This Storm

76 Kay Lake’s Diary (Los Angeles, 9:00 A.M., 2/28/42)

The rental pastor substituted Housman for Scripture. He had quite obviously compiled notes as to who this woman was and opted for lilting elegy. She was cut off in her prime; she had everything this life offers to look forward to; her seat at the banquet was very much assured.

Hardly, sir. Joan Woodard Conville killed herself. She had gorged herself at your banquet already. Stop reciting “To an Athlete Dying Young.” Let me offer up a more suitable graveside selection.

“This storm, this savaging disaster.”

It’s from Auden, sir. Joan quoted it repeatedly and never ascribed a specific source. Auden’s lines summarize Joan’s life since New Year’s Eve. Catastrophic events subsumed her; she fell into the police demimonde that has threatened to subsume me. Her proud grit and resourcefulness took her only so far. Ask the man standing next to me. He was Joan’s lover, and should have been mine. When this service concludes, I will reach into his left pants pocket and pull out his cigarettes. He’s a feckless and erratic man, which serves to blunt his great ambition and yet more spectacular gifts. He’ll flinch when I touch him, and know that I’ve restated my claim.

The PD bounced for the service. A twelve-car cortege traveled out the Arroyo Seco to this hillside memorial park. The service commemorated Joan’s brief transit in Los Angeles, to the exclusion of her Wisconsin years and her nursing school and university stints in Chicago. The mourning corps was all PD, with two exceptions. Joan loved official garb and regalia; I first saw her in her Navy lieutenant’s blues. She would have loved this mourners’ conclave, because she loved a certain breed of man.

Captain Bill Parker wore dress blues; Captain Dudley Smith and Lieutenant Hideo Ashida wore Army olive drab. Jack Horrall, Elmer Jackson, and Buzz Meeks wore dress blues, along with Thad Brown and my cohabiting friend, Lee Blanchard. Nort Layman and Ray Pinker wore black suits; Brenda Allen wore a charcoal gray ensemble. I wore a black cashmere dress, because I look good in it, and because I pander to men as shamelessly as Joan did.

Two men stood apart from the graveside gang. Sid Hudgens eulogized Joan in the Herald. The piece was entitled, “Adios, Big Red,” and bore Sid’s trademark low wit and leer. The subhead read “Girl Forensic Whiz a Suicide. Worked Baffling Cop-Killing Case.”

Adios, Big Red failed to address Joan’s crowded love life and the New Year’s Eve misadventure that brought her to us and to here. Orson Welles stood behind Sid. Joan met him briefly at Otto Klemperer’s. She told me that Dudley savagely beat him and turned him out as an informant. Dudley was Joan’s other lover. I never told her that I knew.

“ ‘Eyes the shady night has shut/Cannot see the record cut,/And silence sounds no worse than cheers/After earth has stopped the ears.’ ”

The pastor droned on. His delivery stank. Spoken poetry requires snap and verve. Elegies should inform rather than soliloquize. Big Red packed a wallop. She was a brilliant forensic biologist and consort of brilliant rogue cops. All men wanted to sleep with her. Don’t mess with Big Red. A drunken Indian groped her. She blew his left foot off with a 10-gauge shotgun. Lee was there for Joan’s New Year’s Eve mishap, and told me the full story last night. Joan’s sodden drive up from San Diego claimed six lives, rather than four. Two of them were children. Bill Parker withheld that fact from her.

The burial crew placed Joan in the ground. I recalled a song I heard at a colored dive in Sioux Falls. “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, stormy weather cause your pump to rust.” I laughed as Joan’s casket went thunk. The pastor glared at me. I’m a cutup, as Joan was. We’re both prairie Protestant girls, and we both believe.

That was it. Adios, Big Red. The wake’s on the PD. Scrambled eggs and booze at Kwan’s await.

I stuck my hand in Bill’s pants pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. Don’t look so shocked, Captain — I loved her just as much as you did.

The wake was boozy and predictably weepy. I sat with Elmer and heard his account of the Negro riot and Catbox Cal Lunceford’s death. Elmer said he’d been scanning mug books, in an attempt to ID the Jap gunman. He was nervous about something but refused to tell me what.

Uncle Ace Kwan served Ming Dynasty Eggs and his world-famous mai tais. He is a remorseless psychopath, known crime partner of Dudley Smith, and Jack Horrall’s Chinatown enforcer. I sipped a single mai tai and chain-smoked my way through the wake. The liquored-up testimonies bored me; I indulged my sport of imputing motive as I watched people interact. Only two mourner-celebrants held my interest today. Of course: Bill Parker and Dudley Smith.

They are both devoutly Catholic and bound by faith and enmity; I share a recent history with both men. Pearl Harbor storm-tossed our lives and revealed startling opportunities. Joan succumbed to them in the romantic form of Dudley and Bill. I was more circumspect and possessed the presence of mind to avoid Dudley at all costs. Our one clash was brief and remains unacknowledged by the police world and by Dudley himself. I very simply love Bill and want him for my own. Joan gave herself to both men; it was a stunning act of idiot courage and self-abnegation.

Both men stood at the bar; they eyed each other sidelong and retained a decorous distance. They were brusquely civil in all their dealings and only met to negotiate. Bill respected and despised Dudley. Dudley respected Bill and glibly concealed his hatred. Each was astonishingly aware of the other’s presence. I saw it now. I watched them drink, smoke, and talk to others as they remained in psychic sync. Ace Kwan walked up and whispered to Dudley; Bill caught every nuance of the approach.

Elmer drifted off to talk to Buzz Meeks. I threw a bold stare at Dudley Smith. I knew he’d turn around and see me at some point. Ever bemused and bent on seduction, he’d smile and wink.

Brilliant girl. It took some fifteen minutes, but the evil bastard did just that.

I went home and practiced. Otto has been teaching me Medtner’s “Sonata Reminiscenza,” and the shifts in tempo continue to perplex me. This was my moment to play the entire piece through, in honor of Joan. I was determined to do it, regardless of gaffes and flubbed notes. The piece depicts the passage of time as both temporal and eternal. I arranged the sheet music on the stand and commenced.

I possess the ability to play and actively daydream in concurrence, and it laid waste my interpretation here. I thought of Otto and his part in smuggling the Shostakovich symphony out of Russia, a convoluted journey with numerous stops scheduled along the way. My impromptu performance was meant to honor Joan, but snapshots of my late friend undercut my concentration. I flubbed a great many notes and scotched my narrative momentum. Otto had received a V-mail letter from Maestro Shostakovich. It contained note sketches meant to portray German tanks approaching Leningrad. I started hitting those notes, and begged Joan’s forgiveness. I played those notes to the point of exhaustion.

The doorbell rang. I got up and walked out to the porch. The postman had left a good-sized package.

It was addressed to me. I noted Joan’s handwriting and return address.

77 (Los Angeles, 4:00 P.M., 2/28/42)

The wake protracted. Joan, we hardly knew ye.

She left him her microscope and gold cuff links. It was symbolic. It meant Follow my lead and carry the torch.

The PD owned Kwan’s today. Jack Horrall deposed Uncle Ace and reigned as potentate. The main dining room was all PD. Cops juiced and table-hopped.

Ashida watched. He sipped tea, cold sober. Cops deferred to him now. He held Army rank and carried a gun. He soared at the riot. Close-range dumdums inflicted brutal damage. He felt no remorse. That could change. Kill now, pay later. Hold for probable nightmares.

Jack H. worked the bar. He rolled dice with Thad Brown and chomped rumaki sticks. Breuning and Carlisle snoozed in their booth. Lee Blanchard arm-wrestled Lew Collier. Buzz Meeks showed off his pet scorpion. Elmer Jackson fed the beast chop suey tidbits.

Ashida eye-tracked Elmer. Cal Lunceford’s death stank. Elmer’s part felt schizy and all wrong. Jack Horrall dumped the Lunceford snuff. Catbox Cal knew Rice and Kapek and veered hard right. Screw Cal, over and out. Thad Brown debriefed Elmer and took a threadbare statement. Thad bought the “unknown” Jap suspect. Sayonara — that’s it.

Elmer caught his eye and table-hopped over. He maneuvered a highball and a plate of egg rolls. He plopped down and stroked his broken heart.

“I’m grieving for Red. I should have stolen her away from them shitheels Parker and Smith. She was too much woman for them. I would have tamed her rangy ass with my warm redneck love. We would have bred some good-looking kids.”

Ashida smiled. “Kay’s your woman. If you have to love from afar, she’s the one.”

Elmer belched. “You’re on target today. Dead-eye Hideo. You take some scalps, and it goes to your head.”

“Kay called me. She said Joan sent her a package, and she wants to meet with us to discuss it.”

“Us? Yours truly, E.V. Jackson? I never say no to a hobknob with Kay, but you’ve got me scratching my head.”

Joan kept a diary. They’d discussed the contents. The diary described everything. The gold. Elmer’s gold-crazed brother. The three-case confluence. Kay Lake hates Dudley Smith. She demands an audience, now. It must pertain to the diary. What fresh hell awaits?

Ashida sipped tea. “I read the statement you gave Thad. There were spatial discrepancies in your account of the shooting and the Japanese man’s escape. You’ve worn a spare .38-snubnose in an ankle holster the whole time I’ve known you, but suddenly it’s gone. Lunceford was felled by a .38 Special two-inch. I ran the ballistics myself. You killed him, Elmer. I’ll give you a skate if you’ll tell me why.”

Elmer killed his drink and lit a cigar. He brushed ash off his coat and blew smoke rings.

“Cal was in with a Japanese guy, and he warned him out of the hideout. I caught a glimpse of him, and Cal came at me. I pulled my throwdown piece and dropped him. That’s all you need to know, and all I’m going to say.”

Ashida twirled his teacup. “Did you recognize the Japanese man?”

“Ed Satterlee showed Buzz and me a surveillance pic. It was that Navy guy you and Dud were looking around J-town for.”

“Kyoho Hanamaka?”

Elmer said, “That selfsame hump.”

78 (Los Angeles, 10:00 P.M., 2/28/42)

Uncle Ace pulled the plug. He said, “Time to go. I got business to run. Mourn dead girl enough.”

He pried Breuning and Carlisle off bar stools. He shook Buzz awake. Buzz jiggled El Scorpio’s cage and hexed him. El Dudster and Whiskey Bill were long gone. Ditto Kay and Brenda. The wake veered to stag night. Call-Me-Jack slept it off in his limo. Nort Layman snoozed with him. Thad Brown and Lee Blanchard single-filed out.

Ace said, “Elmer, you go. Chop, chop, you cocksucker. You perpetual thorn in my ass.”

Elmer hit the road. He wolfed bennies and Old Crow and got eroticized. He drove to Brenda’s place and promoted some woof-woof.

It was perfunctory. The postlude went ten seconds. Brenda said, “Shoo. Don’t think you’re spending the night. You’ve got Joan and who knows who else on the noggin. Let me sleep in peace.”

Elmer hit the road. He drove down to the Strip and pay-phoned Ellen. She said, “Okay, sure. But make it a quick one. The baby’s got the flu.”

That dick-wilted him. He went over anyway. It was perfunctory. The postlude stretched. Ellen war-talked him into a coma. Wake Island this. The Solomons that. “Go back in the Marines, you dippy cracker. My husband’s older than you. You’ve got no right to sit this one out.”

Elmer hit the road. He was wide awake and still libidoized. He cut down to La Brea and pay-phoned Annie. She invited him over and said she was hungry. She told him to snag a pizza pie.

Annie lived on Hi-Point off Pico. Elmer found a pizza pit on San Vicente and turned a quick loop. Annie snarfed half the pie and plopped him down on the couch.

She said, “You’re scared. You’ve got the jimjams like I’ve never seen.”

He said, “I’m in the shit like I’ve never seen, and it’s not like the shit and I ain’t acquainted.”

“Is this police-type shit that you aren’t inclined to discuss?”

Elmer rolled his eyes and went Yep. Annie stretched out on the couch and plunked her head in his lap. She yawned and stretched. She pat-patted her mouth.

“Wake me if you get lonely. We’ll play the radio or hit the sack.”

Rain drummed the windows. Annie dozed. Elmer percolated. He lied to Thad Brown. He said he scanned mug books and ID’d Catbox Cal’s killer. It was a dink named Kyoho Hanamaka. He’s the fiend at large.

He covered his tracks there. Hideo uncovered them. Hideo won’t blab. He was re-covered there. Add on Dudley, Buzz, and the Huey snatch. Yeah, sweetie — I’m scared.

Annie started snoring. Elmer hit the road. He drove to Hollywood and B and E’d Jean Staley’s place. It was you’re-way-deep-in-the-shit dark.

He sniffed her lingerie and got transported. He time-traveled Jolting Jean’s life. Beaumont, Texas. The dust bowl. Jean goes west and goes Red. Meyer Gelb’s cell. The Griffith Park fire and Jean’s queer brother. The whole deal induced hink.

Elmer hit the road. It was 3:14 a.m. He knew she’d be there. She’d be wearing the black cashmere dress and sipping the bright red Manhattan. She had permanent back-room access. She was just that jungled up.

Elmer drove to Lyman’s. He’s the mystic maharajah. He nailed it just that tight.

The dress. The cocktail. Kay at Crash Squad HQ. She’s snooping. She’s reading the file carbons tacked to the board.

She said, “I knew you’d show up.”

He said, “I had a hunch you’d be here.”

Kay lit a cigarette. “Something’s frightening you.”

Elmer lit a cigar. “Women keep telling me that.”

“Joan sent me her diary. There’s some things you should know.”

Elmer dug on her dress. It head-bopped him, periodic. There’s only her. There’s no one else.

“You shivved Dudley. It had to be you.”

Kay said, “Yes, it was.”

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

There’s Beth. She’s almost eighteen. She’s stunningly lovely and most stunningly refracts him.

Her small eyes. Her set jaw. Her dark hair. She’ll see him and run to him. This Army captain’s her dad.

Dudley lounged outside Union Station. Porters wheeled luggage carts. Cabs clogged the breezeway. Parked cars stretched up to Alameda. Beth stood on her tiptoes and shielded her eyes.

She’d called him, impromptu. She was up in Vallejo with her cuckold dad. El Cornudo stifled her joie de vivre and made her keep house. It mandated a Baja retreat.

She had blue eyes. He had brown eyes. He was tall, she was petite. They were otherwise of the same—

She saw him and beelined. Her standard gambit was sprint and collide. She knocked him up against his staff car. She dropped her grip and burrowed in.

He said, “My dear girl.”

She said, “I’ve never seen you so handsome.”

They stepped back and squared off. There’s that full view. Beth wore Claire’s Christmas gifts. Twill slacks and a dark red sweater. The ensemble complemented and jazzed up his ODs.

“I’m here. It’s twice in three months, so it must mean that I love you.”

Dudley laughed. “You’re a Boston provincial no longer. You’ve seen Los Angeles, and now you must brace yourself for Mexico.”

They talked themselves hoarse. Beth’s faux dad and half-blood sisters. His rocky road with Claire. Claire’s faux child, Joan Klein. His split L.A. and Baja duties. Compliant Major Melnick cuts him travel slack. Her day-to-day crushes. Cute boys off to war. Navy pen pals, Point Loma to Pearl.

They fell quiet. Beth played the civilian-band radio. She scootched close and laced up his free hand. Swing broadcasts whooshed them south.

They crossed the border and cut through T.J. Beth went agog. His sheltered lass viewed raucous Revolución. She orbed the nude barkers outside the Blue Fox. The famed negrito waved his two-foot dick and drew stellar crowds.

Dudley swung south on the coast road. Half-assed beauty washed out the T.J. stink. High cliffs and sea swells. Fishing craft and Statie speedboats. Full-scale Jap cove alert.

He’s meeting Juan Lazaro-Schmidt in La Paz today. Juan Pimentel’s flying him down. El Governor wants to talk turkey. He wants El Dudster to attend a moving wingding. His cable included a postscript. “You will see through it, of course.”

He misses Hideo. Hideo’s his brilliant son, in with all his daughters. Major Melnick signed a dual-duty chit. Hideo has been assigned to probe spy mischief in L.A. He convinced Melnick that Baja fiends lurked there. “Hideo’s our man, sir. I strongly recommend him.”

It’s a white lie. Hideo will hit L.A. and work the klubhaus job. Lee Blanchard will watchdog him. Field interviews loom.

The case slogged on. They were thirty-two days in. Jack H. fretted the gun angle. Rice and Kapek glommed Jap weapons, wholesale. A great many were likely sold to Boyle Heights pachucos. Thad Brown proposed an East L.A. youth sweep. Roust local cholos. Stress the gun angle. Note this downside:

Some Sinarquista lads might draw heat. That’s discomfiting.

Beth said, “Mexico is hard to fathom. I can’t quite believe everything that I’m seeing.”

“Ensenada is a bit more genteel. I have to fly down to La Paz, but Claire and Young Joan will give you a proper first look.”

“You say ‘Young Joan’ like you’re not sure you should trust her.”

“She’s sui generis, that one. She lacks your grace, but she’s possessed of grit in abundance. I can’t imagine how she’ll turn out.”

Beth smiled. “You take guff from women that you’d never take from men.”

Dudley smiled. “It’s my Achilles’ heel — but don’t tell anyone.”

La Paz.

Off the south Baja coast. Swell Pacific and inland gulf views. Tuna boats and shack shanties. Grand white houses and yet-more-grand churches. Thick foliage and gargantuan insects. All quintessentially Mex.

Captain Juan dropped him at the Statie airfield. They discussed their plans on the flight down. Wetbacks and heroin. Jap slaves, to boot. Captain Juan urged caution. Lazaro-Schmidt was no pendejo.

He’d dropped Beth off at the del Norte. Claire swarmed her and laid on the love. Young Joan was less effusive. Ever watchful, that one.

Dudley cabbed to El Governor’s casa. It was sunny and gulf warm. He wore a tropical-weight suit and a belt piece. Flaunt your allegiance. He wore his swastika lapel pin, face-out.

The casa was built up a hillside. Lazaro-Schmidt knew from flaunt. It was double-deck, peach-pink adobe. The pitched roof was inlaid with hand-painted tiles. Big-name artists’ work on glazed cement. Picassos, Klees, and Kandinskys overlapped. Squiggles and doodles baked in the sun. The effect was modernist chaos.

The front door was flush with the street. Dudley walked up and rang the bell. It sparked shrieks from Strauss’ Elektra. The door clicked open, full automatic.

Dudley stepped inside. The front room dipped below sea level. Four steps took him down. The room was done up fasco moderne.

Thronelike chairs. All brown leather. Ebony tables and settees. Hammered-bronze lamps and Axis-flag-motif carpets. Mussolini’s lair meets Better Homes & Gardens.

Recessed wall paintings. Lit by pink neon tubes. More Picassos, Klees, and Kandinskys. Der Führer and Red Beast Stalin would frown. It was decadent art.

“Franco’s men sacked a train passing through the Pyrenees. These paintings and my roof tiles were to be sold to raise funds for the Loyalist cause. The general and I are old friends. I appreciate art in a way he does not, which explains his most generous bequest.”

Dudley wheeled. The thick carpet threw sparks. There’s Lazaro-Schmidt. Note his cashmere lounge suit. It befits Hermann Goering at play. His swastika pin beams, face-out.

“I’m impressed, sir. Your lovely home expresses a grand theme.”

Lazaro-Schmidt plopped into a throne. Buffed leather engulfed him.

“Which would be?”

“These times we live in. Art as the sole voice that will transcend the clash.”

“ ‘This savaging disaster.’ A friend of mine exhorts crowds with those words.”

Dudley plopped into a throne. He faced Lazaro-Schmidt head-on. The fasco motif disfavored his host. El Governor ran elfin. He lacked Il Duce’s notable heft.

“You may recall our brief chat at the recital, sir. I have schemes to propose and resources to pledge. I can vouch your immediate profits, and all I require is your promise of protection and a wave of your official pen.”

Lazaro-Schmidt smiled. “Wetbacks. We must not euphemize here. I am set to sign the guest-worker pact with California’s Governor Olson in August. It will effectively legalize the temporary immigration of Mexican braceros, who will pick crops in the verdant San Joaquin and Imperial valleys. You wish to move wets north more urgently. All that the traffic will bear. You are prepared to offer me a price per head, and I am prepared to consider offers.”

Dudley smiled. “Yes, but that’s just one operation I have to propose.”

El Governor plucked lint off his lounge suit. He was dainty. He lacked Il Duce’s feral depth.

“Let me anticipate your other proposals. You wish to defray the cost of the Baja internment by housing our resident Japanese in U.S. internment camps and municipal-police road camps for the war’s duration. You have a plan to hide wealthy Japanese in Los Angeles, under the protection of Hop Sing and Uncle Ace Kwan. You plan to implement the heroin racket you took over from José Vasquez-Cruz, belatedly revealed to be Jorge Villareal-Caiz. My official signatures will provide the unrestricted travel visas that you require. They will free you to move wets, Japs, and dope north, free of scrutiny.”

Dudley flicked lint off his trousers. Monkey see, monkey do.

“You know my plans in advance of my comradely pledges and supplications, sir. Have you had me surveilled?”

Lazaro-Schmidt said, “Yes, and I am aware of the purging of Cruz-Caiz’s men that you and Salvy Abascal performed in the wake of El Capitán’s death. I know that you killed Carlos Madrano, in advance of your army posting here in Baja. I have assessed you through secondhand sources, and have largely extrapolated your designs. I am ready to do business with you, should we come to felicitous terms.”

Dudley scanned the room. He saw gold statuettes on a wall ledge. Tigers, panthers, jaguars. Perhaps solid gold.

“I’m chastened, sir. I thought I’d walk in here and knock you off your feet.”

Lazaro-Schmidt laughed. “I am not easily dislodged.”

“Nor am I easily chastened, sir.”

“I will add that I know you are quite concerned with the whereabouts of my friend Kyoho Hanamaka, and further add that I did not facilitate his exit from Mexico, nor do I know where he is now. I know that you have discovered Kyoho’s hideaway, and are spending considerable time there.”

Dudley said, “Yes, and I discovered a gold bayonet in a cache hole. It was swastika-adorned, and I’ve come to learn that there’s a companion piece, adorned with a hammer and sickle.”

It was a curveball. El Governor deflected it.

“I would call Kyoho ambidextrous. He plays the totalitarian field, and he does not know which beast will prevail in the end.”

Dudley said, “The Red Beast, I fear.”

“Yes, the Red Postwar Beast, who will turn on the Allied nations that buttressed its dubious triumph to begin with. This poses a challenge to the more farsighted members of the German high command. They must sow the seeds of their postwar redemption now, while the outcome of the war remains in doubt. They must prove themselves palatable and potentially valuable to the postwar West, and see to the hoarding of monies for their ultimate relocation.”

Dudley fondled his lapel pin. “I’ve heard that there was quite the confab in Ensenada. November of ’40, it was. The Russians and the Kameraden got down to brass tacks. The Hitler-Stalin pact won’t last. One of us must lose this war. How will civilized and enlightened men like us survive in such a predicament?”

