack at Kwan’s. Rotate me back to Vice, boss. I hate the Alien Squad. Most of these Japs were sandbagged. They ain’t pulled no ruinous shit.

Jack said, “The Squad rates you war-essential. Stick it out, son. If you rotate back to Vice, you’re draft bait.”

Sage fucking advice.

The war’s got folks calculating. Brenda’s pulling away from him. Ellen’s veering back to her husband. Hideo’s running off to Baja. The Dudster’s got his hooks in deep.

Hideo’s feeling his oats. He blows off his bodyguards. Him and Lee Blanchard got pink-slipped there. The crime lab’s fielding a Jap-woman team. The goddamn rain won’t stop.

The Box Man job worked some hoodoo on him. He’s had all these Wayne Frank dreams. Plus dreams of tall redheads in gold lamé gowns.

The war’s a moneymaker. His call biz has gone gold post — Pearl Harbor. Everybody’s scared and fucking willy-nilly. He got plastered and tried to kiss Kay. She pushed him away and said this:

“The war’s got us all by the scruff of the neck. That doesn’t mean we should succumb.”

Sage fucking advice.

He wants to succumb. He’s more hopped up than scared. That’s his dilemma here.

30 (Baja and Los Angeles, 1/9–1/23/42)

He can’t shake the thought. He can’t exploit it for profit. The revelation bodes CATASTROPHE.

Jim Davis slaughters four Japs. He tells his ex-adjutant. Bill Parker keeps mum, so far as we know. Parker is a grandiose drunk. He’s remorseful and suffused with blind ambition. He probably won’t blab. Jim Davis has blabbed twice already.

A gaudy psychopath seeks absolution. Father D. L. Smith grants it. He now knows this:

Lin Chung was privy to the Watanabe snuffs. Ditto Claire’s doctor chum, Saul Lesnick. Jim Davis runs amok. The local Fifth Column bodes, crazily diffuse and politically inclusive.

He’s scared. He’s hamstrung. He can’t kill Jim Davis or Bill Parker. He ran the Watanabe job. Widespread knowledge of Jim Davis’ guilt would create widespread panic. It would keelhaul Jack Horrall and Hideo Ashida. It would ruin one D. L. Smith.

He’d face criminal indictment. He’d forfeit his Army commission. His dear Claire would disavow him. He’d stand condemned.

He’s scared. He’s hamstrung and stalemated there. His Baja work compensates.

He discussed the pay-phone taps with Juan Pimentel. The deciphered codes suggest Jap air bases in San Berdoo County. The specific wording suggests rumor more than hard fact. He forwarded the allegation to Fourth Interceptor. They knew the rumor already. They considered it hogwash.

José Vasquez-Cruz considers it hogwash. He’s got a brand-new hobbyhorse. He wants to infiltrate U.S. diplomatic junkets. The notion consumes him. It’s his #1 intel priority.

El Capitán is politically savvy. He hates FDR. FDR’s Latin American stance is “One Big Red Ruse.” Franklin “Double-Cross” Rosenfeld has seduced film folk en masse. He’s sending them out to hawk the Jew Deal and the Allied war effort.

Captain D. L. Smith has blackmailed numerous film stars. Vasquez-Cruz wants him to recruit junketeering informants. Claire finds Vasquez-Cruz suspicious and attractive. They danced, hands on hips. Captain D. L. Smith noticed it then.

Claire lives within herself. He feels her slipping away. She’s a capable woman, underemployed. She pervs on odd beaners and boots morphine. She communes with Joan Klein. Young Joan steals from stores. He’s spot-tailed her and observed her thefts.

She consigns junk jewelry to street vendors and takes a quarter cut. She’s a petty thief and seasoned prevaricator. He was killing British soldiers at her age. He likes the girl nonetheless.

He likes Juan Pimentel. Lieutenant Juan is competent and adroit. He watchdogs Kyoho Hanamaka’s hideaway. He sees Captain Smith visit the premises. Captain Smith locks himself in and lingers loooooong.