Lazaro-Schmidt fondled his lapel pin. “I attended the conference. I told both factions that Mexico might well prove to be a gateway for the establishment of gainful resettlement throughout Latin America, with proper guarantors of safety provided by U.S. Intelligence services based in Mexico herself.”

Dudley said, “I would be loath to hide godless Reds.”

“You won’t have to. Germany will lose the war — and a newly reformed civilized world will require Nazi brainpower to help keep the Red Beast in check.”

Dudley slapped his knees. “Will all unruly Nazi acts be forgiven?”

“Of course. The concept of realpolitik holds sway here. Seeds of reconciliation have already been planted. Humanistically inclined Nazis have begun a process of atonement with world Jewry. You will see a moving example at the ceremony I’ve invited you to. It is realpolitik at its bald-faced best.”

Dudley scanned the wall ledge. He caught a boffo photograph. Abwehr boss Canaris. NKVD boss Beria. A festive cantina backdrop.

“Is that your conclave there?”

Lazaro-Schmidt twinkled. “Indeed. As subtext, I’ll add that Canaris has been leaking German secrets to British Intelligence since ’37, during the same time frame that Beria has been sending parcels to Churchill himself. As further subtext, I’ll add that both men were quite anxious to visit the legendary Blue Fox.”

Dudley roared. The Wolf appeared. He pointed to a photograph on a bookshelf. Dudley studied it. Constanza Lazaro-Schmidt attacked her viola.

El Governor plucked the photograph and passed it over. Constanza bore down bellísima. Her bow threw sparks. She’d snapped a string. Her white gown dipped off one breast.

“My frenzied sister. She was Kyoho Hanamaka’s lover, some time ago.”

The Statie airfield had been prettified. It was a rush job. The theme was Welcome Exiles!!!

WILLKOMMEN signs lined the runway. Statie goons rolled out a red carpet. An old lady distributed pamphlets. They were quasi — symphony programs. A Spanish-language text ballyhooed the virtuosi.

Four uprooted souls. All first-chair musicians. Late of the Dresden Staatskappelle and Hitler’s death camps. Miklos and Magda Koenig. Sandor Abromowitz. Ruth Szigeti. Mittel European Jewry. Austro-Hungarian, all.

Their flight was due. Dudley stood behind a rope line and mingled. The welcome crowd ran forty, tops. They were all Mex and ran to type. Oldster kultur hounds. Konzertgoers in this heathen land.

A small airplane swooped toward the runway. A baggage cart rolled into view. The kultur hounds applauded. A Statie sergeant wheeled the Lazaro-Schmidts. They waved Hungarian flags on sticks.

Governor Juan wore a seersucker suit and white bucks. He eschewed his swastika lapel pin. Constanza wore a pink summer dress and spectator pumps. The Wolf strained at the rope line. He plainly desired her.

The Lazaro-Schmidts hopped off the cart and stood by the red carpet. A Statie corporal carried out a long-cord microphone. Dudley leafed through his program and checked the photographs.

The overfed Koenigs. The aged Abromowitz. The thin-sculpted Ruth Szigeti. They wore symphony black and held stringed instruments. Das Vaterland was good to them then.

The airplane dipped and landed. The pilot fishtailed up to the carpet. The kultur rubes cheered. The Wolf cocked his head and pawed the ground. What is this shit?

The Statie corporal pushed steps up to the airplane. The door swung open. The four refugees filed out.

The men wore overcoats and winter-wool suits. The women wore long dresses and fur wraps. The gulf heat smacked them. They looked like they’d pass out.

They weaved onto the carpet. Lazaro-Schmidt and fair Constanza dispensed abrazos and handshakes. The refugees looked gaunt and all beat-to-hell. They broiled in their winter ensembles. Old man Abromowitz grabbed Ruth Szigeti’s arm for support.

The rubes lapped it up. They tossed bravos. An old girl dipped into a paper sack and tossed rose petals. The Koenigs glared at the crowd. Old Abromowitz reeled. The Szigeti woman waved.

Lazaro-Schmidt braced the microphone. He spoke high-end Spanish and cut straight to the Big Theme Gist. He hit Expiation, Redemption, Reconciliation. He hit Forgiveness and Asylum. Our hermanos y hermanas were spared certain execution. Honor knows no national or ideological boundaries. German men of conscience saw to the rescue of these four gifted people. They are dedicated to the overthrow of Adolf Hitler and determined to create a better tomorrow for all citizens of the world. Our four new friends will be resettled into the exile community in Los Angeles. They will resume their musical careers as this storm of catastrophic war rages around us.

Applause blitzed the wrap-up. Constanza grabbed the mike and announced a reception. “My home, tonight. There will be music.”

The refugees reeled. Sing for your supper. Ruth Szigeti fumed and peeled off her fur coat.

Her arms were bare. Dudley saw torture scars and an SS tattoo.

The Wolf pre-prowled the wingding. Dudley walked the beach outside the house and peeped windows.

Said house was classic Spanish. It ran inimical to El Governor’s modernist spread. A night breeze stirred sand. The Wolf loped back and reported.

The refugees greeted Los Beaners. Well-wishers engulfed them. It was mucho enlightened and disingenuous. El Governor played host. Juan Pimentel wore Statie black and clicked his heels, Nazi-esque. The refugees avoided him. The kultur hounds swilled free champagne and snarfed free hors d’oeuvres.

Constanza circulated. Her dress straps kept slipping down her shoulders. She had short hair and wore no makeup. She went barefoot. Open windows stirred that beach breeze. Her pink dress swirled.

She’d coupled with Kyoho Hanamaka. It was “some time ago.” That mandated thought.

The Wolf curled up on a beachfront chaise. Dudley peeped a picture window. A valet laid out folding chairs. The refugees unpacked their instruments and sat down. Ruth Szigeti wore a black cocktail dress. She rolled up the sleeves and revealed half her tattoo.

They ripped into baleful Bartók. The room went kultur-hushed. Dudley slipped inside and skirted the crowd. He walked toward the back of the house.

Bisecting hallways. Brushed-adobe walls. Hardwood floors and silk tapestry rugs. Garish oil paintings. An all-jungle motif. Green foliage and predator cats.

Dudley opened doors and flipped light switches. He saw servants’ quarters and storage rooms and a closet jammed with skeet guns and horse-riding tack. He opened the adjacent door and caught Constanza’s scent.

She wore sandalwood perfume. He’d smelled it at the del Norte recital and the airfield. He flipped a wall switch. Floor lamps popped on and cast light.

The room ran fifteen-by-fifteen. It featured rough wood walls and floors. Phonograph records, a Victrola, a desk. Ornament shelves and framed wall photographs.

Dudley walked wall-to-wall. The shelves held small gold statuettes. Constanza’s wolf pack glared at him. Male wolves snarled. Mother wolves suckled their cubs. It refracted her brother’s menagerie. It refracted his own wolf worship. He hefted a wolf cub. It was solid gold. Gold plagued him and followed him, everywhere.

He studied the photographs. Constanza feeds jackals large slabs of meat. She’s wearing a bush jacket and safari hat. There’s Constanza kissing a jaguar. She’s wearing a summer dress tossed above her knees.

Constanza feeds wolves. She’s wearing lederhosen and a loden coat. Rhine maiden Constanza. Constanza, the Black Forest nymph.

The German motif extends. Constanza stands with pianist Wilhelm Kempff and conductor Karl Böhm. Wehrmacht officers huddle behind them. It’s a symphony bash. Constanza’s laughing and blowing smoke in the air.

More photographs. Constanza with Pierre Fournier and Alfred Cortot. Both men welcomed the Boche to France. Constanza wears a slit-legged gown. That’s Paris by night behind her.

We return to Deutschland now. Consider this photograph. Constanza warmly greets Adolf Hitler. Musik Maestra and furious Führer. Both evince delight.

Dudley stood by the desk. He noted the swastika paperweight. It was solid gold. He noted the blue leather diary.

It was locked. The clasp and keyhole were solid gold. The front cover was gold swastika — embossed.

Women as diarists. Intimate thoughts and deeds recorded. He recalled the late Joan Conville. She kept a diary.

He touched Constanza’s diary. He kissed the gold swastika and caught Constanza’s scent.

80 Kay Lake’s Diary (Los Angeles, 9:00 A.M., 3/2/42)

“The rain, the gold, the fire. It’s all one story, you see.”

I knew Joan’s diary now. I had studied it to the point of memorization. She repeated that annunciatory phrase many times. She said the words to Dudley Smith on the first occasion. They had just made love, and Joan had settled in to tell her most complex and harrowing tale. She succumbed to evil in that moment. She recounted her rogue investigation with Hideo Ashida; she stitched the evidential links, from the discovery of Karl Tullock’s body up to a series of forensic crossovers to the Rice-Kapek murders. Her summary circumcribes a state of shock and awe, and depicts her immersion in the police world that has consumed me since 1939 and my collision with Lee Blanchard. Joan’s diary spotlights her analytic skills and her surpassing ability to plumb evidence and assess motive. Self-analysis eludes her. She cannot frame and assume a moral stance as to Dudley Smith. Her capitulation is wholly erotic and steeped in her overweening pride and ambition. Dudley Smith’s hold over women derives from the hold that women have over him. He projects a casual mastery over any and all perils. Joan found that irresistible. She was a woman determined to conquer a man’s world. She wanted Dudley Smith’s mastery more than she wanted the gold and a clean Rice-Kapek solve. Her efforts to countermand Dudley’s hold by the means of her concurrent affair with Bill Parker proved fruitless. She misjudged the two men as antagonists and failed to see them as complicitous and cravenly needy in all their strategic designs. I love Bill Parker unto the death and hate Dudley Smith just as passionately. I must take Joan’s account of her last six weeks and deploy it to a broad moral advantage. I must break the usurious bond between Bill Parker and Dudley Smith and see to Dudley’s most severe censure.

I’m writing these words on the upper-floor terrace of my house above the Sunset Strip. Yet more rain seems to be brewing. This house symbolizes my own capitulation to the police world that so consumed Joan. Lee Blanchard bought this house with bribe money. He tanked his boxing career because he knew he’d always be good and never great. Lee gave a wayward South Dakota girl a home; it’s a place where I muse, ponder, study, and cultivate opportunity with a ruthless will very much like Joan’s. I now possess the sum of Joan’s criminal knowledge. I have a grasp of Dudley’s racketeering plans. I know that Two-Gun Davis killed the Watanabe family and that he confessed to Bill Parker and Dudley Smith. Bill cut deals and saw to the dismissal of Werewolf Shudo’s death decree. I know all about Joan’s mission to avenge her father’s death and her suspicions of one Mitchell Kupp. I know that Dudley promised to look into him. I read yesterday’s Sunday Herald and spotted a page-eight piece. Mitch Kupp’s decomposed body was found at his house in San Bernardino. He had been shot dead at point-blank range. I sense a Dudley-and-Joan-at-their-most-crazed symbiosis here.

Hideo Ashida lives in Joan’s diary. He lives triangulated with Joan and Dudley, ever indebted to Dudley, ever corrupted, ever lustful and unfulfilled. Joan admired him, came to despise him, and developed a fond regard for him during the fevered merging of the gold quest and the klubhaus job. Hideo and Joan coveted the gold and coveted a clean murder-case solve just as furiously. Hideo’s desire to push through to a proper case solution jumped out at me. I had initially planned to meet Hideo and Elmer Jackson together. I put out feelers toward that end as soon as I’d read the diary. I reconsidered the approach almost immediately.

Joan’s diary was evidence. I trusted Elmer and did not trust Hideo. I wanted to present the evidence of Joan’s diary to them individually and gauge their individual reactions. I met them at Dave’s Blue Room yesterday. I reported the contents of Joan’s diary — but withheld a certain piece of information from both men.

Elmer evinced shocked outrage. He had brushed up against the events that Joan had described since New Year’s. His brother died in the Griffith Park fire and was surely involved with Karl Tullock and the summer ’33 robbery spree. Elmer had been cuckolded. His friends Hideo and Joan told him nothing. They ran their rogue investigation and brought in Dudley Smith. Elmer was enraged. Two purported friends had betrayed him. Elmer feared and hated Dudley Smith. Dudley had facilitated Joan Conville’s and Hideo Ashida’s lies and omissions. Elmer’s hatred now burned that much more fearfully and recklessly bright. Sweet Elmer, combustible Elmer. Now dangerously close with Buzz Meeks — who hated Dudley and did not fear him at all.

Elmer guzzled gin fizzes and chain-smoked cigars. I watched him flail at all of it as he fought back tears. I had omitted that key diary thread. It was a soundly reasoned omission.

Hideo, Joan, and Dudley had formed a pact to get the gold. I withheld that fact from Elmer. I withheld my perception that they were every bit as gold-crazed as Karl Tullock and Wayne Frank Jackson. I withheld this fact because I had to withhold it from Hideo Ashida. Elmer was volatile. He might go for Hideo’s throat — with Hideo’s gold greed as the spark that lit his fuse.

My dear friend Elmer. Pie-eyed from six gin fizzes. A silent moment passed between us. Telepathic sparks flew. We had engaged a deadly and foolhardy agenda. We will take down Dudley Smith.

Elmer weaved out of Dave’s Blue Room; Hideo Ashida timorously walked in. He wore his Army uniform, replete with sidearm, and caused jaded heads to turn. He sipped coffee in lieu of gin fizzes and heard me out impassively.

I presented Joan’s diary as evidence and cited my purely academic interest. I knew that Hideo underestimated women and saw me as an idiot child. Hideo held Joan in the same low regard, until she became his gold-quest accomplice. I excised Joan’s gold-quest narrative; I worked around it in the same manner as I had with Elmer. I further omitted Joan’s withering critique of Ashida’s homosexuality and fawning allegiance to Dudley Smith. I wanted to stun Hideo with what I knew and sustain his idiot-child assessment. This idiot child was now armed with damning facts but possessed no formal agenda. Hideo sat through my recitation, implacably. His eyes flickered when I told him that Jim Davis killed the four Watanabes. It was his only notable reaction.

I want Hideo to seize on Joan’s reluctance to describe and analyze the gold quest. I want Hideo to feel safe here. I’m banking on the threads of reluctant decency that Joan and I have both glimpsed in him. What will you do now, Hideo? Which way will your tortured conscience lead you? Will you tell Dudley that I’ve seen the diary or will you omit?

Bill Parker’s tortured conscience rivals Hideo’s. Joan watched him falter and ascend in near-direct proportion. Bill keeps mum on Two-Gun Davis and the Watanabe frame; Bill diverts the Werewolf’s gas-chamber trek. Bill cosigns an expedient solution to the klubhaus job and boldly sells the PD out to the Federal grand jury. Bill falters and ascends; Bill pratfalls, dusts himself off, and stumbles toward his next moral encounter. He caroms between God and Old Crow bonded bourbon in the hope that the former will obviate the need for the latter. He fears the loss of Dudley Smith more than he fears Dudley Smith himself, and clings to the bereft notion that Dudley Smith’s brutal élan facilitates the fortunes of his beloved police department. He stops short of condemning Dudley Smith as monstrous — because to do so would reduce him to the role of most meek collaborator.

I had to bank on Hideo Ashida’s few decent instincts. I had to hope that Bill Parker would pray or drink himself through to the truth of Dudley Smith’s malevolence.

Joan excelled at portraiture. She nailed William H. Parker and went on to nail the Dudley — Claire De Haven misalliance. Dudley and Claire exemplify a barely contained madness. Dudley hoards Nazi regalia and hints at a fascist conversion. Claire defends the Moscow show trials and waves the Red flag with aplomb. Dudley dallies with opium and Benzedrine. Claire boots morphine. A U.S. Army posting buttresses Dudley’s Baja racket schemes. They adopt a fifteen-year-old red diaper baby. Dudley brutally beats Orson Welles and suborns him as an informant. Claire fellates Welles in Otto Klemperer’s steam room.

Claire is a man-trap woman. She holds sway over men in the manner that Dudley holds sway over women. Claire is horrified at the power she’s granted him and aghast at the erosion of her so-precious self. Claire fears that Dudley killed her lover, José Vasquez-Cruz. Vasquez-Cruz was really Jorge Villareal-Caiz. Villareal-Caiz stood foursquare in Meyer Gelb’s Red cell. As Joan Conville said, “It’s all one story, you see.”

And it’s my story now. I’m a bit-player-in-waiting. Claire suspects that a “South Dakota slattern” shanked Dudley last December. Dudley pooh-poohed the assertion and passed it along to Joan. Claire added this: “Maybe I’ll confront the slattern at one of Otto Klemperer’s parties. She’s like the bad penny, always showing up at them.”

Claire, I’d love to gab. I know we’d have things to discuss.

Those looming storm clouds burst; I gathered up my diary pages and carried them inside. I placed Joan’s diary pages in a good-sized cardboard box and addressed it to William H. Parker. It was 11:25 now. The postman always arrives around noon.

81 (Los Angeles, 11:30 A.M., 3/2/42)

He lied to Dudley. He omitted and withheld. It was split-second instinctive.

Ashida drove through Bunker Hill. He replayed the phone call. The Biltmore switchboard had patched him through to La Paz. Dudley issued klubhaus directives. His chance to rat Kay fizzled out.

They met at Dave’s Blue Room, yesterday. Kay described the contents of Joan Conville’s diary. Joan willed her the pages. Joan candidly described her post — New Year’s life and spilled leads on their intertwined cases. Joan laid out her liaisons with Dudley and Bill Parker. Kay talked for two hours straight.

He braced himself for The Bomb. The Bomb did not exist — or Kay declined to drop it.

Joan detailed the gold heist and its current reemergence. Joan omitted the subsequent gold quest altogether.

Or Kay abridged her account. She played editor and expurgated at will. She excised Joan’s pages and recounted only what she wanted him to know.

Rain clouds unzipped. Ashida ran his wiper blades. He crossed Loma and looked north to Belmont High. He replayed Kay’s key remarks.

“Here’s something you should know, Hideo. Jim Davis killed the Watanabes. He initially confessed to Bill Parker, and to Dudley more recently. From the look on your face, I can tell that Dudley failed to inform you.”

Kay provoked him. Kay taunted him and scolded him. “You should have told Elmer everything. His brother died in that fire.” Kay provokes, Kay scolds, Kay taunts and dares.

“I know everything that I’ve told you. I will leave you guessing as to what I might have withheld. You will tell Dudley whatever you decide to tell him. I will seek to expose any and all false solutions to the klubhaus case.”

Kay closed with that. The moment felt telepathic. Kay wanted a clean solve. He wanted a clean solve. Joan might have expressed his desire. Kay might have read him just right.

Telepathy begets telepathy. He talked to Dudley a second time this morning. Dudley said, “Our late friend Joan kept a diary, lad. She’d mentioned it to me several times. Will you go by her bungalow and do a toss and forensic? She may have tattled a few of our secrets that we don’t want commonly known.”

Ashida cut west on 1st Street and north on Carondelet. Central Property kicked loose the door key. The idea came to him then.

He parked beside the courtyard and walked back. He lugged his evidence kit. Nobody saw him or stopped him. Nobody slack-jawed the Army-togged Jap.

He unlocked the door and locked himself back in. He turned on all the room lights. Joan’s bungalow remained unrented and appeared to be intact. It was a suicide scene. The PD and morgue men had come and gone last week.

Ashida checked the kitchen. He looked under the sink and saw a wastebasket. It contained booze empties and coffee grounds. They were piled halfway up. He checked the sink drain and ran some cold water. The drain trap worked well. That was good. It enhanced forensic detail.

He tossed the bungalow.

He went through the closets, the one dresser, the front-room shelves. He went through Joan’s desk drawers. There was no typewriter. That was good. He found pens and writing paper in the bottom-left drawer.

A soft blotter covered the desktop. Ashida popped his evidence kit and filled an atomizer. He utilized deionized water and liquid dioxide. He sprayed the blotter and watched pen indentations rise.

Joan had block-printed and applied hard strokes. “Dudley” and “Bill” crisscrossed the blotter. He saw “despite his best intentions” and “confiscated gun lists.”

The “Dudley” and “Bill” impressions were instructive. They sparked a secondary notion. It would tweak Dudley’s vanity and densify this construction.

He took a hundred sheets of writing paper and dumped them in the kitchen sink. He spritzed them with diluted kerosene and dropped a match. The pages burned. He counted off ten seconds. He doused the flames with tap water and created a wet mess.

He turned off the water and cleaned up the mess. He dumped the bulk of the wet paper in a grocery bag. He placed the bag in his evidence kit and performed his obfuscation tasks.

They were extra precautionary. Dudley trusted him. He relied on that fact.

Ashida unscrewed the sink drain. He smeared sodden paper to the inside walls of the pipe. He tweezed paper fragments and affixed them to the drain holes. He screwed the drain trap back on.

He scooped wet paper and smeared the inside of the wastebasket. He covered all contingencies. The ruse stood complete.

Joan’s telephone worked. The landlord forgot to kill her service. Ashida roused a local operator and placed a long-distance call. Person-to-person. La Paz, Baja. Hotel Los Pescados/Captain Dudley Smith.

The operator said she’d place the call and ring him back. Ashida hung up and prowled the bungalow. He caught Joan’s tobacco and lilac soap scent. He examined her Navy uniforms. He saw red hairs caught in a fine-bristled brush.

The phone rang. Ashida grabbed it.

Dudley said, “Hello, lad. You’re calling from Joan’s apartment, I take it.”

Ashida coughed. He white-knuckled the receiver. The phone cord went taut.

“There’s no diary. She burned the pages in the kitchen sink, and left unmistakable traces. The cops who came through missed them. I raised a few indentations off her desk blotter. I saw partial sentences, along with your name and Captain Parker’s.”

Dudley laughed. “I’m sure she wrote my name a great many more times than his, and wrote it with far greater passion.”

Ashida forced a laugh. “I’m sure she did. And I’m sure a trained graphologist would confirm it.”

“Lad, you delight me. Such wit on such short notice. Go forth and do your duty now. Put your grand mind to work on the klubhaus mess, before Major Melnick calls you back.”

Ashida forced a joke. “I’ll call you if I find the gold.”

Dudley said, “Yes, lad — you do that.”

The line went dead. Ashida replaced the receiver. He’d committed treason. His motive revealed itself.

You’ll never love me as I love you. I cannot place Kay Lake in jeopardy. This ruse punishes you.

82 (Los Angeles, 3:30 P.M., 3/2/42)

The headstone read thus. № 211 Man. No Gold-Heist Goon. No Embroiled with Communists. No Fifth Column — Adjunct.

Elmer stood graveside. He was half-tanked. He flagellated his dumb cracker ass and hexed Hideo Ashida.

Ashida broke his heart. Ashida should have told him the whole story. Joan wrote it all out. Kay regurgitated it. The bad news hurtled, here to Hell.

The Dudster, Joan, and Hideo. They harbored leads. They knew he planted the address book at the klubhaus. Two-Gun Davis iced the Watanabes. Joan writes it out. Kay regurgitates it. Here’s the part he don’t get:

Kay says Joan told all. Thus, Kay told all. But — one thing don’t conform to type.

Dud, Joan, and Hideo. Three covetous cookies. Wouldn’t they go for the gold? Where’s their big fat doughnut? Did Joan fail to write that down or did Kay fail to mention it?

Inglewood Cemetery. Wayne Frank’s wobbly stone. It didn’t read Klan Klown. It didn’t read Kid Brother Elmer’s Got de Hellhound on His Trail.

The furry fucker’s name is Fear. Buzz and him thumped Huey C. Did Dud find out? Dud snuffed a fruit at a Nazi bash and waltzed on it. Does Dud know that he knows?

Nobody knows de trouble I’se seen, nobody knows my redneck sorrow—

Elmer scrammed. He sprinkled flask booze on Wayne Frank’s grave and hit the road. Three bennies detoured his hooch load. He drove home and fed his tropical fish.

The mailman was due. Jean Staley owes him a nice postcard. Elmer J. digs Jean S. Sister, why’d you run out on me?

Elmer sat on his porch. He lit a cigar and watched storm clouds brew. The mailman showed. He dropped off the light bill and a card, postmarked St. Louis.

The front displayed the churning Mississippi. Jolting Jean scribbled up the back.

Tilt. His shit detector clicked on. Something ain’t right here.

The card was postmarked St. Louis. St. Louis is way northeast of Albuquerque. Jean’s headed for Des Moines. Des Moines is northwest of St. Louis. Jean’s not taking no regular route. Here’s the capper here:

He got a Texas-postmark card, two days back. Jean’s hot to hit that Albuquerque wingding. Texas is east of New Mexico. It’s all fucked-up geography.

The mailman stuffed mailboxes. Elmer ducked into his flop and grabbed the stack of cards Jean sent.

He studied them. He tracked postmarks and skimmed Jean’s scrawl. Ooops, there’s—

The Kansas City card preceded the Denver card. KC’s east of Denver and should have come first. Here’s one he missed. The Lubbock card extolls the Rocky Mountains. That don’t fit. Jean ain’t seen those mountains yet.

The cards are all checkmarked. Oooga-booga. There’s all these different shades of ink.

Elmer goosed the mailman. “Lou, what’s with these cards? They’re coming all out of sequence, like this girl’s trying to put one over on me. And what’s with all these checkmarks?”

Lou studied the cards and tapped them on his teeth. Lou shiteater grinned.

“It looks like these cards got routed through a mail-drop system and sent on to you from a drop here in L.A. You know from mail drops, right? They’re these services that gigolos and call prosties use, all over the country. It’s like a relay pipeline for people on the run and on the lam, who want certain folks to think they’re somewhere else. Mail comes in, and the drop employees log it in or out and charge your account. These places are all over the U.S., so mail gets forwarded, and that way you can get whatever postmark you want. You get a lot of smut books and hate tracts sent that way. It’s like a cheating-wife-and-husband parlay. You can’t be in two places at the same time — but sometimes you’d like to convince folks that you are.”

Elmer snatched the cards and fanned them out. He fanned a spray and pointed to the checkmarks.

“What’s with these here marks, boss?”

Lou went oooh-la-la. “I know those marks. Look — they’re half cross, half X mark. That’s Bev’s Switchboard. It’s out in West Hollywood. Blow Job Bev Shoftel runs the place. She’s one for the record books.”

Nite-owl stakeout. 1:00 a.m. — Fountain and Crescent Heights.

Bev’s Switchboard was county turf. It was a rinky-dink storefront upside a swish bar. Elmer brought his B and E tools. He parked his sled across the street and got up some gall.

He ran a routine check first. He went by the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station and braced the Vice boss. The boss confirmed Lou the mailman.

Blow Job Bev turned out the twelve-year-old sons of the L.A. elite. She devirginized movie-biz scions and the offspring of Hancock Park swells. Bev’s Switchboard was a racket drop. It serviced smut merchants, hate-tract purveyors, and filmland shitheels. Plus homo prosties, dirty-picture girls, dubious “actors” and “musicians.” The service passed on phone messages and forwarded mail. The service rented on-site mailboxes. Sometimes the mail just jumped box-to-box. Bev’s been popped for smut and indecent exposure. She flashed her snatch at some dowagers at the Wilshire Country Club.

Bev’s got a pedigree. Bev snitches for Sheriff Biscailuz. Bev’s Switchboard is Sheriff’s-protected. Yeah, and there’s this:

The Feds are homed in on Bev’s. Sheriff Gene just quashed a premises search warrant.

Elmer said, “What were they looking for?”

The Vice boss said, “They were looking for incoming mail sent from mail drops in Phoenix, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Denver, Kansas City, and St. Louis.”

That meant pay dirt. Jolting Jean sent him cards from those cities. Jolting Jean allegedly passed through them.

The Vice boss said, “The requesting agent was this nosebleed Ed Satterlee. He’s purportedly tonged up and on the grift.”

They wrapped up at 5:00 p.m. Elmer split West Hollywood Station and went shopping then. He bought a miniature camera, film, and some flashbulbs. He popped bennies and brainstormed names.

Three-case names. Crisscrossed through three case lines:

Wendell Rice, George Kapek, Archie Archuleta. More names: Fritz Eckelkamp, Eddie Leng, Donald Matsura. Still more names: Martin Luther Mimms, Leander Frechette, George Lincoln Rockwell. Yet more names: Harold John Miciak, Cedric Francis Inge, Catbox Cal Lunceford. Boocoo names: Meyer Gelb, Jean Staley, Dr. Saul and Andrea Lesnick. Mucho names: Jorge Villareal-Caiz, Kyoho Hanamaka, Lin Chung, Tommy Glennon. Bent-cop names. Fifth-Column names. Commo names. Nazi names. Jap names, Chink names, Mex names—

Elmer checked his watch. It was 1:19 a.m. The fruit bar roiled. The jukebox blared and supplied noise cover. Do it now, son.

He’d packed his B and E and camera shit in a gym bag. He grabbed it and crossed the street, fast. Traffic was scarce. Bev’s Switchboard was flat brick. A door awning covered him. The door was push lock/one keyhole.

Elmer got out a #4 pick. He probed said keyhole. The booger failed to fit. He got out a #6. That booger probed deep. He twisted it left/right, left/right. The mechanism snapped, the doorjamb shimmied and popped.

He stepped inside and threw the reverse bolt. The joint was deep dark. He pulled his flashlight and got his eyeballs adjusted. He beam-strafed the whole premises. He saw this:

The back wall was rigged with pullout mail slots. The east wall was lined with file cabinets. A desk and chair faced the front window. The west wall was foto-festooned. Film-biz schleppers mugged. For sure: part-time talent/full-time gigolos and whores.

Elmer walked to the back wall. He yanked a dozen mail-slot pulls and got no give. They were locked crab’s-ass tight. He kept his beam low and walked to the east wall. The cabinets ran alphabetical. Little letter plates were stuck to the drawers. He slid over to the S-for-Staley drawer and gave it a tug.

He hit pay dirt. Woo-woo! — the booger’s unlocked.

The drawer was jammed with file folders. Elmer maneuvered his flashlight and lit the name tags. He finger-walked from Sadler and Samuelson on. He saw the odd name Szigeti, Ruth. Two non-S files were clipped to it. Koenig, Miklos & Magda, Abromowitz, Sandor.

Elmer finger-walked. No familiar names mauled him. He hit Sperling, Phil and Sroloff, Ralph. Bam! — he hit Staley, Jean.

He pulled the file. It contained one sheet only. “Recent transactions” was typed at the top. Plus notes on “postcards received & forwarded/out-of-town postmarks assured.”

Postcards forwarded. To one geek only. A lunkhead named E. V. Jackson. Postcards from Phoenix, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City. Postcards from Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis. That means this: Jean sure as shit sandbagged him.

Elmer got out his camera shit and foto-snapped the page. The flashbulb popped bright. Elmer extracted it and dropped it in the gym bag.

Names. Names. Names. Take your pick. Open file drawers await you. It hit him, quick. Jean’s Commo cell. Villareal-Caiz, the Lesnicks, Meyer Gelb.

Elmer file-jumped. He pulled the V drawer and finger-walked. Bam! — there’s no Villareal-Caiz. He pulled the L drawer and finger-walked. Bam! — no Saul or Andrea Lesnick. He pulled the G drawer and finger-walked. Bam! — there’s Meyer Gelb.

The file contained one sealed envelope. It was addressed to “MG 226/CO Bev’s Switchboard.” That was plain dumb code. 226 was Gelb’s box number. Note the return address: “PO Box 1823/La Paz, Baja.”

Elmer slid to the front desk and rifled the drawers. Shit — there’s no envelope steamer. He slid back to the G drawer. Fuck it. He ripped the letter open with his teeth.

For what? There’s just this blank sheet of paper. It’s a head-scratcher. What’s that there? It looks like a dried stain.

Elmer head-scratched it. He worked his dim brain every which way. It hit him, belated.

Blotter paper. Microdots. Fourth Interceptor issued a bulletin. “Report all such/A-Level evidence.”

He nicked the envelope. He brain-broiled. He ran more names and pulled more file drawers. He pulled the H drawer and got zilch for Kyoho Hanamaka. He repulled the L drawer and got nyet on Catbox Cal Lunceford. He repulled the G drawer and finger-sprinted.

He hit Gainford, Garfield, Gersh, Gifford. He hit Glennon, Thomas Malcolm. That’s some pay dirt.

Elmer skimmed the transaction sheet. There were no mail-outs scrawled. Tommy’s PO box number was scrawled in. Box 7669/La Jolla, California.

La Jolla. A swank enclave down by San Diego. It’s close to the Baja border. It’s a hot lead. More circles loop and constrict.

Elmer went through Tommy’s file. It contained one fat envelope. Elmer ripped it open and yanked the contents.

Tracts. Little hate pamphlets. Hate, hate, hate. Kill, kill, kill. Recipes for Jap fricassee and Chinaman stew. Kill the jigs, kill the Jews, kill the British Protestant oppressor!!!

Elmer dumped the tracts in his gym bag. He broiled more names. He hit the A drawer and trawled for Archie Archuleta. He got nein there. He hit the C drawer and trawled for Lin Chung. Tuff luck — there’s no Chinaman Chung.

He went light-headed. He weaved. This was all some wild-ass shit. He got his feet under him. He pulled the R drawer and trawled for George Lincoln Rockwell.

He finger-walked. Rehnquist, Rillard, Roberts, Robertson — Rockwell, George Lincoln. No transaction sheet. One fat envelope stuffed in the file.

Note the note clipped to it. “Forward to T. M. Glennon, Box 7669/La Jolla.”

Elmer slit the envelope. He banked on more hate tracts. He got smut pix instead.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Suck, suck, suck. All black-and-white glossies. Pokey-pokey shots. In the mouth, up the love trail, up the dirt road. Two men and two women. The men wear leather masks. One man wears a Nazi uniform. One man wears Red Guard threads. The women wear zero. One woman’s white, one woman’s Mex.

Circles constrict. Oooga-booga. Circles meld and overlap.

The pubic-hair samples. Ashida found them. Doc Layman typed them. Two samples are female. One sample’s white, one sample’s Mex. Note the foto backdrop. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Suck, suck, suck. It’s there in all the pix.

It’s the upstairs bedroom at the klubhaus.

83 (La Paz, 8:00 P.M., 3/3/42)

Seduction.

He knew it. She knew it. Her coy act at the exile bash proclaimed it. The Wolf caught her scent and proclaimed her lust.

Constanza recorded the Wieniawski Légende. She played the soaring violin part. A randy Pole composed the piece. The motif was explicitly Latin. Recurrent themes depicted star-crossed lovers aswirl.

Dudley sat in a harborside cantina. His booth overlooked the east-facing gulf. He sent Constanza a mash note-cum-invitation and got no response. He purchased her phonograph record and slipped it to the maître d’. A fat bribe assured steady play.

There’s Constanza’s solo now. Love subsumes conflict, conflict subsumes love. She’ll walk in soon. She’ll wear a white dress. One strap will slip off her bare shoulder. She’ll hitch it up repeatedly. She’s perfected the move.

Dudley chain-smoked. He wore his summer uniform and brown gun belt. Harbor craft bobbed a few feet away. A sea breeze hit open windows and cooled the place off.

Constanza walked up. She wore the white dress. He stood and bowed. Constanza laughed.

“I heard my third recapitulation, all the way out on the dock. I will reinterpret the composer’s intent if I record the piece again.”

Dudley smiled. “Don’t spoil my interpretation. The piece infatuated me.”

“You succumb to infatuation, as long as it serves you. It’s a ruthless trait that I admire in men.”

A waiter snapped to. He brought Cointreau on ice and Dudley’s third scotch. Cointreau was her drink. The Wolf told him so. Constanza tucked her dress pleats and slid into the booth. Dudley sat across from her. Constanza sipped Cointreau and lit a cigarette.

“My impolitic maid warned me about you. She said, ‘There’s a strange man prowling the house, and looking at things that he shouldn’t see.’ ”

“I saw you posed with beautiful animals and quite notable men. I was smitten at the airfield, and conquered when I saw you with the jaguar and your German friends.”

Constanza twirled her ashtray. A dress strap slipped off her shoulder. She hitched it back up.

“My brother forewarned me. He said, ‘Captain Smith is a voyeur who misses nothing. Poor boys confronted with affluence always love to look and touch. If there’s anything you don’t want him to see, you should hide it in advance of your party.’ ”

“And what did you hide?”

Constanza said, “I hid nothing.”

Dudley lit a cigarette and twirled his ashtray. Their fingers brushed.

“You brother intercedes in your life in a manner that some might find unseemly. My friend Salvy Abascal told me that.”

“Did Salvy tell you that I am his occasional lover? He has his child bride, who will supply him with children, and the women he ruts with and talks to.”

The cantina was built on a barge. Waves tapped loose pilings. Constanza swayed in time with them.

“It’s the war, you see. You are the U.S. Army captain and certified foreign devil. My brother only trusts people who want things from him, once he has vetted their most pressing common concerns. He has had you surveilled and knows of the British soldiers you killed in your homeland. He knows of your rich puta lover Claire, and her odious beliefs. He knows of Claire’s young charge Joan Klein, and has verified her outré stories of leftist intrigue. Would it surprise you to know that Joan’s New York comrades are acquainted with the Koenigs, Ruth Szigeti, and Sandor Abromowitz? My brother interceded for me because he distrusts wartime alliances and knows more than I do. He considers you to be a voyeur and quite the rank amateur. He intercedes and looks out for me by accommodating my own voyeuristic impulse.”

Dudley crushed his cigarette. “It’s all alliance, is it not? Once again, we come back to the war and those we might learn to trust or distrust.”

Constanza crushed her cigarette. “Alliances overlap. That is because spheres of interest and influence are ever mutating. In wartime, the only true common interests are profit and ultimate survival. Take the musical underground. In it, the musical Left and Right clash and just as often collude. It is all toward the end of profit and survival assured.”

Dudley said, “I saw that at your party. Your photographs of Herr Kempff and Herr Böhm, and your exiles so bravely and disingenuously repatriated.”

Constanza said, “You are perceptive. However amateurish, you compel me to report what my brother reports to me. There are mock traitors in the Führer’s high command, you see. They are strategically saving volubly articulate Jews from extermination. It is all part of an exoneration ruse, to be put into effect should Germany lose the war. An identical plan has been implemented in Russia. The Russians fear that the U.S. will invade their country should Germany lose the war. It is all about establishing moral credentials now, and paving the way for the appearance of redemption in what will surely be a bitter and rancorous postwar era. It also asserts the need for a mutual accommodation of Communist and fascist beliefs in the present, so that both sides will be couched to prove themselves indispensible to the ultimate victors.”

Dudley stirred his drink. Constanza’s strap slipped down her arm. He reached over and pulled it up. Constanza touched his hand.

“Let’s see if I can extrapolate off the point you just made. I would guess that our current exile friends and all others that may follow will be put to use as informants. They’ve served the cause of Communist-fascist amity. But their efficacy should not stop there.”

Constanza said, “My brother allows that you are quick. You confirm it by keeping up with me.”

“You keep bringing up your brother’s intercessions. His influence daunts me. I’ve begun to think of him as a rival and romantic impediment.”

Constanza smiled. “We will get to the topic of the two of us in good time.”

“Pray forgive my great haste.”

Constanza smiled and lit a cigarette. Her hair was brown more than black. She was pale more than tan. She wore a man’s wristwatch.

“My brother knows a comunista named Meyer Gelb. Comrade Gelb is working on the Russian end of the exoneration scheme I described to you. Russian émigrés, badly used by Stalin, will be approached by my brother and suborned as informants, wherever they are resettled. Meyer will approach the Koenigs, Mr. Abromowitz, and Miss Szigeti in Los Angeles.”

Red Meyer. The Griffith Park Fire. Gelb’s ’33 cell. Brother and sister know Kyoho Hanamaka. The intersections failed to surprise him.

“Let me extrapolate. Your brother knows high-ups in the Fatherland. Comrade Gelb knows high-ups in Mother Russia. You’re describing a blackmail racket.”

Strolling musicians dipped by. They jiggled jangly maracas. Constanza went Shoo.

“Yes, and I should add that Comrade Gelb has marvelous dirt on the Koenigs, old Abromowitz, and Miss Szigeti. They sold three hundred Jewish musicians into the Führer’s death camps in order to save their own skins.”

Dudley lit a cigarette. “You are telling me quite a great deal. I find it as disconcerting as your brother’s unseen presence at our table.”

Constanza laughed outright. She covered her mouth, double quick. She had pronounced buck teeth.

“I was Kyoho Hanamaka’s lover. He showed me the gold bayonet you later found at his hideaway. Like you, I had heard of a companion piece, adorned with Soviet symbols.”

“I mentioned the Communist bayonet to your brother. Let me hazard a guess here. You had his living room bugged.”

“Yes. Again, I’ll state that you are very perceptive.”

Their hands were close. Dudley touched her fingers.

“Again, I’ll state that you are telling me quite a great deal.”

Constanza squeezed his hand. “You want the gold. Men like you deem such treasures irresistible. I share your desire, body and soul.”

The barge lurched. Dudley lurched. The room went double hot. He saw gold bars that weren’t really there.

“Do you know where it is, or who has it? As much as it pains me to ask, does your brother know?”

Constanza said, “I don’t know, nor does my brother. Kyoho most likely knows — but he is hiding somewhere undisclosed in the U.S.”

The room went triple hot. Dudley fluffed his napkin and wiped his face. Constanza leaned in and undid his necktie.

“Much of this dates back to a fire in Los Angeles. Kyoho and Comrade Gelb were burned there. Gelb lays the source of his wounds on the Spanish Civil War, which is rubbish. Kyoho tells a similarly self-serving lie. My brother and I know all of this — but no more.”

“And you don’t know who has the gold now?”

“The alliance that I have described to you has many layers of buffering. The top few men surely know the status of the gold. My brother is just a minor cog, who tells me things. I am a woman, and no cog at all.”

Dudley cracked their window and roused some gulf air. Constanza opened her clutch and removed a vial of perfume. She daubed her left wrist and held out her arm. Dudley took her hand and kissed the scented spot.

“And the Kameraden’s ultimate plans for the gold?”

“The establishment and implementation of a strategy of escape, resettlement, and credible exoneration. Select members of the world’s great totalitarian regimes, collaborating toward that end. Beyond that end, I know only of plans to hoard the gold and invest in U.S. defense industries, to further induce gratitude in our presumed conquerors, and to increase the likelihood that the new identities of our comrades will not be revealed.”

Dudley said, “Darling, you are recklessly impolitic. However much your revelations excite me.”

Constanza said, “I know something about you. The gold would be incomplete for you without a woman.”

Dawn broke bright and warm. Ensenada looked drab. La Paz creamed it, hands down. Ensenada was T.J. South. La Paz was Saint-Tropez for Irish arrivistes.

Dudley elevatored up to his suite. He was dead bushed. He closed that harborside haunt with Constanza and caught a late Army flight back.

He yawned and saw fatigue spots. He unlocked the door and saw Beth asleep on the couch.

The bedroom door stood ajar. Overhead lights snapped on. He heard radio hum.

He walked in. The fatigue spots made him blink. Claire threw herself at him.

She hit his chest and spit in his face.

She clawed at his mouth.

She ripped the buttons off his coat and tore the captain’s bars off his shoulders.

She beat at his face.

She defamed his redheaded whore and hexed her in Hell.

She called him a “fascist insect.”

She called him a “cowardly killer.”

She hurled herself up at him and bit off a piece of one ear.

It’s Dublin again. It’s 1919. He’s out sniping British soldiers. He comes home to Maidred Conroy Smith. She wields her razor strop.

84 Kay Lake’s Diary (Los Angeles, 9:00 A.M., 3/4/42)

I waited on my front porch. I was to be Otto’s goodwill ambassadress and accompany him to Union Station. We would greet four Austro-Hungarian string players, late of Nazi concentration camps. A cryptically defined relief organization had secured their release and brought them here via steamship, transport airline, and overnight train trek from Baja. The extravagantly generous Maestro had secured them courtyard apartments in Santa Monica. My contribution was good cheer and a grocery bag stuffed with two-dollar champagne and paper cups.

The day was bright and cool; I glanced across the street and down to the Strip. A PD prowl car was parked at the curb, just above Sunset. I had no doubts as to the occupant. This is what Captain Bill Parker does. He perches outside the homes of provocative young women and plots his next move. He intrudes, he entraps, he blunderingly seduces. Ask yours truly and the late Joan Conville.

Bill had something on his mind now. Provocation abets provocation. I had sent Joan’s diary special delivery. He’d received it, read it, and wanted to talk.

Otto’s big Chrysler turned left on Wetherly and headed up to me; the chauffeur wheeled a clumsy U-turn and bumped the curb in front of my house. I walked over and hopped in the back. The Maestro kissed my cheek and wrangled me in. We passed the prowl car, southbound. Bill slept behind the wheel. Incident recalls incident. Joan returned home from a party at the Maestro Manse and found Bill parked outside. She wrote her first diary pages with Bill passed out on her bed.

It was a half-hour drive downtown, and Otto wanted to yak. I positioned myself on his good side and played to his vanity. The brain tumor had constricted his facial muscles and marred his fierce good looks. It made conversation difficult and frustrated a man born to yak at great length. Otto is six-foot-seven and disposed to yak and command. When Otto yaks, one listens.

We lit cigarettes. Otto settled in to run discourse. Dr. Saul Lesnick had diagnosed the tumor. Otto credited Dr. Saul with saving his life; I credited Dr. Saul with the array of damning mischief exposed in Joan’s diary.

The Maestro held forth. He was composing a nightmare tone poem in the Richard Strauss — Elektra mode. The piece would depict events that had occurred in his own haunted house. Declining chords would portray a murderous occurrence in Nazi Germany’s past and sequentially link it to a rumored reenactment in his own home. The orchestral part would subside to a hush then. Low-register piano chords would announce the first of his brain-tumor blackouts.

The Maestro yakked orchestral structure, and paused only to light cigarettes. I squeezed in a few questions about our goodwill mission and how our exile chums had escaped Europe. Otto cited vague rumors. Exoneration-minded Nazis had bounced for their repatriation. They were moved out on a transport flight to Mexico; the airplane was loaded up with precious mercury ore for the return flight. Our exiles comprised a first refugee wave. Otto said it seemed like a ruse to him; exoneration-minded Russians were purportedly releasing prisoners to establish their own humanitarian credentials.