He visits the wall cache. He brings the gold bayonet. He poses with it.

He found a discreet tailor in T.J. The man altered wall-cache uniforms to fit him. He’s bypassed the Russian garb. He poses in Wehrmacht gray and SS black.

A cobbler fitted him with jackboots. He bought a sheath for the gold bayonet. His fascist trousseau stands complete.

The bayonet consoles and confounds him. He’s run a magnifying glass down the whole length. He picked up the probable remnants of U.S. mint marks. Buff-out marks also appear.

The provenance. That’s what confounds him. FDR banned gold hoarding back in ’33. The dictate was widely ignored. Let’s indulge fantasy here.

There’s a wealthy U.S. fascist. He employs an artisan. A gold bar is cut into bayonet shape. It makes its way to the Fatherland and Kyoho Hanamaka. Fetishistic horror ensues.

Provenance. A fantasy rendition. Fantasy as necessity and a firewall against chaos.

A man tried to kill him. That made two attempts in two months. He scanned Statie mug-shot books. He ID’d his second would-be assassin.

The Slogan Man. Victor Trejo Caiz. Born Calexico, 1901. Priest killer under Kommisar Calles. Commandant of a Redshirt Battalion. In disfavor under Lázaro Cárdenas. Suspected wheelman for the Leon Trotsky snuff.

Caiz was the Slogan Man. Está muerto now. The Sleek Man killed him. He mug-shot ID’d the Sleek Man. He’s one Salvador Abascal.

The Sinarquista Führer. Born 1910. Blood foe of all Reds and anticlerical slime. Devout Catholic hegemonist. Fiery supporter of the Irish Republican cause.

A man to honor. A man to covet. A man to scrutinize.

He drove south on a whim. He hit Magdalena Bay and surveilled the Sinarquista encampment. He watched a priest perform outdoor Mass for six hundred Greenshirts.

Abascal gave a rip-roaring speech. He stood too far off to hear. He admired the Führer’s fluent gestures and delivery.

He drove back to Ensenada. Joe Hayes called. He was in town with Charlie Coughlin and the Archbishop. They came to fish and drink. “And, you owe us dinner, Dud.”

He made good. They dined at the Hotel del Norte. He steered talk to the Sinarquistas. His pals praised Salvador Abascal. Es un hombre magnifico.

Father Charles brought up Tommy Glennon. You know Tommy, don’t you, Joe? Monsignor Hayes blushed and blanched.

Tommy tops the still-missing list. Elmer Jackson seems to have curtailed his rogue antics. The Baja Jap roundups proceed. Two more L.A.-to-Baja pay-phone calls have hit.

They were decoded. Sub berths were abstractly discussed. No exact locations or coordinates were mentioned. It was just abstract chat.

Human voices spieled code words. Said voices were muffled and barely audible. They might have been prerecorded. Pay-phone stakeouts were the logical next step.

He discussed it with José Vasquez-Cruz. El Fascisto was bored. They discussed their racket plans. That perked him up.

Running wetbacks. Running heroin. Moving wets and “H.” Their Utopian vision, shared.

It’s all grand, but—

Jim Davis and Bill Parker still trouble him. Jim’s blabbed twice already. Parker might blab.

Beth Short will visit Baja soon. She’ll be eighteen this summer. She’s his favorite bastard spawn. She wants to quit school and roam. He’ll play stern dad and dissuade her.

It’s all grand, but—

He’s due in L.A. The county grand jury has summoned him. He’s set to testify. He’ll be resolute. Werewolf Shudo killed the four Watanabes. He’ll concede that he may be insane.

It’s all grand, but—

Jim Davis and Bill Parker remain meddlesome.

A recent snapshot blinded him. The bulb glare slowly cleared. He saw lovely Joan Conville at Lyman’s.

She stirs and mutters in her sleep. Her skirt’s hiked. She’s red-haired and rangy. She’s got midwestern je ne sais quoi.

She woke up. They spoke briefly. Now she’s back and blinding him. Dear girl, what took you so long?