The blithe hypocrisy stunned me. I asked Otto where he picked up the “vague rumors.” He said, “A chatty Communist named Meyer Gelb told me. The man impressed as fraudulent, so perhaps the rumors themselves are just propaganda or idle schmooze of some sort.”

Meyer Gelb appeared in Joan’s diary. Joan met him at the Maestro Manse. His Communist cellmates Jean Staley and Saul and Andrea Lesnick attended the same party. The cell was scrutinized in the Griffith Park fire inquiry. Joan considered the cell germane to the welter of cases that had so consumed her and Hideo Ashida. I asked Otto how he came to meet Meyer Gelb. Otto said, “He’s Saul Lesnick’s analysand. Saul invites him to my parties.”

We found our chums by the taxi stand outside Union Station. They stood by a large mound of luggage and stringed-instrument cases. It was an up-to-the-moment Ellis Island snapshot. They weren’t quite the huddled masses. They looked exhausted and apprehensive and exhibited not one ounce of relief.

Sandor Abromowitz fell into Otto’s arms; they were former comrades from the Berlin Opera. The Koenigs were heavyset, frail, and proud. I carried their luggage, but they refused to take my arm for support. Magda Koenig gave me the stink eye. She figured me for a party-crashing dilettante and Otto’s young whore. Ruth Szigeti was thin and wobbled on brand-new high heels. She took my arm and wasted no time bumming a cigarette. Her flat, straight hair and hollow cheeks were straight out of Brecht and the horror musicales of Weimar Berlin. She had schizophrenic gray-green eyes and warmed to the notion of brushing against me. I pegged her as a lezbo or at least an avant-garde creature who veered any and all ways.

The gang piled into Otto’s imperial-sized auto. The chauffeur pulled down the jump seat, but we were still strapped for room. The Maestro yanked fat Abromowitz up on his lap; the frail Koenigs scrunched in side by side. The jump seat was narrow and built for one only. I staked my claim and hopped onto it. Ruth Szigeti staked her claim and hopped onto my lap. She said, “Do you mind, Liebchen?” I said, “Given your ordeal, how could I?”

The chauffeur pointed us westbound on Wilshire Boulevard. Otto played host and served up my bargain-basement champagne. War and music talk bubbled in English, French, and German. There was no talk of death camps or the oppression of Jews in Hitler’s Germany. An implicit pact rendered the topic verboten. I stifled my curiosity and kept my mouth shut.

Otto was throwing a party tonight. He announced it and leaned back to read reactions. Mr. Abromowitz and the Koenigs went stone-faced. Ruth Szigeti said, “Will you be there, Liebchen?” I assured her that I would be and summoned up my own ideal guest list.

Claire De Haven and Meyer Gelb. There’s two party cards. I’d love to meet Communist carhop Jean Staley. What about Dr. Saul and Andrea Lesnick? I went back to Bill Parker’s incursion with them and would adore a chance to get reacquainted. Don’t forget Orson Welles, Dudley’s newly cowed informant. He might be in the market for a new steam room pal.

Magda Koenig gagged on cigarette smoke and rolled down a window. I looked out and saw that a PD prowl car was providing an escort. Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle sat in the front seat; a man in Mexican Statie garb sat in the back. Breuning looked over and saw me. I waved; he waved back. Carlisle yelled, “Hey there, Kay!”

Mrs. Koenig rolled up her window and cut off the exchange. I got chills in an overheated limo. Ruth Szigeti jiggled into me and draped an arm around my neck.

Joan’s diary. Dudley Smith’s orbit. The ubiquity of a single rogue policeman.

We journeyed through Beverly Hills and West L.A. A sea breeze welcomed us to Santa Monica. The chauffeur turned north on 4th Street and pulled up in front of a palm-lined courtyard. Our exile chums got out and surveyed their new home. Ruth Szigeti reluctantly undraped me. Her left blouse sleeve had rolled up; I saw knife scars and an ominous tattoo.

I got out last. I smelled salt air and watched the prowl car park behind us. The chauffeur unloaded the luggage and instruments; Otto escorted the gang to their new digs. The Maestro owned numerous beachside properties, the Seabreeze Court among them. He was forfeiting rental income from three bohemian bungalows. Otto Klemperer defined noblesse oblige.

I lagged back and strolled over to the prowl car. Breuning and Carlisle were piling gift baskets on the hood of the sled. The baskets featured withered fruit and cheese of the hold-your-nose ilk.

The Statie introduced himself. He was Captain Juan Pimentel. The captain was an emissary of Governor Juan Lazaro-Schmidt and the governor’s friend Dudley Smith. The baskets denoted the governor’s warm bienvenidos to our immigrant pals.

Pimentel impressed me as a vicious little shit. His spiel indicted the repatriation plan as a shuck. Meyer Gelb had uttered “vague rumors.” That was suspect in itself.

Pimentel clicked his heels. “Your new Americans are the first wave of the governor’s humanitarian effort to rescue persecuted Jews from the horrors of fascist Germany.”

I pointed to his SS-style hat. His spit-shined jackboots and flap-holstered Luger were just as snazzy. I said, “I’m all for the rescue of persecuted Jews, but I must note that you dress fasco yourself.”

Pimentel clicked his heels. It expressed disdain and moral confusion. He clicked his heels again. It gave him something to do and suppressed his urge to kill infidel women.

Breuning and Carlisle cracked grins. That Kay Lake’s a sketch. I’d belted a few with Sid Hudgens at the PD’s New Year’s bash. The Sidster plied his crazy craft. He called Mike and Dick “maladroit mastiffs on a mission to maul for their master.” And, who’s their master?

Who else but?

Rain drove the party indoors. That was okay by me. Joan described the Maestro Manse as a lodestone for the Meyer Gelb — Saul Lesnick set. I came to perch and observe. Sid Hudgens had attended numerous Klemperer soirées. He called them “bilious bacchanals and Baedekers of early-wartime indulgence.” Sid was right about that. The Klemperer crowd came to harangue, gesticulate, bloviate, and dubiously critique. I was there to worry the Griffith Park fire and the proximity of Meyer Gelb’s cell.

I stationed myself on the second-floor landing and looked down on the huge main room. I had been home to change clothes and see if Bill Parker was still poised to pounce. He wasn’t. He’d be back, though. He’d have Joan’s diary memorized and worried down to page pulp.

The party swirled below me. Mr. Abromowitz and the Koenigs beat back admirers; Ruth Szigeti drifted off with Barbara “Butch” Stanwyck. Party delirium had set in. Folks harangued, gesticulated, bloviated, and dubiously critiqued. Cigarette smoke obscured faces. Saul Lesnick arrived with a zaftig young woman. I recognized her. It was Annie Staples, Elmer and Brenda’s college-girl vixen. Elmer told me she was jobbing Dr. Saul for the Feds. Elmer had worked the camera at Brenda’s Miracle Mile trick spot, and had caught Annie’s act.

Orson Welles arrived. I noticed his plastic-surgery scars straight off. The Sidster told me that Terry Lux did the plastic job. It smoothed out the obvious signs of the Dudster’s thumping. Claire arrived, with two young girls in tow. The older girl was Beth Something. She was Dudley’s reputed spawn. I made the younger girl as Joan Something. She was Dudley and Claire’s enfant sauvage. Joan Conville’s diary supplied explication. Joan Something perplexed Dudley. He found her otherworldly and considered her a counterpart to his fantasy wolf. Claire was haggard, ever the doomed poetess. I knew her MO. She’d seek out Dr. Saul and hit him up for a fix.

The party would run late. Otto’s parties always did. I had time for an interregnum before I hit the main floor. I ducked into the conservatory and sat down at the piano. “Sonata Reminiscenza” was embedded within me and fully memorized. I decided to play it all the way through.

The piece demands a meditative approach. It is both pictorial and diffuse. The piece depicts recollection and portrays the sweet heartbreak of time lost and recalled. I always mark the moment as I sit down to practice it. Today is March 4, 1942. I am twenty-two years old and have knocked around a bit. A late and dear friend of mine willed me some words she wrote. The words comprise a debt I must repay and punitive measures I must enact. This is for Joan Woodard Conville.

So, I played. I hit notes too soft, too hard, and just right. I veered off the established score and hit notes to the words “This storm, this savaging disaster.” I veered back to the score and lost myself in shifting tempos. Someone entered the room behind me; I heard rudely loud footsteps in approach.

“You’re playing Nikolai Medtner. I hate him, because he hates the Bolsheviks.”

I stopped playing and looked up. Joan Something stood to the right of the bench. She wore a red party dress I’d seen Claire in. A tailor had altered the sleeves and hemline to fit someone much smaller. Joan Something was fifteen or sixteen and discernably otherworldly. She wore dark-framed glasses; her black hair bore gray streaks.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name.”

“Sure, you do. My aunt Claire says you know everything. I’m Comrade Joan, and you’re Comrade Kay, but you’re really not much of a comrade if you like Medtner.”

I said, “Rachmaninoff hates the Bolsheviks. Scriabin hated them, as well. I’d say that puts Medtner in good company.”

“You think you’re clever, but you’re really just glib. Rachmaninoff and Scriabin are yesterday’s news. Comrade Shostakovich is au courant. I’m part of the collective that’s smuggling in his new symphony, in case you think I’m just a silly young girl who has no business being in Comrade Otto’s house.”

She spoke Brooklynese. She had Dudley Smith’s small brown eyes. She flexed her jaw while she spoke and glared more than looked at you. Her part in the smuggling effort surprised me. I felt confluences merge.

“It was nice of you to come up for this party, Comrade. I’m sure Comrade Otto appreciates it.”

Comrade Joan lowered her voice. She leaned against the piano and dropped into stage-whisper range.

“I’ve gone undercover down in Mexico. My fake dad’s an Army officer in Ensenada. My aunt Claire’s his lover, but I don’t think for much longer. My mock dad’s a fascist, but he’s nice to women, even though he cheats on Aunt Claire. He’s got a wife and five real daughters, and his illegitimate daughter is nice, but she’s stupid and boy crazy.”

I said, “You’re very perceptive, Comrade.”

The girl swooped over to the low-register keys. She sat down at the bench and banged the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth. She did it one time, two times, three times — each time harder and faster. I looked over my shoulder and saw Claire De Haven standing in the doorway.

We stared at each other and nodded in sync. Comrade Joan hopped off the bench and ran to her mock mom. They disappeared down the hallway.

So much for Comrade Medtner. Comrade Claire and Comrade Joan had excised him for now. I walked back to my observation perch and looked down at the party floor.

The Koenigs and Mr. Abromowitz remained bombarded and beleaguered. Partygoers continued to harangue, gesticulate, bloviate, and dubiously critique. I scanned the room for new faces and spotted Meyer Gelb.

He’d been pointed out to me at a previous party. There he was now — tall, florid, heavyset. Joan had run nationwide records checks on him. They turned up negative; he had no listed address and no driver’s license issued within the forty-eight states. He came to Otto’s parties in cabs. Joan had noted his burn-scarred hands and had surmised the source as the Griffith Park fire. Gelb was waving his hands in Magda Koenig’s face at this very moment.

I scanned the room again. Faces popped in and out of smoke clouds. I saw Ruth Szigeti necking with Butch Stanwyck’s husband, Robert Taylor. Butch herself watched and delightedly grinned. Someone called out “Jean!” A woman turned and walked toward the voice.

Jean, as in Staley. Slender, dark-haired, stylish glasses. It had to be her — she fit Joan’s precise description. She entered my line of sight from the back of the house; her hair was noticeably wet. I wondered where she had just come from.

I walked downstairs and through the big room. It was all war-talk cacophony and gesticulation. Dr. Saul held court for daughter Andrea and Miklos Koenig; I noticed Andrea notice me. She had buzz-sawed me at a Claire De Haven party in mid-December. Andrea lived to harangue, gesticulate, and dish. Party guests were her very favorite victims. She tended to find people. I walked out the terrace, to let her find me.

I sat in a deck chair and looked out at the rain. Wind buckled the awning above me. I counted days backward to the Rice-Kapek murders. January 29 to March 4. That made thirty-five.

The investigation had gone fallow since the catastrophic blackout and Joan’s suicide. Hideo split his duty time between L.A. and Baja; Dudley rarely attended briefings. The Crash Squad continued to meet and hash out go-nowhere leads. Lee reported an overarching sense of futility. His drunk act on the jazz-club strip had gleaned no leads; the Negro riot had turned jazz-club regulars that much more truculent. Thad Brown teethed on the bootjacked guns. He was planning to run an East L.A. youth sweep. Rice and Kapek had purportedly sold a good many firearms to Mexican hoodlums.

“Hello, Miss Lake. I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age. I chewed your ear off at one of Claire’s dos, remember?”

I pulled a chair up beside me; Andrea slumped down and kicked off her shoes. She wore a man’s greatcoat over her party dress. The left breast pocket was pinned with Spanish Civil War medals. Meyer Gelb had worn that coat just a few minutes back.

Andrea’s hands were a mess. Her nails were chewed bloody; her fingers were nicotine-stained. I lit two cigarettes and passed her one. Let’s dish, Andrea. How about Meyer Gelb as a topic?

“I like that coat you’re wearing, Andrea. It’s not yours, is it? It’s much too big for you.”

Andrea jiggled the breast-pocket medals. She said, “To hear Meyer tell it, he killed more fascists than the Red Guard at Leningrad. I think he bought them from an old lefty down on his luck, and passed them off as his own.”

“He must have whole rooms full of that sort of junk at his house.”

“If he has a house. If he doesn’t sleep in a coffin like Dracula, and come out only at night. If he doesn’t just appear at Mr. Klemperer’s parties to grandstand and schmooze up his old comrades.”

“You’re saying that nobody knows where he lives?”

Andrea flicked her cigarette out in the rain. She’d smoked it in ten seconds flat.

“ ‘Kay Lake’s nosy. She’s a fascist chippy and keeps her ear to the ground.’ Claire De Haven told me that.”

“ ‘Andrea Lesnick loves to tattle.’ A little birdie told me that.”

Andrea giggled and made bird sounds. “ ‘Miss Lake’s a hoot.’ That’s my grand pronouncement, and I figured it out for myself.”

“Yes, and what have you figured out about Comrade Gelb?”

“What’s to figure? Meyer’s Meyer. My daddy and I were in his cell back in the early ’30s, and Meyer went off to the Spanish Civil War, and he became this big hero and got his hands burned in a pitched battle with Franco’s Falange. Or, there’s the persistent rumor that Meyer and some Jap Navy man were doing acid dips on their fingerprints way back.”

Or, he burned his hands in the Griffith Park fire.

“Was the Navy man’s name Kyoho Hanamaka?”

“I don’t know. Rumors are rumors. All I know is that it was just some loopy Jap.”

“Jean Staley was in your cell, wasn’t she? She’s here at the party now.”

Andrea snatched my cigarettes. She lit one up and dropped the pack in her purse. The awning dripped rain just a few feet away.

“Meyer’s Meyer and Jean’s Jean. Everybody made her for a snitch way back when. The CP was full of snitches then, and everybody made Jean for a secret right-winger, because she was such a conniver and a square. She’s a carhop, but she sucks up to rich people in the arts. She bunks in their guesthouses, like she’s hiding out and on the lam, even though she’s got a nice little place in Hollywood. My daddy says Jean’s a piece of work. She plans theme parties for rich people and hides out like the bogeyman’s on her case. She’s holed up in Mr. Klemperer’s guesthouse right now, and she leaves the curtains down all the time. My daddy says she’s a nympho and an exhibitionist. He said she blew Clark Gable at a party, while all the other guests watched.”

Andrea paused to catch her breath and chain cigarettes. I mulled the Jean Staley dish. Jean’s name appeared in Tommy Glennon’s address book. Kyoho Hanamaka touched the book and left a burn-scarred fingerprint. Jean Staley was on Elmer Jackson and Buzz Meeks’ interview list. Jean was bunked up across the backyard. That fact explained her wet hair.

Andrea stood up and slipped her shoes on; Meyer Gelb’s greatcoat brushed the ground. She said, “ ‘Miss Lake’s not as smart as she thinks she is.’ My daddy told me that. ‘Miss Lake’s a stooge for the L.A. cops.’ That’s another good one you can chalk up for Claire.”

I stood up and extended my hand. I almost said, “Thanks for the dish, kid.” Andrea swatted my hand and skipped back inside the house.

It was midnight. The party was approaching its gesticulating and fawning nadir, and the guesthouse lights were still on. I walked to the door of the main house and peered in. Jean Staley was ardently occupied with Mr. Abromowitz and the Koenigs. Mr. Abromowitz snoozed while Jean gesticulated and fawned.

I took off my shoes and ran across wet grass to the guesthouse; rain plastered my dress and soaked me down to my skin. The shades were up and wind had blown the door all the way open. Careless Jean. Exhibitionist Jean. Sloppy Jean, ditto.

The front room was a jumble of tossed clothes and dumped cosmetics. I walked into the bedroom and left squished-stocking footprints. Jean would know there had been an intruder. An open suitcase sat on the bed. A stack of picture postcards was arrayed atop a pile of lingerie.

The cards displayed the Mississippi River and the low skyline of Des Moines. I turned the top card over and whooped audibly. It was addressed to Elmer V. Jackson. Elmer’s address was scrawled below.

Jean plied Sergeant Elmer with schmaltzy greetings from the American Midwest. The postmark caught my eye and stopped me cold.

It was postmarked Des Moines. But it wasn’t a canceled postmark. It was dated March 9. Today’s date was March 4.

I checked the rest of the cards. All four featured Des Moines pictorials and breezy greetings to Elmer; all four featured uncanceled Des Moines postmarks. The postmarks ran a full week ahead of today’s actual date. That meant the postal cancellations and forwarding would be accomplished in L.A.; that meant Comrade Jean was jobbing and/or sleeping with horndog Elmer. It meant that Elmer had become entangled with a material witness in his own brother’s probable arson death.

I left everything where it was and squished back across the wet grass to the party. I ignored the bloviators and gesticulators and squished upstairs to the conservatory. Otto kept spare blankets in a closet there. I grabbed one and swaddled myself. The couch by the piano supplied a cozy roost. I stretched out to think and/or doze.

Goofball Elmer and What Is This? fought the tug of my late-night exhaustion. My next-door neighbor’s cat jumped on the couch, but I knew he didn’t really. I saw picture postcards of Des Moines and heard Joan’s casket go thunk. A woman said, “Katherine?”

I opened my eyes. Claire De Haven was perched on the edge of the couch. Claire, the doomed poetess. Edna St. Vincent Millay for the poor.

Who had aged since the first time I saw her. Who had given herself to Dudley Smith. Who held a rosary and prayed for Dudley to survive my knife wounds. Who survived the idiot onslaught of Bill Parker and my dilettante self.

Her fingers were as tobacco-stained as Andrea Lesnick’s. I said the first thing that came to me. It was, “Oh shit. I’m sorry.”

Her voice was raw. “It’s not enough.”

“It has to be.”

“You gained my trust and betrayed me. It’s not within me to forgive you.”

“Ask Monsignor Hayes about forgiveness. Ask Bill Parker the next time you see him at Mass.”

“He’s a man. I expect less from them. I expect women of your caliber to behave more gallantly.”

I said, “Word travels, Claire. I’m a prairie slattern and a switchblade assailant, or so you believe. How could I behave gallantly?”

She said, “I admire your sense of risk, even as I despise you.”

I said, “I admire your ability to withstand Dudley Smith, even as your love for him confounds me.”

A single tear ran down her cheek. I reached up and brushed it away.

“Will you continue to crash the party, Katherine? Will you continue to bombard people who’ve done you no harm?”

“You threw the party, and I crashed it. You instilled the sense of risk that you see in me. I’ll repay the debt and nullify my meager apology.”

Claire took my hand and placed it back on her cheek. She kissed the palm and placed my fingers in her mouth. Her eyes flickered between hard and soft. She placed my hand on her breast. The nipple pebbled up at my touch.

“Sweet girl, you don’t know who you are.”

“Dear lady, you don’t know my resolve.”

Bill’s prowl sled was parked in front of my house. He tapped his headlights as I swung into the driveway; I got out of my car and got into his.

Joan’s diary was there on the seat. Bill turned on the roof light and illuminated the pages. I leafed through the stack. Bill had marked the full manuscript in red ink.

He handed me his flask; I took a sip and passed it back. Bill killed the roof light. Late-night shadows fell over us; light rain tapped the windshield.

“You’ve been to a party, and your dress took a beating.”

“I would have asked you to escort me, but I thought your wife might disapprove.”

Bill said, “Don’t get catty. We have things to discuss.”

I squared off the manuscript between us. The numbered pages ran to 324. Joan wrote them in one month’s time.

“You should hear this injunction first. I’ll expose any and all manufactured resolutions to the klubhaus case, regardless of how it affects the craven deals you’ve cut with Dudley Smith.”

Bill nipped on his flask and mumbled in Latin. He started to cross himself; I reached out and pinned his hand to the seat.

“Send one up for Joan, before you even think of the plight you’re in. Think of what your sweaty crush got her.”

Bill sighed. It was too dark to see his face. I pictured him rolling his eyes and thinking, For the love of God, WOMEN.

I hit him. I swung around and punched his face and knocked his glasses into the backseat. Bill wiped his mouth and reached for the flask; I grabbed it first and tossed it out my window.

“You killed her. Don’t put it off on Dudley for one instant. She killed six people in a drunken stupor worthy of you, and you robbed her of the dignity of paying a just price for her actions. You wanted her, and that was all that mattered. You swooped down on her and used her, and she couldn’t resist Dudley, because he was so unlike you in all the easy ways and so like you in his soul. You used her, and Dudley used her, and you didn’t have the kindness or decency to pull her out of this crazy world you forced her into.”

Bill said, “Yes. But I’m the one you trusted with her diary.”

85 (Los Angeles, 9:00 A.M., 3/5/42)

Thad Brown said, “We’re thirty-six days in. This job commenced back when Hitler was a corporal. It you’re as bored as I am, raise your hand.”

Ashida polled the room. Breuning and Carlisle raised their hands. Buzz Meeks raised his hand. Lee Blanchard raised two hands. Ray Pinker had assumed Joan’s lab slot. He Sieg Heil’d Thad and roused some laughs.

Captain Parker looked hungover. He disdained Crash Squad shtick and kept his hands down. His lip was split, like somebody had smacked him. Elmer J. was AWOL. Dudley was down in La Paz.

The back room looked worn-out and threadbare. The food and booze inducement felt thin. The blackboard hung loose. The bulletin board drooped. The tacked reports wilted.

Ashida sipped coffee. He wore his winter Class As and gun belt. He scrolled back to Joan’s place every half second. He’d betrayed Dudley there.

Thad said, “We’ve got collateral cases up the wazoo now. We’ve got the Lunceford snuff and that Hanamaka guy that Elmer ID’d. We’ve got the klubhaus arson, and the presence of that hideout crib down the block. And don’t tell me the proximity is a coincidence.”

Ray Pinker said, “I’ve forensic’d the place three times. It was repeatedly vacuumed, so there’s no trace elements worth a shit. I can’t turn a latent print to save my life. There’s rubber-glove prints on all the room surfaces and cooking utensils, so I’d bet the inhabitants were gloved up at all times.”

Thad leaned into the blackboard. “What about the klubhaus torch?”

Pinker kicked his chair back. “It was deliberately set. I found powdered-accelerant traces on a downstairs floorboard. The first floor ignited, and the rioters caught arson fever and started chucking bottle bombs.”

Breuning said, “Monkey see, monkey do. The firebug lays down the accelerant and drops a match. He’s got the blackout and all the air-raid grief for cover. The jigs go all copycat and get up a bonfire.”

Thad cracked his knuckles. “We’re coming up against that Miciak shitheel’s statement. There’s the sheer bulk of all the criminal and PD-implicated shit that transpired at the klubhaus. We’ve got to work the confiscated guns that Rice and Kapek were selling. I want to run a sweep out of Hollenbeck Station. We’ll raise some hell, rattle some cages, and see if we can tie some beaners to our homicides.”

The room rumbled. That’s policework. The boys foot-stomped the floor. Ashida went aw-OH.

Blanchard said, “My so-called drunk act on the jazz strip is going nowhere. I’m a well-known cop, and the coons have got all closemouthed since the riot.”

Carlisle smirked. “Mr. Celebrity. ‘The Southland’s good but not great white hope.’ He spawns fear and envy wherever he goes.”

Blanchard kicked Carlisle’s chair. Carlisle cringed and unsmirked. Fight fever peaked and fizzled, fast.

Thad pitched Blanchard. “You and Lieutenant Ashida work a Mutt and Jeff and comb the strip again. We’ve got to ID the women who left those pubic-hair samples.”

Blanchard said, “We should try to ID the other cops who habituated the klubhaus. We might pull some leads there.”

Thad went nix. “Chief Horrall says no. He thinks it’ll open a whole can of worms.”

The Teletype clacked and unfurled paper. Parker walked up and tore out the sheet.

He read it. He rubbed his split lip. He glanced at Ashida.

“They’re moving the Werewolf back to Atascadero today. I thought you’d want to know.”

Ashida watched the move-out. Sayonara, Werewolf — thanks for the memories.

Two male nurses plucked him out of his cell. They wrestled him to the catwalk floor and shot him up with jungle juice. The Werewolf flailed and bared his fangs. He bayed at some nutso moon and went loosed-limb floaty.

Ashida stood close by. The nurses fish-eyed him. He’s a Jap. He’s Army brass. Who gave him that .45? The Werewolf’s his daddy.

They cuffed and shackled the Werewolf. They straitjacket-wrapped him. They grabbed his arms and wrangled him upstairs and outside. Ashida followed them out.

Newshounds sent a cheer up. Sid Hudgens and Jack Webb led the pack. The hounds howled and pawed the sidewalk outside Central Station. Flashbulbs pop-pop-popped.

Ashida blinked back bulb glare. Monster Matinee. He saw passing papas hold their toddlers up to watch.

Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle lounged on the steps. Breuning flicked his cigarette butt and hit the Werewolf’s back. A little girl tossed her ice-cream cone and missed the Werewolf by inches. The Sidster scribbled up a scratch pad.

A nuthouse wagon idled curbside. The driver slid out a gurney on casters. The nurses hoisted the Werewolf and triple-wrapped him in. More flashbulbs popped.

The nurses hopped in the back. The driver fishtailed eastbound on 1st Street. News fotogs snapped Ashida. He’s this Jap stoic. He’s all dolled up, Army style.

Ashida rubbed his eyes. That bulb glare had him seeing double. He saw two Elmer Jacksons, straight across the street. Two Elmers bolted the Moonglow Lounge and booze-weaved toward the station.

Ashida blinked and got back his eyesight. He saw one Elmer now. Elmer stumbled over the curb and made straight for him. He got up in booze-breath range and cut loose.

You little Jap shit/you should have told me/my brother died in that fire/you fuckers wanted the gold/I watchdogged your ass when the Japs bombed Pearl/you should have told me/you little Jap shit, you—

Mike Breuning stepped in. He grabbed Elmer’s coat collar and jerked him half off his feet. Elmer wheeled and sucker punched him. His Marine Corps ring gouged Breuning’s cheek down to the bone. Breuning yelped and threw sissy punches. Elmer moved close and slammed elbows. He smashed Breuning’s nose, Breuning’s teeth, Breuning’s dumb jug head overall. He put Breuning down on the ground and kicked one jug ear half off.

86 (Los Angeles, 11:00 A.M., 3/5/42)

His elbow hurt. He was skunk drunk. Breuning’s snaggle teeth snagged up his suit coat. He snagged Dumb Cracker of All Time honors. They foretold his futile fate. Dudley Smith would fuck him up the dirt road.

Elmer lurched through City Hall. He lurched toward the Vice squadroom and his cozy cubicle. He lurched by sweatbox row. He thought he saw Buzz Meeks in box #2. He lurched past box #3 and hit the home stret—

Something bushwhacked him. Two geeks snatched him and shoved him into box #4. He hit the bolted-down table and plopped into the bolted-down chair.

Bill Parker kicked the door shut. Thad Brown thunked a thermos down on the table. Parker unscrewed the top and poured out hot coffee.

Elmer took a test sip. It burned his tongue and stung his teeth. Parker and Brown pulled up chairs. Parker said, “We talked to Buzz Meeks. He told us you forged up Tommy Glennon’s address book and placed it at the klubhaus. He also mentioned that the two of you put the boots to Huey Cressmeyer, down in T.J. Huey purportedly snitched off Dudley Smith’s racket schemes, up here and in Baja.”

Elmer sipped too-hot coffee. His hands shook. He scoped Parker’s fat lip and willed savoir faire.

“Who smacked you, Bill? Was it Kay, or some other swift college girl?”

Brown chortled. “My money’s on Kay.”

Parker deadpanned the shtick. “We don’t know if Meeks gave us the whole drift on you two and Huey, and it doesn’t really matter. The spatials on the Lunceford shooting are off, and you’ve quite noticeably ditched your ankle piece. That doesn’t matter, either. You fired it on a liquor-store stakeout in October of ’40, and a spent-ballistics file exists. Guess what, dipshit? We got a match to the pills you pumped into Catbox Cal.”

The green room looms. The last mile beckons. Your ass is grass, son.

“So, I’m fucked.”

Brown shook his head. “No, you’re not. Lunceford was Fifth Column, and he was in with that Jap hump, Hanamaka. You’re getting a waltz on Manslaughter One. We consider the shooting kosher, and this room is as far as it goes.”

Parker said, “Thad and I have read Joan Conville’s diary, and I’ve discussed the text with Kay Lake. I know that Miss Lake has discussed that text with you and Hideo Ashida, but I’ll add that she omitted one key narrative thread.”

No green room. The coffee had cooled down. Elmer took a big gulp.

“I already figured that out. The Dudster, Joan, and that little shit Ashida were out for the gold from the git-go. I sensed that Kay was fibbing on that. She didn’t tell me, because she thought I’d go berserk on account of my brother. She didn’t tell Ashida, because he’s Dudley’s lapdog, and he’s a participant in this whole crazy gold hunt anyways.”

Brown smiled. “Elmer’s not as dumb as most folks think he is.”

Parker said, “Let’s not get carried away.”

Elmer yukked. The coffee diffused the booze. Son, you’re in the catbird seat.

“Okay, then. We got our three big cases, going back to ’31. You two, me, Buzz, Kay, and maybe Ashida want a pure solve on the klubhaus job — but Jack H. and the Dudster want to put the onus off on some shines. And you two are all ditzed, because Bill clean-solved the Watanabe job and kept mum on it, and our pal Jim Davis killed them Watanabes, and you don’t want that leaking out, and Dud told Joan Conville that he intends to pentothal Jim D. to see if he spills any crossover leads to the klubhaus caper. One of you’s our next chief. Jack Horrall’s afraid of Bill, because his grand-jury plays served to get the Werewolf sprung, and Jack can’t retaliate. You want my opinion on that?”

Parker sighed. “Give us your esteemed opinion, Sergeant.”

Elmer stood up and kicked blood back in his legs. He scratched his balls and worked up some brain juice.

“Judge and jury will sure as shit acquit Fletch B., Call-Me-Jack, Ray Pinker, and the Jamie kid, along with all them others. That’s for-sure gospel — regardless of Bill’s testimony. While I’ve got you here, I’ll tell you why. J. Edgar Hoover don’t want bad blood between the Feds and the PD, not when we got this here Jap internment to deal with. You got a spell of time to make hay on the klubhaus job, before the acquittals come down, and Jack H. figures he can pull the plug on the job and give Dud his marching orders, and then it’s good-bye, jigaboos.”

Parker sighed anew. “You’re right, Thad. He’s not as dumb as folks think.”

Elmer hoot-hooted. Brown said, “Meeks told us that Ed Satterlee offered you a shot to listen to the Fed’s phone and bug recordings and delete your own voice. I’d like you to provide that same service for Captain Parker and me.”

Elmer plunked back down in his chair. He hooked his thumbs in his suspenders and put his feet up on the desk.

“In exchange for what?”

Parker said, “In exchange for let bygones be bygones. That means any and all illegal and questionable shit that you’ve pulled since New Year’s. That stated, I’ll add that we’re easing Breuning and Carlisle off the job. We’re keeping you and Meeks, Ashida and Blanchard on. Dudley’s permitting Ashida to do field interviews, and Thad and I are convinced that Ashida wants a clean solve, regardless of his relationship with Dudley. I’m not going to tell Dudley that Kay revealed the contents of Joan’s diary to you and Ashida, and the only attendant risk here is what Ashida might tell Dudley himself.”

Brown lit his pipe and shook out the match. He raised his feet and nudged Elmer’s feet off the desk.

“That leaves Blanchard and Ashida, you and Meeks as our line detectives. Ashida’s driving back to Baja tonight. We’re swearing him in as a war hire when he returns. The four of you will have carte blanche. We’ll ride out interference from Jack Horrall, if and when it occurs.”

Elmer snagged the full gist. “You’re freezing Dudley out. You’re driving him to make some dumb play that will put his dick in the wringer.”

Parker lit a cigarette. “Don’t say it, Thad. ‘He’s not as dumb as most folks think.’ ”

Brown said, “Our biggest concern is the guns. I rebraced Harold John Miciak last night, and bought him out of a GTA bounce in Fresno. He fleshed out the statement he gave Breuning and Carlisle, as it pertained to the guns. He told me that Rice and Kapek sold all the guns to pachuco right-wingers. We’re compiling a roust list off the Feds’ subversive files. You’re the first man on the Crash Squad we’ve shared this lead with. It’s a bigger deal than I let on at the briefing this morning. We’re going in with shotguns and sedition-stamped grand-jury subpoenas. There’ll be three two-man flanks. That’s Captain Parker and me, you and Meeks, Blanchard and Ashida.”

Elmer wolf-whistled. “You are taking a very dicey risk with Ashida. You are risking him spilling everything we get to the Dudster.”

Parker gulped. Brown gulped. Their throat doohickeys bobbed.

Brown passed Elmer a snapshot. It was a niteclub-type deal. The backdrop denoted Club Alabam. A jolly trio mugged in a booth. Dig said trio:

Meyer Gelb, Jean Staley, Tommy Glennon.

Elmer wolf-whistled, looooooooow. Brown said, “It was in with Miciak’s property, up in Fresno. It’s date-stamped February 27, which makes it one week ago. Miciak refused to comment on the picture. I had some hayseed cops hard-nose him, to no fucking avail.”

Elmer brain-strained it. Jean’s allegedly back east. Jean’s mail-drop play via Bev’s Switchboard. Smut pix with klubhaus backdrops. Tommy G.’s La Jolla PO box.

Parker crushed his cigarette. “Here’s the big question. What’s a Nazi like Glennon doing with two Communists like Staley and Gelb?”

Elmer lit a cigar. “I think I know where Tommy is.”

Brown said, “Then go find him and arrest him.”

Elmer scrammed. He booked out of box #4 and cut back to box #2. Bad Buzz still sat there. He looked un-Buzz-like forlorn.

“I know where Tommy the G. is. Let’s go get him.”

87 (Ensenada, 4:00 P.M., 3/6/42)

Silver bars to gold oak leaves. The SIS command. We mustn’t mince words here. Juan Lazaro-Schmidt pulled strings.

Ralph Melnick jumped to lieutenant colonel. Fourth Interceptor promoted him and called him back stateside. It occurred abruptly. Colonel Ralph threw a party.

At Major Smith’s new office. It was Colonel Ralph’s ex-office. It was twice as large and twice as grand. Mess orderlies served cake and champagne. Dudley invited guests.

Hideo Ashida and Juan Pimentel. Claire, Beth, and Young Joan. Salvy Abascal. The two Lazaro-Schmidts.

Dudley circulated. He tossed the FDR portrait out the window and drew scattered applause. Captain Juan raised a toast. “To outgoing despots and incoming Sturmbannfürers.”

The right-flankers loved it. Claire and Young Joan scowled. Colonel Melnick giggled. He loathed Double-Cross Rosenfeld.

Beth looked perplexed. She did not comprehend repartee or lovers’ passion. She’d witnessed his tiff with Claire. Both parties raised welts and drew blood. He belt-lashed Claire. His severed ear required stitches.

The moment drew nigh. Colonel Melnick called for order. The guests moved in close. Dudley clicked his heels. Constanza removed his silver shoulder bars and pinned on his gold oak leaves.

Major Dudley Liam Smith. The bluff Irish lad ascends.

Constanza kissed him, full on the lips. Beth gasped. Young Joan smirked. Claire wheeled and walked off through the squadroom. Dudley heard glass break. Dudley smelled sprayed champagne.

The orderlies made haste. They moved out with towels and whisk brooms. Claire’s display of pique upstaged him. Constanza hooked two fingers through his belt loops and tugged. They bumped hips and kissed again. It restated her claim.

The guests dispersed. They shuffled and formed war-chat cliques. Hideo caught his eye. Dudley gestured toward the squadroom. Hideo filed out first.

Dudley joined him. He smelled Dom Pérignon ’29. The orderlies whisked up glass shards. Hideo sat at the duty sergeant’s desk. Dudley pulled a chair up.

“Is something troubling you, lad? I doubt that it’s the trifling domestic scene you just witnessed.”

Ashida said, “The klubhaus aspect of our cases troubles me. I think there’s a very simple solution at the heart of it. I would like your consent to explore all possibilities in my field interviews, before Chief Horrall orders you to implement a more expedient solution.”

Dudley smiled. “You have my consent. I will add that you know a great deal about my business dealings here in Baja, and I would ask that you steer clear of them as they might pertain to your investigation.”

“Yes, I agree.”

Dudley fondled his oak leaves. They were solid gold.

“I would advise caution on a second front, as well. Dick Carlisle called me and described your contretemps with Elmer Jackson, including the vile comments he made to you and the beating he inflicted on our friend Mike. Dick said that Elmer made a garbled reference to gold, which I find discomfiting. Please be careful there. Beyond that, I would like you to draft an extensively detailed report on our three cases, for my exclusive review. Requisition any and all files you need, under your SIS sanction and my signature as your new commanding officer. Interpret all the evidence and theorize as to how the three cases cohere. Have the report to me in one week’s time.”

El Rancho de Narcóticos was ten miles east of T.J. Carlos Madrano built it. Dudley and José Vasquez-Cruz usurped it. Juan Pimentel now sub-Führer’d the ranch.

Dudley and Captain Juan dropped in. Sinarquista goons straw-bossed the operation. Statie noncoms patrolled the perimeter. They packed tommy guns and Brazilian mastiffs on short tethers. The dogs hunted feral cats and mauled dope-worker slaves on command.

The conversion lab was up-to-date and unhygienic. Four chemists brewed Mexican poppies into Big “H.” Low-peso peons packaged the shit. A slave barracks adjoined the lab. The slaves worked sixteen-hour shifts and got Sunday mornings off. A local priest performed Mass. He was hooked on Big “H.”

Dudley toured the grounds. Captain Juan played tour guide. Governor Lazaro-Schmidt had joined the cabal. He’d requested a progress report.

Four large trucks and three large buses stood by the barracks. Their big-scoop wheelwells would move the shit north. Interned Japs would ride the buses. Legally vetted wetbacks would crowd up the trucks. Hideo Ashida would watchdog future border crossings. He’d speak Jap to the Japs. He’d tally confiscated gelt and secure property lists.

Wets, Japs, dope. A trenchant trifecta. El Governor would vouch the three fronts. He’d grease the skids with the U.S. Relocation brass. Their Jap jails would overflow. He’d sign on California farm bosses. He’d exploit his office and sell them cut-rate wets.

Dudley spot-checked vehicles. He kicked tires, popped hoods, tightened loose spark plugs. Juan Pimentel watched. He said, “You haven’t told me the governor’s percentage.”

Dudley swung a wrench and cinched up wobbly lug nuts. Slack tires just wouldn’t do.

“15 % of our combined ventures. He provides the official sanctions, while we provide the work.”

“Do you not find the governor’s relationship with his sister quite strange?”

Dudley winked. “I would call it outré, and perhaps perverse.”

They dined at Neptune’s Locker. It was a driftwood and barnacle barn on Avenida Costeño. Native swells and U.S. stiffs loved the place.

Their table overlooked the yacht pier. Film moguls cruised down from L.A. and went slumming. Nude starlets baked on warm teakwood. The governor openly stared.

He wore a trim-cut navy blazer and white ducks tonight. The London Shop dressed him. He shopped in Beverly Hills once a month.

They drank absinthe frappés. Constanza wore a yellow sundress. Dudley wore his ODs. He felt dowdy beside these two.

They toasted Dudley’s precipitous promotion. They toasted their business deal and a certain German jefe. Constanza hummed the “Horst-Wessel-Lied.” The table was set with mock-gold flatwear. Lazaro-Schmidt raised a mock-gold fork.

“To new friends and acquisition. To that precious commodity we seek.”

They tapped forks over the table. The absinthe had Dudley light-headed. Constanza ran a hand up his leg.

“Tell the major about Kyoho, Juan. He’s quite naturally curious, and I need to gauge whether or not he’s the jealous type.”

Lazaro-Schmidt laughed. He lit a cigarette and shot his shirtcuffs.

“It may dismay my sister, but I think of Kyoho as a conspirator more than I think of him as her lover. As a conspirator, I would surmise that he was the most adroit and politically savvy of all those in the left-right cartel. He was always tight-lipped, especially as it pertained to the gold. He was here for the conference in November of ’40, and I recall that he seemed to be very much within himself, amid the few instances of camaraderie that I witnessed.”

Constanza lit a cigarette. “Juan was there for the opening ceremony and the departures only. He was not there for the formal meetings where the strategies pertaining to the gold itself were discussed.”

Dudley said, “Do minutes for the conference exist?”

Lazaro-Schmidt said, “Yes, but they are not to be found. They would be a priceless discovery, of course.”

Constanza dipped a hand under the table. Dudley threaded their fingers up.

“It would delight me to have you drop some names, Governor. The conference has me starstruck.”

Lazaro-Schmidt waved the gold fork. “The Russians were without significant style or substance. Molotov, Beria, a few elevated apparatchiks. They were there to betray Butcher Stalin and the Communist International, and I credit them only with their ardent belief that informed leftists and rightists must unite to survive a certain postwar apocalypse. Our Nazi Kameraden were quite another barrel of fish. They shared the revelation with comparable urgency and comported themselves with inestimable class. Wilhelm Canaris was most cultured and gracious. Ernst Kaltenbrunner was thin, gorgeously attired, and six and a half feet tall. My acquaintance Meyer Gelb drove the German contingent around Ensenada, without their ever once suspecting that he was a Jew.”

Red Meyer, redux. Dudley pondered it.

“Gelb attended the conference?”

“I’m sure he was there as a rogue Stalinist, and the tool of an enlightened faction within the Comintern. He served as a chauffeur, but was not privy to the conference itself.”

“But minutes of the conference do exist?”

“Yes. An American man took them with him at the end of the conference. I know nothing about this man, but I saw him leave for the airfield with a briefcase cuffed to his wrist.”

Dudley said, “Please describe the man.”

Lazaro-Schmidt said, “He was tall, and he had a southern accent.”

Constanza booked a suite at the del Norte. It was insolently close to his suite and Claire. They walked through the lobby, entwined. Beth and Young Joan sat in lounge chairs and saw them. Beth scowled. Young Joan scrutinized.

His body revved, his mind raced. They’d sniffed cocaine in the cab. The seditious siblings, the gold, some elliptical gap. They hadn’t discussed the heist/the fire/the gold’s full origins. They assumed each other’s lust for possession and possessive intent. The sibs went back with Kyoho Hanamaka. Governor Juan attended the confab and knew Meyer Gelb. His body revved, his mind raced. Tell me everything. He almost shrieked it.

They elevatored up to the suite. Constanza pushed him into the back wall and held him there with her mouth. She kissed his eyes and his neck. The doors slid open. She grabbed his waistband and pulled him down the hall. He fumbled the key out of her clutch and unlocked the suite.

The front room was all dark shapes and shadows. He kicked the door shut and pushed Constanza into a chair. He dropped to his knees and held her there with his mouth.

He threw her dress up and pulled down her stockings and underwear. Constanza drew back and hooked her legs over the width of the chair. He caught her scent. She grabbed his hair and pulled him into it.

He wanted that. He knew she knew it. He stretched her legs. He found the wet and the fit and the place. Constanza fell into Spanish. She went Sí, sí, sí, sí, sí.

She made different sounds. He learned her tones and her tastes all together. Her breath raced. She pushed up. She pitched and buckled off one drawn-out Sí. She held him there with her legs then. He’d hoped that she would.

It rained all night. They made love all night. They talked in between. It reprised his first night with Joan.

Pious you. You kill people and sense God as an innocent. You see the abrogation of all moral law in my relationship with my brother.

Yes. I disapprove and am concurrently titillated.

I disapprove of La Comunista. She is strident and indecorous. You must confirm or refute that you killed her Red lover. My brother believes that you did. He believes that my occasional lover Salvy may have assisted you.

I’ll confirm or refute when I know you better. Forgive my circumspection until then.

I have never been circumspect. I despise your Red whore. She is La Comunista Estúpida. I find your young charges compelling, however. They are both of you, regardless of their blood. Young Joan possesses your ferocity, and young Beth possesses your hunger.

Your perceptions honor me, darling.

You are tall and urbane. One rarely sees that in Mexican men. My brother is urbane, but he is a shrimp.

Your brother is urbane, but not quite as perceptive as you. I rather enjoyed his perceptions of Meyer Gelb, though.

Meyer Gelb is a puto, a parasite, and an extortionist. He is an evil Stalinist, and he hates Trotskyites more than he hates fascists such as you and me. He will extort the very life’s blood from our Jewish exile friends.

Betray me not, mi corazon. It would surely devastate me.

Do not tell me that. It will assure my betrayal.

Caustic you. So determined to take my measure in the course of a first-night’s encounter.

One takes a lover’s measure immediately or not at all. You need women to record your triumphs. You need to capitulate to women in a manner that many would find unseemly.

I commune with a wolf I met on the British moors, in 1921. He will sleep with us tonight, and he is very astute about women. He has told me that your designs are entirely felicitous, and has recently informed me that I underestimate a reckless young woman in Los Angeles. He’s close to convincing me that the silly girl intends me great harm.

88 Kay Lake’s Diary (Los Angeles, 7:00 A.M., 3/7/42)

I was still woozy from Otto’s party, three nights ago. It wasn’t a liquor hangover or a case of party-behavior regret. I barely touched booze; I abstained from flirtatiousness and cutup antics. I felt the undertow of Otto’s provocative guest list. It was a nexus of criminal-case suspects, present and past.

Meyer Gelb. Jean Staley and her postcard ruse, geared to deceive my pal Elmer. Gelb’s tenuous connection to the four exiled musicians. Gelb, Staley, the Lesnicks. Communist comrades in ’33; party guests nine years on. Jorge Villareal-Caiz did not attend the party. Dudley Smith allegedly killed him. Claire De Haven told me that. She told me that with my hand on her breast.

I’m seated at a folding table in my backyard now; I’m ten feet from the incinerator that I use to burn rubbish. I put the incinerator to hasty use late last December; I burned the clothes I wore during my impetuous attempt to take Dudley Smith’s life. Canny Claire made me for this crime. Elmer picked that nugget up during a hot-sheet surveillance. A call girl named Annie Staples was servicing Saul Lesnick.

The Claire-Dudley liaison is imploding. Claire went to Mexico with a murderous madman and now pays the price. Claire told me this herself. She told me with my hand on her breast.

Bill called me an hour ago; he bluntly stated that he and Thad Brown are now colluding. They are pushing Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle off the klubhaus case, while they retain my Lee Blanchard, partnered up with Hideo Ashida. Bill has characterized Hideo as a young man who perpetually “falls from shit to clover.” Hideo is surely the luckiest Japanese in these parts. He has whizzed through the internment push and has secured a U.S. Army commission. Bill told me that he will soon be doubly credentialed. Double-Trouble Hideo will also serve as a war-hire policeman. He is down in Baja now, but will soon be returning. He will cut his teeth in an upcoming “pachuco sweep.”

Bill Parker, fired with holy purpose and fixed upon task. Joan Conville’s diary chastened and dismayed him. I’m glad I hit him in the mouth. It served to wake him up.

Bill told me that he will abet my pledge to expose false solutions to the klubhaus case and will publicly excoriate the slaying of any and all bogus suspects. This is a direct contravention of his pledges to Dudley Smith. I have concluded that Hideo has not revealed the existence of Joan’s diary or the fact that I hold possession. Hideo pines for a clean klubhaus solve. He was robbed of a clean solve on the Watanabe case and harbors guilt for his part in the frame-up of Werewolf Shudo. I know this. Hideo’s desire for a clean solve supersedes his lust for the gold and his kid crush on Dudley Smith. I know this. Hideo’s desire for a clean solve transcends his bond with Dudley and Joan Conville, and cuts through all their criminal and romantic circumlocutions. I know this.

I pondered romantic triangles within a triangulated case structure. I pondered triangles in general. I thought of Brenda Allen, Elmer Jackson, and Annie Staples. A brainstorm hit. I ran inside to the phone.

Brenda’s preferred meeting spot was Dave’s Blue Room. She and Elmer owned a sizable percentage. Brenda’s preferred pose was midmorning gin fizzes; her preferred conversational style was the full-speed monologue. One buckled in for these.

Our back booth assured privacy. The waiter brought a full pitcher of fizzes and left us alone. Brenda revved up on the war, FDR’s tax bill, and her monthly bribe cut to Sheriff’s Vice. She laid on the prelude and arrived at her preferred topic: her call-biz partner and part-time lover, Sergeant E. V. Jackson.

“...and I’m thinking of calling the Missing Persons Squad about this boy, Citizen. I don’t care that he’s got Ellen Drew on the side, or whatever else he’s got going — but we’re running thirty-four girls, and it’s an around-the-clock enterprise that he’s been neglecting while he’s been working that klubhaus job down in darktown, him all partnered up with Buzz Meeks, who I know for a fact has gunned down numerous colored and Mexican gents under dubious circumstances.”

So far, so good. I arranged the klatch to get a bead on Elmer’s recent actions. I sipped midmorning gin and egg whites and formulated a question. Brenda relaunched her monologue and cut straight to Jack Horrall.

“As you well know, I’ve got my weekly date with Call-Me-Jack, which involves perfunctory woof-woof in the missionary manner, and always on the floor, and I’ve got the long-standing rug burns to attest to this long-standing arrangement. Well, Jack don’t take very long, and he always segues to his long-standing spiel about the woes of the big-city police chief, and this morning it’s all about how your chum Whiskey Bill Parker showed up at his office last night and summarily announced that he would oppose and expose any bogus solving of the klubhaus job, despite Jack and the Dudster’s wishes, and it left Jack in a veritable tizzy, because Citizen Jack is now under Federal indictment, and vulnerable in about six trillion ways.”

Bill fulfilled his pledge to me. My heart swelled. My well-aimed smack in the mouth surely did it. Brenda drained her third gin fizz and lit a cigarette; I jumped at my chance to ask a question.

“Brenda, what’s going on with Elmer and Annie Staples?”

Brenda tittered and formed a circle with her left forefinger and thumb. She poked her right forefinger through the middle of the circle. It was international sign language for fuckee-fuckee.

“Well, Citizen, to begin with, Annie likes it more than she should, given that she repeatedly does it for money. Second, I told Ed Satterlee that he could use my Miracle Mile wall peek to get some footage on Annie in the kip with some Commie psychiatrist, and I heard a rumor that Elmer got embroiled in that play. I confronted him, but he refused to blab. Annie’s always been too smart for her own good, which don’t sit right for a line girl. To top it off, I saw Annie in Hollywood last week. She was hobknobbing with Sid Hudgens at Breneman’s Ham ’n’ Eggs, all huddled up thick as thieves.”

89 (Ensenada, 10:00 P.M., 3/7/42)

The walls were thin. His suite adjoined theirs. The walls were sound sieves. He sat at his desk and worked through the tiff.

Ashida read photostats. He’d submitted stat requests and gotten fast replies. Treasury and Alameda PD kicked loose. LAFD Arson stats had been pledged.

He read. He took notes. He sat up against a sieve wall. The two suites ran contiguous. He worked and eavesdropped.

1927. Fritz Eckelkamp’s heist spree. Liquor-store jobs. Cash on hand, always. The quick in-and-out. Alameda PD snags Fritz. He falls behind multiple counts.

Claire shrieked. She defamed the Redheaded Succubus and the Nazi Half-Breed Whore. Dudley shrieked. She was the whore. She was a Dope-Addict Shrew and a Mex- and Nigger-Fucker. She fucked that Putrid Puto Jorge and that Nigger Welterweight in L.A.

Ashida read stat pages. Alameda PD supplied a background sheet. He traveled back to Weimar Berlin. Willkommen, Herr Jap.

Claire shrieked. Dudley shrieked. They traded You’re the Dope Fiend barbs. Claire defamed Ace Kwan. Dudley demeaned the Jew Maestro. Claire went singsong. Somebody-stabbed-you/somebody-stabbed you/I-think-it-was-a-girl.

Fritz was a Sparticist. He fought Brownshirt thugs and swung a nail-studded plank. He robbed diamond merchants at gunpoint. He firebombed a bierhaus and fried two Brownshirts to a crisp.

Ashida wrote, “FE precedes all criminal cases and all intrigues. FE as precipitating agent? FE escapes from gold train, 5/18/31. Catalytic moment of all cases combined?”

Claire called Dudley Pussy-Whipped and Shanty Irish Scum. Dudley called Claire a Round-Heeled Poseur. A silent gap stretched. Then they laughed, then they moaned, then bedsprings creaked.

Ashida ran from it. He sat in the lobby bar and nursed a dry sherry. It was late. The lights were dim. He was the sole patron. Joan Klein messed around at the piano.

She possessed some skill. Her forte was hybrid improvisation. She melded Chopin and Gershwin tonight. Ashida caught strains of a jumpy mazurka and Concerto in F.

Young Joan. She’s Dudley’s and Claire’s odd creature. The hotel management indulges her. She’s become Spanish-fluent in record time. The head barkeep pays her a pittance to play show tunes. She wows patrons with her oddball transcriptions.

She wrapped up Chopin Meets Gershwin. She hit two sour notes and went out with a bang. Ashida applauded. Young Joan walked over and sat down with him.

She sipped his sherry, uninvited. She cleaned her glasses with his napkin. People recognized it. She had Dudley Smith’s eyes.

“Comrade Chopin drank patent compounds and went insane. Comrade Gershwin died from a brain tumor. The fascist patriarchy stifles the creative class and drives them nuts.”

Ashida smiled. “Comrade Stalin’s agrarian purges have left four million dead. Consider that the next time you start fomenting.”

Young Joan waved faux wolfsbane. “Uncle Hideo’s a square, but he’s not a fascist, like a certain party I could name. The jury’s out on Uncle Hideo, in more ways than one.”

Ashida waved faux wolfsbane. “Stop being cryptic and uncanny. Stop making with the non sequiturs and comrade talk. Nobody knows what you’re talking about half the time.”

Young Joan replaced her glasses. Her small eyes magnified.

“Aunt Claire took Cousin Beth and me to this swift party. Everybody talked in non sequiturs. I met Bertolt Brecht and Orson Welles. Comrade Welles squeezed my knee and called me ‘cutie.’ I met some swell string players from the Dresden Staatskapelle, and I drank absinthe and had visions.”

Ashida grinned. He indulged the girl more than he should.

“What did you see, specifically?”

“I saw this violinist named Ruth Szigeti making the beast with two backs with Robert Taylor, while Miss Barbara Stanwyck herself watched. Then I saw this man named Comrade Meyer Gelb hit Comrade Ruth up for a blow job, and try to get her to snitch out Trotskyites in this studio orchestra.”

Meyer Gelb. From the mouths of babes. This loopy child source.

“What else did you see?”

“Nothing. Visions are visions, and I’m not going to tell you I saw something I didn’t. I’m not going to lie just to entertain you, when you think I’m just a silly girl playing Mata Hari.”

Ashida went Stop it. “Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think that at all.”

“Don’t underestimate me, Uncle. If I’m just this silly girl, then why does Juan Pimentel pay me to get next to you and pump you for information?”

Pimentel was an invert. Maricón en español. Pimentel possessed sonar and radar. Pimentel sensed inversion in him.

RHIP. Ashida had master keys. They unlocked the SIS squadroom and all the file banks. He was Dudley’s exec now. It covered him. Boss, I was just working late.

Pimentel perved on him. Pimentel had no shame. Pimentel corrupted a mere child and sicced her his way.

Ashida unlocked the squadroom door and hit the fluorescents. Bright tube light bore down. SIS kept intel files on all the Baja Staties. They were deemed corruption-prone.

Statie folders filled up two file banks. N to Q filled a full drawer. Green sheets detailed suspect history. Addendums listed “Possibly Related Intel.”

Ashida unlocked the drawer. The Pimentel file was stuffed between Pecheco and Pizzaro. One green sheet poked out the top. Ashida plucked it and skimmed it. The sheet revealed this:

Pimentel, Juan Ramon. DOB 5/26/11. Suspect Personal History. One derogatory report.

“Arrested in raid on homosexual nightclub. 2/19/37. San Diego PD.”

Ashida flipped the green sheet. Three intel notes were typed on the back.

“Subject Pimentel alleged to be highly skilled in area of telephone (pay-phone) technology.”

“Subject Pimentel holds graduate degrees from Mexican Polytechnical Institute, Guadalajara. Purportedly attended technical institute in Germany. Purportedly knowledgeable in microdot technology.”

“Subject Pimentel purportedly attended assumed subversive conference/Ensenada, mid-11/40. Conference purportedly brought together high-ranking Soviet and Nazi intelligence officers. Subject Pimentel purportedly assigned chauffeur duties & was spotted with Abwehr Commandant Wilhelm Canaris & Gestapo chieftain Ernst Kaltenbrunner.”

90 (San Diego, 11:00 A.M., 3/8/42)

The boys are back in town.

At this lice-lair motel. On the PD’s dime. Staking Tommy G.’s PO box. To no fucking good avail.

The Seaglade Motel. Off the main drag in Dago. A hot-sheet hut for sailors and jarheads. All-nite whore traffic. One big VD stain.

Buzz read a Donald Duck comic book. He gassed on Donald’s rage and perved on Daisy Duck. Elmer gabbed with Thad Brown, long-distance.

He spilled his break-in at Bev’s Switchboard. Thad went Yikes. Elmer steamrolled the reaction and ran down the mail-forward scam. Link Rockwell held a box at Bev’s and sent smut pix to Tommy’s box in La Jolla. The pix featured klubhaus backdrops. A white girl and Mex girl frolicked with masked men. The girls fit Ashida’s snatch-hair prognostications.

Thad went Yikes. Elmer relaunched his spiel.

The post office stakeout bore no ripe fruit. Fruitcake Tommy hasn’t showed. Elmer ran down the envelope in Meyer Gelb’s box. It featured a La Paz PO box return address and no return name. The envelope contained blotter paper and maybe microdots.

Thad went Yikes. He told Elmer to ring Ashida — chop, chop. Tell him to check the La Paz box and apply his brain to microdots. Beyond that — chop, chop. You and Meeks go find that Tommy fuck.

Elmer went Yeah, boss. Buzz read his comic book. Thad laid out some hot PD dish.

Whiskey Bill keestered Jack Horrall. Ouch! — straight up the shit chute. Bill pulled Breuning and Carlisle off of the klubhaus job. Bill told Jack he’d quash a bogus-suspect solve. Ouch! — Bill keestered Dudley Smith.

Elmer went Yikes. Buzz tapped his wristwatch — wrap this shit up. Thad motor-mouthed. He said Parker’s wrangling a material-witness writ. Link Rockwell’s at some Navy flight school in Florida. Parker wants to extradite him. Jack Horrall’s dragging his heels.

Elmer went Yikes. Thad went Chop, chop, you dumb hayseeds. Thad went Quit jerking off and go to work.

They restaked the post office. The posh hamlet cocooned them. La Jolla was swanksville. Cypress trees and golf courses. Nice stores with candy-cane awnings. A nifty beach close by.

The stakeout was yawnsville. They pondered a more direct approach. Brace the Postal Inspection Service. Have the postal cops dump Tommy’s PO box.

They discussed it. They nixed it. This was a strongarm job. The postal cops would demur. They had to snatch Tommy. They had to hurl some hurt on him before they dumped him on Thad.

Swanksville. Yawnsville. They sat in Elmer’s civilian sled and evinced ennui.

Buzz said, “Maybe Tommy ducked down to T.J. He’s bored, so he’s thinking he’ll go catch the donkey show and see his pal Huey. I say we go down there and stir up some shit.”

Elmer said, “We overstirred the shit the last time we went down there. I say we check with SDPD Burglary. We’re brother officers looking for a hot-prowl man. They might have some fresh cases and some leads they could share.”

SDPD was close by the Seaglade. That greased the skids. They drove over and parked in a visitor’s slot. The building was whitewashed adobe and two stories high. They walked up to the DB. Dago was a turkey town. Burglary Division was one fat-slob cop.

The dink sat in a gnat-sized office. His desk plate read SGT. LEW SARNI. They walked in, deliberate. The dink shook himself awake.

“L.A., right? You’ve got that look. You’re down here on a job, and you need a hand.”

The dink dwarfed his dink-sized desk. Elmer and Buzz straddled chairs and faced him. They lit up cigars. Elmer tossed the dink a one-dollar Cuban. It bounced on his desk.

“We’re looking for a hot-prowl geek named Tommy Glennon. He’s a homo, but he rapes women. He’s got a postal box in La Jolla, and we thought you might have made him for some incidents down here.”

Buzz slid the dink a mug-shot strip. The dink lit the cigar and studied the fotos.

“We’ve got a series of 459/rapes, and your guy matches the suspect’s description. The victims are all Navy women, working out of Point Loma. Navy CID’s handling it, because they make the rape-o for a sailor. The guy’s vicious, and he’s pulled six jobs so far, but the whole thing’s going nowhere.”

Elmer said, “That’s it?”

The dink savored his cigar. He flicked ash and went Yum-yum.

“No, that isn’t it. A Wave officer called us and reported a man following her and skulking around her apartment house. He matches your guy’s and our suspect’s description, but CID and the DB here can’t spare a stakeout team or a woman cop to play decoy.”

Buzz whipped out his flash roll. He peeled off two yards and dropped them on the desk.

“Let us handle it. What CID don’t know won’t hurt them.”

The dink coughed cigar smoke. “Well... uh... I like to accommodate the L.A. boys whenever I can.”

Elmer said, “Give us the Wave’s statistics. We’ll take it from there.”

Ensign Margaret May Mewshaw. An Omaha transplant. Ensign Meg lived in Pacific Beach. She lived alone and had no boyfriend. She lived in a second-floor/street-facing crib. It was a two-crib stucco building. Outside stairs led up to her door.

They waited for dusk. They hunkered in and car-sat across the street. Ensign Meg was home alone. They brought a short dog of 151 rum. It got them lubricated and motivized.

It was late-winter warm. Ensign Meg kept her front window cracked and the shades up. She played the radio. Bucky Beaver shilled Ipana toothpaste. Charlie Barnet played “Cherokee.”

Ensign Meg schlepped around in her slip. She was a big blonde. She had that Annie Staples scope and je ne sais quoi. Elmer got erotified. Tommy G. was a leg man. Ensign Meg had legs from Dago to Detroit.

Elmer said, “I don’t get it. Tommy’s a fruit, but he rapes women.”

Buzz said, “Sex is powerful juju.”

“Moonlight Serenade” drifted over. Elmer yawned. That tune and 151 put him dozy. He wisped off somewhere. He saw Wayne Frank in a limousine packed with gold bars. He saw Dudley in the green room at San Quentin. Buzz went Ssshhh and elbowed him awake.

“Hush now. We got a prowler.”

Elmer rubbed his eyes and looked out his window. This jamoke stood by the stairs. He’s wearing gloves. He’s holding a tool pouch. He’s pivoting to creep upward. Hold the phone, mama. It’s Tommy Glennon.

They bolted the sled and ran over. They crouched low at the foot of the stairs. Tommy stood outside Ensign Meg’s door. He brandished a lock pick and blew on it for luck. Buzz kicked a tin can, accidental. Tommy heard it and glanced down the stairs.

He saw the boys. He was trapped-rat confined. He dropped the pick and pulled a shiv and charged down the stairs.

Elmer charged up. He pulled his belt sap and crashed Tommy low. Tommy stabbed down and snagged his sport coat. Elmer sap-slammed a nut shot and cartwheeled him. Tommy screeched and tumbled ass over elbows.

He hit the ground, all bruised and splayed. Buzz rabbit-punched him and bashed his head on a stair ledge. Elmer tripped down the stairs and cuffed his hands behind his back.

They cuff-dragged him across the street. They made the sled in one split second. Elmer unlocked the trunk. They dumped Tommy in and slammed the trunk shut. Ensign Meg looked out her window. What’s all this ruckus? Elmer blew her a kiss.

Tommy thunked around in the trunk. Buzz jumped in the car. Elmer got behind the wheel and burned tread. They had a spot all picked out. The caustic-sewage dump behind the Point Loma base.

Elmer wheeled them there, rapid. The spot adjoined an air-artillery range. The dump was barb-wired up. Caustic gack bubbled and gurgled. Evil swamp creatures gamboled within.

Elmer brodied up to the fence. He got out and unlocked the trunk. Buzz got out and jerked Tommy up on his feet. Tommy was beat-on and green at the gills. Buzz tossed him in the backseat and scooched him toward the middle. Elmer got in and sandwich-jobbed him on the other side.

Tommy huffed and squirmed. Elmer tapped the roof light and halo-lit him. Buzz pulled his throwdown piece. He popped the cylinder and flashed the six-bullet load.

Elmer said, “We got some questions.”

Tommy quiver-quaked. Buzz dumped five bullets and spun the cylinder. He snapped it shut and winked at Tommy. He put the muzzle to his head and pulled the trigger twice.

The hammer hit empty chambers. Tommy wriggled and squealed. Elmer said, “We got some questions.”

Buzz held up his piece. He spun the cylinder and snapped it shut. He winked at Tommy.

Tommy said, “Fuck your mother.”

Buzz put the muzzle to his head and pulled the trigger. The hammer hit an empty chamber. Tommy wriggled and squealed. Elmer said, “We got some questions.”

Tommy wriggled and squealed. Tommy bleated and squealed. Tommy said, “Okay, okay, okay.”

Elmer said, “You dropped your address book New Year’s Eve. I guess you figured that out.”

Buzz said, “There’s some names we were curious about.”

Elmer relit a cigar. “Let’s start with Eddie Leng. The number to his slop chute was right there in your book.”

Tommy coughed. He was bruised and contused. He talked, squeaky-frail.

“Eddie was an old pal of mine. He was a terp man. He was all tonged up, and he got snuffed in C-town on New Year’s Eve. You’re climbing the wrong tree if you think I did it. It was this Jap, Don Matsura. He had a terp still at his place in J-town, and he peddled terp to the Japs and the Chinks. He hung himself in the Lincoln Heights Jail, but Ace Kwan might have helped him.”

Buzz said, “You’re in the know, son.”

Elmer fed Tommy a jolt of 151. Tommy gulped and coughed out residue. Elmer caught a residual spritz.

“What else you got on Eddie and Don Matsura? You got any KAs for them?”

Tommy coughed. “How’s Cal Lunceford sound? He was this shitheel cop on the Alien Squad, but he’s dead now. It was in the papers. Some ex-caped Jap shot him. Cal was Fifth Column, and he was in with Eddie and Don Matsura, plus a whole lot of other shitheels. Before you ask, I ain’t got no proper names.”

Elmer fed Tommy a jolt of 151. Tommy sucked it in and kept it down.

Buzz said, “St. Vibiana’s. What’s going on there? What’s with you and Monsignor Joe Hayes?”

Tommy said, “Come on, don’t make me say it.”

Buzz said, “I’ll say it for you. You and the monsignor travel the dirt road together. You’re both Coughlinites and Jew-haters. Let me hazard a guess here. Being tight with priests got you juice with Dudley Smith.”

The roof light haloed Tommy. He got this caged-mick look.

“I snitched for Dud. I’m pals with Dud’s boy Huey Cressmeyer. I ran wets for Carlos Madrano, so you could say I been around and know some people you might be interested in. Dud visited me in Quentin, last November. I put the squeeze on him, which I shouldn’t have done. Dud put your cracker pal, Mike the B., and Dick the C. on me, but I got away, because your cracker pal here didn’t have the stones to shoot me.”

Elmer brain-strained it. Tommy extorts Dudley. Let’s call his shakedown wedge this:

Winter ’39. That Nazi costume bash. Tommy gets a biiiiiiiiiiiig eyeful. Dud slays that he-she bitch.

Buzz pat-patted Tommy. Good snitch dog. Let’s give him a treat.

He snatched the 151 and fed him two jolts. Tommy coughed and joy-kicked the front seat.

Buzz said, “Let’s get back to the address book. What’s with that hot-box phone, by the Herald.”

Tommy said, “I was relaying gibberish calls. It was all dot-dash-dot, dog-cat-pig, code shit that means something if you know how to decode it. My call scripts got patched through to a bookie drop in Ensenada, and I got the scripts at my mail drop in L.A. It was all through what you call cutouts, so I never knew who was writing the scripts or giving the orders. I got this sort-of tip from a Mex bookie who was forwarding the messages. He told me they were going to this political guy and his sister in La Paz, but then he clammed up.”

Elmer said, “Come on, there’s got to be more there.”

Tommy coughed. “Okay, okay, okay. The bookie guy zipped it, but I extrapolated some shit, because Fifth Column’s Fifth Column, and it’s all one big sort-of-happy family, which sure loves to talk. I know Deutsches Haus guys, guys with the Mex Staties, and guys from that nutso 46th Street place. I know things just as good as I know all these guys. I know Dud killed Carlos Madrano, I know there were some sub-berth killings in Baja, and it was all part of a play to pass Japs off as Chinks, and—”

Elmer cut in. “Eddie Leng was tight with a Chinatown doctor named Lin Chung. You’re a guy who knows guys, so I’m wondering if you know him.”

Tommy smirked. “I know Lin. Everybody knows Lin, including a notable dead guy named Eddie Leng, who don’t know him no more.”

Buzz poked him. “Don’t string this out. Finish whatever it is that you got to say.”

Tommy resmirked. “Okay, okay, okay. Eddie was tight with Lin, and Lin was tight with these rich white guys who were behind that first sub landing. Eddie introduced me to Lin, and Lin said the second landing was the work of a left-wing/right-wing alliance, and they were setting up some kind of postwar reconciliation deal. They’re pulling all sorts of evil shit in the here and now, but they intend to make themselves look good by exposing it after this war is over.”

Elmer brain-braced it. “Was Dud embroiled in any of this?”

Tommy laughed. “Nein to that. Dud leans Fifth Column, but it’s just a cocktease. He loves Nazi threads and regalia, but he ain’t no saboteur. He’s just some kind of fetishist.”

Buzz said, “Let’s revisit the klubhaus.”

Tommy said, “Goody. That sounds like kicks.”

Elmer said, “Link Rockwell. Them smut pix he planned to send from his mail drop to yours.”

Buzz flashed the key pix. Elmer shot good camera dupes. You’ve got two women. One’s white, one’s Mex. There’s that klubhaus backdrop.

Tommy shrugged. “If you’re asking me who the two janes are, I don’t know. They’re just jazz-club chippies out for distraction.”

Elmer said, “We’re here, and we’re all ears. Give us some more on the klubhaus.”

Tommy said, “I’m parched. Give me another nip first.”

Buzz grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. It stretched his mouth wide. Buzz juked in the juice.

Tommy gargled it and kept it down. Buzz wiped his hand pomade-free. Tommy’s mouth snapped shut. He went electrizized. He looked sloshed, slammed, and slathered to shit.

“I like this stuff you’re slipping me. It makes me want to hot-prowl and commit some swell misdeeds.”

Elmer said, “The klubhaus. Let’s get back to that.”

Tommy squirmed. He was cuffed tight. Steel ratchets gouged his wrists. The evil punk bloodied up the backseat.

“The smut pix were just some Link Rockwell deal. Beyond that, the klubhaus was just this place where anything goes.”

Elmer gnawed his cigar. “Our lab guy found jizz stains and fecal matter on an upstairs bed. That reads ‘queer shit’ to me.”

Tommy went C’est la vie. “I hid out at the klubhaus for a week, after you blew that stakeout on me. Okay, I knew Wendell Rice and Georgie Kapek, but just to say hi to. I knew they were cops, and I knew they were Fifth Column, but then so’s everybody else in the exalted Thomas Malcolm Glennon’s world.”

Buzz sighed. “The ‘queer shit,’ Tommy.”

Elmer sighed. “Chop, chop, you pervert. It’d delight me to put some hurt on you.”

Tommy yawned. It was I’m-so-bored stagy. Elmer bitch-slapped him. Tommy licked blood off his lips and rebounded quick.

“Okay, ‘queer shit,’ a topic dear to my heart. I didn’t really know Rice and Kapek, but I knew they were afraid of this queer kid who hung out on the jazz strip and brought boys to the klubhaus for some pokey-pokey. He was a blondie kid, sort of tall, maybe some kind of musician, and he was pals with a crazy Jap that Rice and Kapek busted, but the Jap made habeas and got himself sprung. Now, Mr. Jap was a sword man. Rice and Kapek popped him with this big blood-caked sword, and after he waltzed, he became a sure-as-shit klubhaus regular. He used to kill chickens for all these slop chutes in J-town, and he licked the blood off the swords that he used.”

Elmer brained-snagged it. He witnessed that log-in. Rice and Kapek/the blood-flecked sword. This could be good. Paperwork might still exist.

Buzz said, “The haus, Tommy. Keep going there.”

“What’s to tell? It was too crazy for me, so I vamoosed.”

Elmer said, “What did you squeeze Dudley with?”

Tommy said, “Brace yourself, daddy. Dud snuffed a drag boy at a party. Huey C. and I witnessed the whole thing. I’ll give you my long-held opinion on that, for what it’s worth. Dud knew that she was really a he, and he was looooving the encounter until something flipped his switch.”

Elmer looked at Buzz. Buzz looked at Elmer. They both orbed Tommy G.

Buzz said, “Kyoho Hanamaka? Ring a bell?”

Tommy said, “Nix.”

Elmer said, “José Vasquez-Cruz. His aka’s Jorge Villareal-Caiz.”

Tommy said, “Ixnay.”

Buzz said, “Archie Archuleta?”

Tommy said, “I knew that pendejo. I used to see him at the klubhaus, and from what I heard, he was a notable J-town and C-town crawler. He was cinched up with more strange-o’s than you can count, and he veered Fifth Column right. He knew Mex girls who’d pose for smut pictures, and he knew Sinarquista heist guys and set them up with Rice and Kapek, to buy these guns they’d confiscated from these Japs they’d tossed in the clink. RIP, Archie. He was a white man, as much as any Mex can be.”

Elmer soft-lobbed it. “This Commie girl, Jean Staley. How come she’s in your book?”

Tommy drop-jawed that one. He’s gone on 151. He’s all stage ham now.

“Jean’s been known to play Red, but she’s been a Federal snitch since the ice age. She was in a CP cell back in the ’30s, while she was meanwhile tattling to her handler and running shakedowns on movie people and her fellow Reds with this yid, Meyer Gelb. Meyer’s a ganef and a penguin-fucker from way back. There’s nothing he ain’t done or considered doing. He got Jean shaking down these Trotskyites he hates, because he’s a Stalinist, and these Red-faction humps hate other Red-faction humps more than they hate confirmed fascistos like yours truly.”

Elmer digested it. Tommy credentialed it. Jean, baby — say it ain’t so.

Buzz wiggled the 151. “Bottoms up, Tommy.”

Stage Ham Tommy. He goes all rubber-faced.

“I’ve heard that one before, but I have to add that I’m the brunser, more than the punk.”

Elmer cringed. Buzz bottle-fed Tommy. The stage ham smacked his lips. The backseat socked in heat. Elmer rolled down his window and breathed deep.

“What’s Meyer got Jean doing now? There’s a picture of you three at the Club Alabam, just last week.”

“Souvenir pictures are the blahs, hoss. They send girl photographers around, and Meyer always succumbs.”

“I asked you a question, fucker.”

“Okay, okay, okay. The answer is shakedowns. That’s the Jean and Meyer bailiwick. This time, they’re putting it to these left-wing musicians that got so-called rescued from der Führer’s clutches, to make the so-called rescuers look good when Uncle Sambo wins the war. You sound me, muchacho? Meyer’s setting Jean up to extort them and recruit them as informants.”

One more time. Jean, darling — say it ain’t so.

“How dirty is she?”

“She’s a mud hen from way back, hoss. She goes back to that Kraut hump, Fritz Eckelkamp. Does that name ring a bell? He ex-caped from that gold train that got robbed back when I was still in pigtails. Jean got around and gets around, and she sure plays Jezebel in the process. She was married to a pathetic geek named Ralph D. Barr. Ralphie set fires and yanked his crank when the fire engines showed up. He was a suspect for that big Griffith Park fire, but he was a small-blaze specialist and got absolved. Jean told me he was hung microscopic.”

Elmer looked at Buzz. Buzz looked at Elmer. They both orbed Tommy G.

Buzz said, “ ‘Fifth Column’s Fifth Column.’ We get that. Past that, have you got a specific source for what you been feeding us?”

Tommy made horn-call sounds. Tommy blew a loooooong fanfare.

“Hold your hats, race fans. We’re at Del Mar, and my #1 nag is at the gate. He’s my #1 source for Fifth Column scuttlebutt, and he’s none other than your ex-chief, James Edgar Davis.”

Buzz looked at Elmer. Elmer looked at Buzz. They both orbed Tommy G.

Buzz sighed. “It’s getting late. Tell us something we don’t know.”

Tommy blew a long fanfare. He wet his pants for such shtick.

“All in all, I’ve raped twenty-three women. I killed two bags in Frisco and a thin cooze at a truck stop in Visalia. I killed an old Jew lady in South Beach and did a necrophile job on her. I made like Dracula and drank her blood, and I yanked out all her gold teeth.”

Buzz grabbed a loose seat cushion. He clamped it over Tommy’s head and pulled his belt piece. He pumped a full clip into Tommy’s face. Blood and cushion stuffing exploded. Shots tore out the trunk ledge and ricocheted. A skull chunk hit Elmer’s cheek.

Buzz said, “I got me an old granny who’s one-sixty-fourth Jewish. I don’t condone that sort of grief.”

91 (Santo Tomas, 12:00 P.M., 3/9/42)

The Wolf growled and paced. This bluffside spot vexed him. Swooping gulls and salt spray. A dirt parking lot. Tables perched close to a cliff.

Dudley sat outside. The spot induced vertigo. He’d called the meet. Salvy suggested this cantina. They served Baja’s best mariscos.

Mucho carros jammed up the lot. The Mex Army favored El Dumpo. It was their place. They ignored the rats clustered by the kitchen. The cantina was subramshackle. Army staff cars brodied on loose dirt. Dudley ate exhaust fumes.

He sipped lukewarm beer. His table overlooked the lot and a hundred-foot drop. Mex soldiers chortled all around him.

He was furious. He conceded Fear. Bill Parker enlisted Thad Brown and applied a vise squeeze. Parker levied his no-false-solution decree and sandbagged Jack Horrall. He violated the Smith-Parker truce. He slammed Jack H. and offered up an irresistible concession. Parker said he’d erase every bug and tap recording now in Fed custody. This action would spark courtroom acquittals for Jack and his gang. Fletch Bowron, Ray Pinker, the Jamie kid. All the lesser defendants. Poof! — all would go free.

Parker pulled Mike and Dick off the klubhaus job. Pinker stymied Jack H. there. Elmer Jackson put Mike in Queen of Angels. Call-Me-Jack nixed reprisals. Parker has adroitly nullified one Dudley Liam Smith.

Salvy was late. Dudley chain-smoked. He conceded Fear. Parker’s machinations depleted his ranks. They left him with Hideo Ashida, todos.

Hideo was newly war-hired. He was partnered up with lackluster Lee Blanchard. Jackson and Meeks were off to hell and gone. Their partnership spelled chaos. Hideo came through and supplied hope.

Brilliant lad. He turned up an old Arson Squad accelerant swatch. It derived from the Griffith Park fire. He compared it to a klubhaus-blaze swatch and got a match. The match linked two crimes spaced nearly nine years apart.

Dudley chain-smoked. He conceded Fear. The Wolf bodyguarded him. Constanza returned to La Paz. He missed her. His union with Claire had imploded. Beth was poised in retreat. The promotion-party incident unhinged her. Claire was up in L.A. She was prowling for new lovers there. He knew that.

Salvy was late. More Mex soldaten arrived. They drove custom-fitted U.S. confiscations. Special tailpipes. Hood-mounted BARs. Bleeding-saint and snarling-panther paint jobs.

They stomped three abreast. They entered the cantina and commandeered outside tables. They pinched waitresses and demanded fast service. “Neutral” Mexico. Soon to be Allied-allied. Axis in temperament and aesthetic.

Salvy showed. A car appeared, he appeared, el carro peeled off. Salvy employed Greenshirt flunkies. They chauffeured him and groomed him. He appeared more than arrived.

Dudley stood up. They exchanged abrazos. Hail-fellows-well-met. Men’s men, por vida. Two damn good backslappers.

“My dear comrade.”

“Mi mayor. Will you be content to stop there, or do you wish to rise to four-star general?”

Dudley laughed. “I’m a police sergeant in my heart and soul, lad. I was one when this war started, and I’ll be one when this war ends.”

Salvy laughed. “You are an entrepreneur, a strategist, and a treasure seeker. I am humbled and gratified by your generous pledge to our shared cause.”

Dudley poured two beers. They clicked tankards and sat down at the table. The Wolf trembled. That cliffside drop loomed.

Dudley lit a cigarette. “I bear discomfiting news from Los Angeles. My errant police colleagues are determined to round up a large number of young Mexican men, who they believe may have frequented that damnable klubhaus. I’m afraid that quite a few stout Sinarquista lads may fall into this melee. My colleagues are looking for guns, sold out of the klubhaus. You had assured me our East L.A. lads were not klubhaus affiliates, but I need you to convincingly reassure me now.”

Salvy lit a cigarette. “Yes, of course. I am grateful to have been informed of this, and you have my most sincere reassurance.”

Dudley sipped beer. It was warm. The Wolf prowled adjacent tables. He sniffed raucous Mex soldiers and growled.

“I require another assurance, as well. I proffer this request couched in my utmost respect for you as a comrade and a man. I have become involved with Constanza Lazaro-Schmidt, and I have been informed that you are her occasional lover. I request that you terminate this relationship, and that you sever all contact with Constanza immediately.”

Salvy blinked once. Dudley blinked once. Salvy stubbed out his cigarette. His veins pulsed.

“You have my assurance, but I will issue a warning along with it. Constanza and her brother are shamefully as one, and they are more utilitarian than ideologically fascist. I have given you my pledge and additional caveat, and we need not mention this matter again. I commend you for not threatening me and blowing this trivial request out of proportion.”

The Wolf growled. He smelled Salvy’s rage. He saw his pulsing veins and incipient tremors. Salvy checked his wristwatch. He went uno, dos, tres — and winked.

The cantina exploded. It went up, just like that. It’s a fireball. There’s blasted-out glass and wood shrapnel. There’s smoke, flames, and palm trees ignited. Detonation equals earthquake.

The outside soldaten ran for their cars. They trampled civilians and kicked over tables and chairs. They tumbled into their taco wagons and slammed bumpers, en masse. It was straight from the Keystone Kops.

The inside soldaten ran outside. They stumbled over scorched timber and screamed. Twelve men, todos. They pitched crazy-spastic, in flames.

Salvy said, “Priest-killers and nun-rapers. Redshirts of the Calles regime.”

A car pulled off the coast road and skidded into the lot. Four Greenshirts piled out. They held sawed-off shotguns. They dodged flying debris and ran up to the burning men.

They pumped buckshot into them. They severed limbs on fire. A burning man staggered and knocked over tables. Dudley pulled his piece and fumbled it. The burning man got close. Salvy pulled his piece and shot him dead.

92 Kay Lake’s Diary (Los Angeles, 2:00 P.M., 3/9/42)

Annie Staples arrived in her work clothes. That meant tartan skirt, crewneck sweater, and saddle shoes. She was Elmer and Brenda’s college girl, and pitched her charms to men thrice her age. Brenda set up the lunch and urged Annie to be forthcoming. We met at Jack’s Drive-in on the Strip.

Annie was blond. She was tall, leggy, and busty, and hailed from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. We dined in my car. Monarch burgers and pineapple malts. I understood Annie’s allure. She was all college girl. Bill Parker would flip for her.

We made small talk during our lunch; Annie guilelessly dished on her tricks and told me she once spent a cozy weekend with the allegedly straitlaced Thad Brown. She tricked with Wendell Willkie during the ’40 campaign, and said he was a sweetheart. Our carhop skated by and removed our trays; we lit cigarettes and settled down to business.

I said, “Brenda saw you with Sid Hudgens at Tom Breneman’s. I sense a story there.”

Annie blew smoke rings. “Well, I’d call it a complicated story.”

“Those are my favorite kind.”

“Brenda told me you know some of it already, because you know about her trick spots, and you’re such good friends with Elmer Jackson. She said you know Sid, and you’ve met Ed Satterlee, and they’re part of the story, too.”

I said, “L.A.’s a small town for a big town, and I’ve been ensnared with the PD for a good three years. You tend to run into men like that, in the course of things.”

Annie thought that was a hoot. She doused her cigarette in her coffee cup and chuckled a bit. She had changeling’s eyes. One veered blue, one veered green.

“You tend to run into men like that, and I tend to sleep with them. You could say I ran a parlay with Elmer, Sid, and Ed, and Ed was the one who put me to good use, beyond the old you know what.”

Elmer and I gabbed at Hideo Ashida’s swearing-in party. He spilled the beans. I told Annie that I was up to speed on her shakedown gig with Ed the Fed. The mark was Dr. Saul Lesnick. Elmer filled in for Ed behind the camera one night. He caught wind of Annie pumping Dr. Saul. It got him thinking — and Elmer thinks impulsively, at best.

Annie said, “Well, sister, you’ve got most of it.”

“Ed was interested in sexual and political dirt, wasn’t he? Mr. Hoover gets his jollies that way, and you never know when dirt like that can be useful.”

“Yep. That’s the gist of it.”

“Confirm this, will you? That first night Elmer ran the camera. Dr. Saul was discussing his patient Claire De Haven.”

“That’s right. Claire, the rich-girl Communist. Her and her cop lover, down in Mexico. Claire said you tried to kill the lover, but old Saul didn’t believe it. The upshot is that Elmer heard all this, and he offered me money to wear a microphone and go to Otto Klemperer’s parties, and ratchet up my pump job on old Saul.”

I said, “Because Elmer wanted to keep tabs on Dr. Saul, and Claire always attended those parties, and Elmer was curious about what she might say regarding Dudley Smith.”

Annie smiled. She was truly big-girl lovely. Call her Ingrid Bergman, with ten thousand chromosomes askew.

“Elmer was very curious about Mr. Smith, and I think he’s got some kind of vendetta going against him. I told Elmer a little tale that old Saul told me, where Mr. Smith beat up Orson Welles, because he had a sort-of deal going with Claire. Elmer said he’d like to wire me up to pump Mr. Welles, which I’d do for free, if Mr. Welles lost some weight.”

Brenda called Elmer “shakedown happy.” This jibed with something I knew about him. He was a canny judge of character and voyeuristically inclined.

Annie ordered a second malt. Brenda thought she looked best on the sturdy-milkmaid side. I asked her how Sid Hudgens played into all this. She told me Sid was shakedown happy, all on his own, apart from Elmer and Ed. Join the crowd, Sid. Annie Staples knows from shakedowns.

Sid wanted dirt on film folk and politicians. He was putting out a sub-rosa scandal sheet and wanted dirt too hot for the Herald. He tried to recruit Annie as his very own Venus flytrap. She was still considering his pitch.

Annie’s second malt arrived; she dunked her straw and siphoned the goo in a wink. Annie played a cameo role in Joan Conville’s diary. Joan observed her futzing with her microphone outside Otto Klemperer’s guesthouse. I teethed on the nexus of the whole three-case megillah. It was Meyer Gelb’s cell and how the four surviving members still hovered in plain sight. The Cell. What old Saul might know and might have written down.

And Annie Staples was sitting right beside me. She’s a one-woman nexus. In the market for a shakedown shill? Annie’s the tops.

She had malted-milk residue on her upper lip. She’s about five-foot-ten and built like a discus queen. I grabbed my napkin and daubed the goo off her lip. Annie likes people to touch her.

“I know that old Saul is a Federal informant, and that he reports to Ed Satterlee. Do you know if his informant duty went back to the early ’30s, when he was in a Communist cell?”

“No, I don’t think so. I think he signed on with Ed more recently than that, because his daughter was in prison for vehicular manslaughter, and Ed used that as a wedge to turn Saul out as his fink.”

I lit a cigarette and thought about Elmer. He’d gone AWOL from Crash Squad briefings; Lee told me this.

Annie said, “Penny for your thoughts.”

I said, “I was thinking about Elmer.”

“What’s there to think about? I’m in love with him, and he’s in love with you.”

I laughed. Elmer and his dead brother, Elmer and his shakedown girl. Early wartime L.A. The pursuit of the big main chance.

Annie jiggled the charms on her charm bracelet. Little dogs, doghouses, arrows piercing hearts.

“But Ed did have a snitch in Saul’s cell back then, and Saul and Andrea didn’t know it. It was this woman named Jean, and she was no kind of Red. Ed dished her to me. He said she’s still in cahoots with this Meyer guy who ran the cell, even though the cell’s dissolved. Jean used to be married to some crazy firebug. This Meyer guy’s going to get her to shake down these exile musicians.”

I said, “I’ll pay you a thousand dollars to make wax impressions of all the keys that Dr. Saul carries.”

Annie detached a little dog charm. She placed it in my hand and gave me a squeeze. She said, “For luck, sweetie. Because where you’re going with all this, you’re sure going to need it.”

“Annie, will you—”

“Sure, sweetie. It’s not like I’ve never caught him with his trousers off.”

93 (Los Angeles, 3:00 P.M., 3/10/42)

Army brass. War-hire cop now. His luck holds. He’s serendipitous and fuckstruck.

The Hollenbeck muster room was cluttered and cramped. The reduced Crash Squad was all ears.

The boys straddled chairs and faced Thad Brown. Ashida, Elmer Jackson, Buzz Meeks. Lee Blanchard and Bill Parker. Cigarette and cigar smoke/one big iron lung.

Ashida side-eyed Elmer J. Elmer’s outburst still rankled. Jap, Jap, Jap. Elmer stooped to that.

Thad said, “We’ve got nine male Mexicans on our roust list. We need to determine whether or not Rice and Kapek sold them Japanese-confiscated guns. They filed no gun-confiscation paperwork, so we’ve got no comparison sheets to check against any guns we bag tonight. What we do have is the threat of illegal possession of firearms and possibly related armed robberies, to use as a wedge to extract information on our homicides.”

Blanchard said, “Say it, boss. 211 pops will make us look good, if this whole job dips south.”

Elmer said, “Blanchard’s a pessimist.”

Buzz said, “Blanchard’s a Bolshevik.”

Thad rolled his eyes. “We’ve got three squads tonight. There’s Captain Parker and me, Jackson and Meeks, Blanchard and Ashida. On a related topic, that Navy chump Link Rockwell’s in custody down in Florida. A naval district judge should be issuing an extradition ruling soon.”

Elmer said, “Anchors away, whipdick.”

Buzz said, “Link’s tight as ticks with the Reverend Mimms. They’re the world’s foremost salt-and-pepper act.”

Parker said, “We’re going out tonight, and we muster here at 1930 hours. Shotguns, riot gear, and one paddy wagon per squad. Go home and sack out. We’ll be stretching these humps all night.”

Buzz whistled. Blanchard whooped. They dogged Parker and Brown out to the hallway. Elmer kicked the door shut. Ashida gulped. Elmer pulled his chair up close.

“I’m sorry, Hideo. I shouldn’t have said what I said. It was plain wrong of me, and I apologize.”

Ashida stuck his hand out. Elmer bone-crushed it. Ashida mock-winced.

“I understand. You’ve been seething since you met with Kay, and I more than warranted your outburst.”

Elmer displayed an envelope. He waved it and pulled out a sheet of soft-bond paper. Ashida saw faint spots. They resembled pinpricks dipped in soluble oil.

“Where did you get this?”

“At Bev’s Switchboard. You know, that loopy mail drop in West Hollywood. It was in Meyer Gelb’s mail-holding file, and it was addressed to a PO box in La Paz, down in Baja.”

Ashida touched the sheet. It was high-rag content and top-grade absorbent.

“It’s microdots. We’ll need a microdot camera to bring up the text.”

Elmer whooped. “I knew that was it. I saw a piece about that shit in Reader’s Digest.”

Mail drops. Meyer Gelb. The dicey Lazaro-Schmidts hailed from La Paz.

“Hideo’s in a trance. He’s hanging out the ‘Genius at Work’ sign.”

Ashida laughed. “We can’t bring up the text without that camera.”

“What about a plain old microscope? Could that get us in close?”

Ashida said, “Meet me at the lab. I’ll see what I can do.”

They two-carred over and hooked up at six. The day-shift chemists had clocked out. Ashida locked them in. Elmer jammed a chair under the doorknob.

Ashida scissor-cut the paper and shaped three equal strips. Elmer watchdogged the process. Ashida rigged a microscope and slide-clamped swatch #1. He dialed down to maximum range. Faint ink blurs appeared.

He ran swatch #2 and swatch #3. He got eight more ink blurs.

Ashida shook his head. Elmer went Shit. Ashida placed the strips back in the envelope and resealed it.

“There’s something you should know, Elmer.”

“Let me guess. You can’t withhold this here lead from Dudley, like you withheld Kay’s spiel on Joan Conville’s diary.”

Ashida balled his fists and fumed. He despised that mannerism. It made him look eff—

Elmer woofed him. “You’re on the fence about Dud now, aren’t you? I’m not all that surprised. Kay wouldn’t have clued you in if she thought you’d tattle to him. And here’s something you might want to consider. Maybe Kay’s smarter than you are, and maybe she’s cooking up something good.”

Ashida stomped one foot. Elmer haw-hawed. Ashida walked to the mail slot and dropped the envelope in.

“It’s out of our hands now. I might be on the fence, and I might not be. You’ve got the box number in La Paz as a lead, and that’s it.”

Elmer stomped one foot. He did good impersonations. He mimed effete rage, c’est bon.

“You’re trumping me, Hideo. I’m coming out second-best here.”

Ashida walked to his locker. He turned away from Elmer and unlocked it. He grabbed the gold bar off the top shelf.

Robbery swag. Thirty-three pounds plus. Worth twenty grand, U.S.

He turned and faced Elmer. Come, let us adore it. He held it out, worship me — style.

Elmer trembled and dropped his cigar. He lurched and bumped a glassware shelf. A glass beaker toppled and shattered on the floor.

Ashida said, “Take it. Your brother died for this, and I don’t want it anymore.”

Elmer picked up his cigar. He looked electrified. He dredged half a voice.

“What do you want?”

“A clean solve on the klubhaus job.”

Elmer kicked glass under a work desk. He brushed ash off his suit coat and went Nyet. Ashida placed the bar back in his locker. He tossed a lab rag over it. Gold as holy sacrament. Men died for this.

“Tell me how you turned the lead on Bev’s Switchboard.”

Elmer said, “It commenced with Jean Staley. I braced her, and she jobbed me out of my socks. We had a nifty first date, and then she plain vanished. I started getting postcards from U.S. 66, but Jean was really here in L.A. Bev’s Switchboard was stiffing the cards and jobbing up the postal cancellations.”

D. L. Smith on E. V. Jackson. He’s half smart here and there. He trips on his dick otherwise.

“I need those cards. They may contain microdots, inserted between the inside and outside pieces of cardboard. I’ll take them back to Ensenada with me. I might be able to locate a microdot camera there.”

Elmer said, “Okay, boss.”

Ashida said, “I’ll try to work out a truce for you and Buzz. Keep the bar. I’m sure Dudley will accept that concession.”

“All I want is a fair shot at whoever killed my brother. It has to be a plain murder. The gold’s just a way in to figure all that out.”

Ashida bowed. “I lost my taste for the gold when Joan died. All I want is a shot at a solve.”

Elmer relit his cigar. Lab fumes and hot ash. Ignition, combustion, explos—

“I got no beef with that. You’re Dud’s boy, so you handle everything pertaining to that fucker.”

“That’s fine, but he’ll want to know how you know whatever you know, and we have to keep Kay and Joan’s diary out of it.”

Elmer said, “You’re right, boss.”

Ashida said, “You should know something. You should know that I’ll reveal whatever I learn at the sweep tonight to Dudley.”

Elmer said, “You should know that fence-sitters tend to teeter and fall. You should also know that Buzz and me did Dud quite the solid. You know our missing chum, Tommy Glennon? Buzz and me braced him and killed him.”

Ashida teetered. The fence wobbled. The floor dipped.

“What did he tell you?”

“My lips are sealed, boss.”

94 (Los Angeles, 8:30 P.M., 3/10/42)

The boys are back in town.

El Towno said it best. Boyle Heights was T.J. North. It was tacofied territory. It was one big beaner bin.

Hola, fuckers. Here comes trouble. All you wicked Juans and dirty Diegos gonna get shit-kicked tonight.

Elmer and Buzz comprised Two Squad. They wore tin hats and lugged cut-down shotguns. They packed grand-jury subpoenas. Said paperwork was stamped “Alien Sedition Act.”

A paddy wagon trailed them. Two Squad worked the flats upside Lincoln Heights. One Squad and Three Squad were off elsewhere. Three squads, three turf quadrants, three righteous roust lists.

Three three-man rousts. That standardized the sweep. Elmer and Buzz caught three doozies. Chuy “El Perro” Mendez. Frankie “El Cabrón” Carbajal. Carlos “El Cucaracha” Calderon. The Dog, the Fucker, the Cockroach. Suspected 211 men and right-wing nuts. The flats gots to swing tonight.

Two Squad worked north-northeast. Los cholos lived in a tight radius. Elmer and Buzz walked. The paddy wagon chugged in low gear. Elmer was fitfully fucked-up and dizzy distracted.

It was Ashida. It was Ashida’s microdot play. It was Ashida’s gold bar. It was Ashida’s implied double-cross of one Dudley Smith. It was Tommy Glennon, to boot.

Buzz snuffed Tommy, impromptu. That didn’t faze him. They dumped Tommy in the waste dump and let the swamp beasts eat him up. That was likewise okay. But Tommy bleated a klubhaus lead in his pickled prelude to death.

This Jap. Rice and Kapek popped him. He was a “sword man.” He had this queer white-boy pal. The white boy might be a musician. The white boy frequented the jazz strip and poked boys at the haus. The Jap sword-sliced chickens at J-town slop chutes. The Jap licked blood off the swords that he used. The Jap made habeas and was on the loose somewhere.

Elmer teethed the lead. He was fungooed and fucked-up. He was ditzy and diverted. The shotgun weighed ten tons. The tin hat banged his head. He walked the flats, distracted.

He’d witnessed a property log-in. It was late January. Kapek and Rice talked up a sword man. The sword man licked blood off his swords. It disgusted Kapek and Rice.

He checked Alien Squad roust sheets last night. Guess what? No fucking sword man was listed. Guess what? No Jap swords were property-logged during that time span. Guess what? No chicken-killing sword lickers were tagged in the MO file.

He’d read the initial log-in report. He recalled that much. He had the sword man’s name tucked someplace unconscious. Rice and Kapek pulled his paperwork. That had to be it.

The sword man. Hideo Ashida. Cause for ditzy distraction.

He got Jean Staley’s postcards to Ashida. Army SIS just might possess a microdot camera. Him and Ashida worked out a cover story. It explained how he knew all this three-case hullabaloo. It served to cloak his ass with Dudley Smith.

Dig this:

He was at Joan Conville’s place. He was hot to pour Big Joan the pork. Joan was terped up. She was burbling, out of her gourd. She kept mumbling shit about the gold and her diary. He found the diary and read it. He learned everything. He put the diary back where he found it. He bid Joan adieu and waltzed off, unlaid.

The story played goooooood. It jibed with Ashida’s lie to Dudley. Joan burned the diary. She was suicide-fevered. Ashida found that burned-page mess.

The rousts proceeded. The Cockroach went easy. Papa Roach fumed. Mama Roach wrung rosary beads and went Aaay, caramba. The Cockroach submitted to cuffing and shackling. Elmer gave him a cigar. They hoisted him into the paddy wagon and split for El Casa de Perro.

The Dog went easy. Mama and Papa Dog whimpered and retreated. El Perro wore a Sir Guy shirt and slit-bottom khakis. He submitted to cuffing and shackling. Buzz gave him a cigar. They hoisted him into the paddy wagon and hit El Casa de Cabrón.

The Fucker went rough. He tried to run and tripped over a lamp stand. Buzz grabbed his hair and smashed his face on the floor. Elmer cuffed him. Buzz shackled him. Mama and Papa Fucker evinced boredom. They were blitzed on white port and lemon juice.

The extraction went rough. The Fucker flailed and kicked. They tossed him in the paddy wagon. Elmer sat on his legs. Buzz sat on his head. The Dog and Cockroach haw-hawed. The driver cop hauled for Hollenbeck Station.

Four bluesuits met them. They grappled the punks through the jail door and got them ensconced. The Dog and the Cockroach went in the drunk tank. One Squad’s and Three Squad’s geeks were already there. That made eight geeks, all in all. They whooped and demanded their rights. A colored trusty slapped them around.

The blues dumped the Fucker in sweatbox #2. Buzz recuffed him to a chair. Oooh — what’s that on his right hand?

It’s a coiled-snake tattoo. It’s El Symbol of Sinarquismo. This mandates some thought.

Elmer ducked down to the file room. He tapped the C cabinet and pulled Frankie Carbajal’s sheet. Aaay, caramba. Frankie peddled maryjane, Frankie 211’d bodegas, Frankie whipped his chorizo out on women.

That was it. Just one file sheet. No Fed routing stamps. No subversive rebop noted. No KA list attached.

Elmer walked back to the sweatbox. Frankie was trussed to that chair. Buzz rode a matching chair and skunk-eyed him. Elmer pulled a chair close and relit a cigar.

Buzz lit a cigar. He got it going good. The sweatbox fumed up. Frankie cough-coughed.

“You guys are sadistic. I’ve got asthma. Those cigars aren’t doing me any good.”

Buzz said, “Did you catch Frankie’s tattoo?”

Elmer nodded. “We got that to consider, along with the fact that Frankie’s a whipout man.”

Buzz said, “I’ll bet he habituates schoolyards and whips it out on little kids.”

Frankie said, “I whipped it out on Eleanor Roosevelt. She was serving cookies and punch at some crippled kid’s gig in the Heights.”

Elmer said, “A whipout man’s a whipout man. I don’t see no distinction between kids and our swell First Lady.”

Frankie squirmed in his chair. He looked consumptive. He sported a hairnet conk. His zoot pants rode up to his sternum.

“I whipped it out on Ann Sheridan and the Liltin’ Martha Tilton. They were at this war-bond drive on Hollywood Boulevard. I escaped into the crowd and whipped it out on a B-girl at the Firefly Lounge.”

Elmer sighed. Buzz sighed. Elmer uncuffed and unshackled Frankie. Buzz slipped on sap gloves.

“Your whipout escapades don’t interest us. Your tattoo interests us. There’s some names we’d like to run by you. There’s a certain spot on East 46th Street that we’d sure like to discuss. Fifth Column shit’s a hot topic these days, and we’d sure like to hear your thoughts about that.”

Frankie rubbed his wrists and ankles. Frankie said, “Viva Sinarquismo. Chinga tu madre.”

Buzz roundhoused him. One slap/ten-ounce palm weights/see Frankie fly. El Whipout Man whipped off the chair and hit the floor flat on his back. Buzz stepped on his neck and pinned him supine. Elmer read him the riot act.

“Here’s where you determine your fate, son. Prompt answers get you a cozy cell and a shot at a kick-out. Horseshit and jive gets you a bunk in the fruit tank at Lincoln Heights. Gene ‘the Mean Queen’ Kefalvian’s in custody there. He goes for Mexican shrimps like you.”

Buzz released his foot. Frankie coughed and rubbed his neck. Elmer helped him up and sat him back in his chair. Buzz slipped off his sap gloves and pat-patted him on the head.

“I’ll take the cozy cell and the shot at a kick-out. I saw Gene the Queen fight Chuco Ortiz at the Olympic. He put a drubbing on him.”

Buzz said, “Señor Carbajal’s no dummy.”

Elmer said, “Señor Carbajal’s on the Fed’s subversive list, or he wouldn’t have been on our roust list. He’s got no routing tags on his green sheet here, so I’m guessing that all the Feds have got on him is his membership in them goofy Sinarquistas.”

Buzz cracked his knuckles. “Let’s see what Señor Carbajal has to say about that.”

Frankie flashed three fingers downward. It was Klan kode. It meant KKK. This beat-on beaner aped redneck rubes.

“I say ‘¡Viva Sinarquismo!’ I say, ‘¡Sinarquismo por vida!’ ”

Buzz relit his cigar. “Let’s note Frankie’s point, and get to them names.”

Elmer said, “Let’s start with Archie Archuleta. He’s Mex, and he hails from Frankie’s neck of the woods.”

Frankie snapped his suspenders. “I knew Archie. He’s dead now, and he got snuffed along with two cops — which is sure as shit what all this is about.”

Buzz said, “Frankie’s quick on the uptake.”

Elmer said, “Don’t stop there, Frankie.”

Frankie fluffed out his conk. It glistened with Lucky Tiger pomade.

“Archie recruited Mexican boys for La Causa. He pulled them out of the CYO at St. Vibiana’s. This priest named Joe Hayes ran the St. Vib’s chapter. He was a Coughlinite and a big Sinarquista contributor, not to mention a big sissy. He was poking this crazy Tommy Glennon guy up the culo. I didn’t know Tommy too good. He was just a face in the right-flank crowd.”

Elmer said, “The klubhaus. 46th, just east of Central. Wendell Rice, George Kapek, and a cop named Cal Lunceford.”

Frankie shrugged. “I dropped in for visits. A bunch of my fellow Greenshirts did, and so what? I won’t give up no active shirts, but I’ll tell you I hardly knew Rice and Kapek, and Lunceford didn’t show up there all that much. He was a keep-to-himself sort of guy. They all took the blood oath and joined La Causa, but they’re dead now, so who cares?”

Elmer said, “Let’s get this out of the way. We all know a Jap spy killed Lunceford, and you’ve got no goddamn idea who killed Rice, Kapek, and Archuleta.”

Frankie said, “Sí. Es la verdad, muchacho.”

Buzz slipped on his sap gloves. “Son, I don’t like you telling us who or what you won’t give up, and you trying to set the terms of this here interrogation.”

Frankie flashed the Klan sign. Frankie flexed his coiled-snake tattoo.

“I curse your syphilitic mama, Tex. I curse your white Protestant-oppressor ancestors going back six generations, and—”

Buzz roundhoused him. Teeth and gold bridgework flew. Ditto blood. Ditto gum flaps. Ditto a slice of his tongue.

Frankie pitched backward. The chair jerked loose of its struts. Frankie crashed into the wall. The chair toppled. Buzz balled his fists and cocked big left-rights.

Elmer jumped up and held him back. Elmer bear-hugged him and ran Whoa now’s. Buzz went limp and dropped his hands. Elmer hug-walked him out of the sweatbox and dumped him in the hall.

He slammed the door and threw the lock. Frankie gurgled blood and quaked abject. Elmer pulled off his suit coat and squatted beside him. He wadded the coat and passed it to Frankie. The little hump blotted his face.

Elmer hit the wall switch. The sweatbox went all dark. He got up close to Frankie. He touched him soft and whispered this:

You’ve got to talk/you’ve got to talk/you’ve got to talk. I won’t let that Okie hurt you, if you talk to me.

Frankie gurgled and spit blood. His breath went asthmatic. Elmer baby-talked him. The sweatbox went eerie dark. Frankie caught some asthma breath and snitched this:

The Greenshirts fingered a sub attack. It was last month. The Japs lobbed the Ellsworth Oil Refinery. The shells went adios and pfft. Rice and Kapek were muy Fifth Column. Catbox Cal, just as much. They sold Jap guns to the Greenshirts. The shirts got plans to commit 211s. La Causa needs the gelt. Catholic dinero fuels los Sinarquistas. They’ve got this initiation rite. You got to kill three priest-killers.

Salvy Abascal’s El Führer. He’s got kill lists of priest-killers and Reds. El Führer’s got this Irish fool eating out of his hand. The fool’s an Army major and an L.A. cop. They’re smuggling “H” and wets. They’re selling Baja Japs as slaves. The Irish guy’s got his head up his ass. He don’t know shit from shinola. Salvy’s put Greenshirt plants in with the wets. Them fake wets are set to escape and pull sabotage.

It came out in stutters and gasps. The sweatbox was blackout dark and reeked of slobber and blood. Elmer cleaved close to Frankie. The little hump bled on him. The little hump gasped for breath and gasped this:

Archie the A. Call him “El Pimpo.” He brought girls to the haus. There was this queer boy. He went to all the jazz clubs. He orchestrated the pervo shit at the haus. He had this Jap friend. The Perv of All Pervs. He sold curios. He ate raw chicken flesh. He sucked blood off samurai swords.

95 (Los Angeles, 11:00 P.M., 3/10/42)

Salvy said, “You seem fretful, Comrade.”

Dudley lit a cigarette. He’d chained the whole pack in nothing flat.

“I could say the same about you, lad.”

“Yes, but I am more high-strung to begin with. I have never possessed your most serene composure.”

They slouched in Dudley’s prowl sled. They’d parked up from Hollenbeck Station. They had a clear front-door view.

The sweep stood complete. They’d observed the haul-ins. Nine fish were now jailed. Salvy tagged three Sinarquistas. Miguel Santarolo, Frankie Carbajal, Mondo Díaz. Hard boys all. Salvy said they’d never roll and bleat.

Dudley chain-smoked. His throat felt raw. His nerves ran raw, besides. Hideo called him, pre-sweep. Hideo tattled an odd chat with Elmer Jackson.

Elmer tumbled to the three-case convergence. He wouldn’t say how. He knew about the gold and fixated on the fire. A three-case principal must have killed his brother. Elmer believed it. Elmer vowed revenge.

It was unsettling. Hideo’s punch line troubled him.

Elmer and Buzz Meeks killed Tommy Glennon. The act redeemed Elmer’s New Year’s Eve fuckup. The act proclaimed a vow of fealty to one D. L. Smith. Hideo foisted his gold bar on Elmer. Hideo urged him to confess to Father D. L. Smith. The gold gift seems justified. How Elmer tumbled remains perplexing.

Salvy lit a cigarette. “You needn’t concern yourself as to what my boys might reveal about our plans. They know very little, and I’ll secure them a lawyer and post bail in the morning. This klubhaus mess will subside and resolve at some point, and I’ll keep my boys sequestered until then.”

Elmer Jackson showed. He walked out of the station. He lit a cigar and stretched loose some kinks. He looked disheveled. He was coatless and sported a badly stained white shirt.

Dudley beeped the horn and flashed his high beams. Elmer looked over. Dudley got out and stood on the sidewalk. Elmer ambled on up.

He leaned against a streetlamp. It backlit him nicely. The stains were wet blood.

Elmer said, “Forgive my appearance, Dud. A suspect got between me and Buzz.”

“Turner Meeks is a vivid interlocutor. He’s been known to lose patience with rowdy Mexicans. Might you tell me the suspect’s name?”

“Frankie Carbajal.”

“I’m assuming that he rolled in the end.”

“Such as it was, boss. He said the Sinarquistas are planning some 211s, and they plan to use some guns that Rice and Kapek sold them. Archie Archuleta brought girls to the haus, which don’t surprise me at all. Frankie was hipped on some queer jazz-club geek and some Jap with a sword fetish.”

Bland revelations. Ho-hum. Nothing catastrophic there.

Elmer pointed to the car. “Who’s the cholo?”

Dudley smiled. “He hardly concerns you.”

Elmer smiled. “Tommy Glennon concerns both of us. Buzz and me clipped him, in case you didn’t get that from Hideo already. I don’t expect an attaboy on it, but I’d sure like you to acknowledge the favor we did.”

Dudley said, “Muted bravos, Elmer.”

“Don’t you want to know what he spilled?”

“I was getting to that, yes.”

Elmer blew smoke rings. “He laid out some old news. You and Carlos Madrano ran wets, and Joe Hayes was his bun boy. He tried to squeeze you when you saw him up at Quentin last year, but he didn’t say what with.”

Dudley lit a cigarette. It was a gaffe. His hand trembled. Elmer caught it.

“I had quite the chat with Hideo. He told me that you’ve put some things together since the last time we spoke. I’m wondering how you came upon what you learned.”

Elmer stretched and rubbed his back against the streetlamp. He was milking this. You overreaching bumpkin, I will kill—

“I was over at Joan Conville’s place about a week before she died. I was putting some moves on her, but it wasn’t going my way. Joanie was terped, and she was mumbling about the gold heist and the fire. She kept fading in and out, and she talked up a diary before she passed out for real. I tossed the place, found it, and read it. It was mostly woo-woo about you and Bill Parker, but she wrote up her forensic shit with Hideo pretty good. I put some threads together, and figured the three of you were out for the gold. I put the diary back where I found it, kissed Joanie good night, and scrammed.”

Vivid verismo. Elmer Jackson in quintessence. Woman-crazed and self-seeking. Less than half smart.

“Sally forth, lad. Keep the gold bar. Kill your brother’s killer with my most fond regards.”

96 Kay Lake’s Diary (Los Angeles, 11:30 P.M., 3/10/42)

I watched the Maestro compose. We sat at his piano; Otto picked out low-register chords and jotted notes on a scratch pad. He was working on the nightmare tone poem we had discussed several times. Otto encouraged me to improvise at the moments his imagination faltered. I filled in with passages from the three Bartók concerti; I was undermining Otto’s more foreboding motifs. My mission was therapeutic more than anything else. I was seeking to derail the Maestro’s darkly foreboding moods and loosen the hold of his formal therapist: the darkly corrupt Saul Lesnick.

Otto hit chords as I smoked and sipped brandy. Once again, I studied the piece of paper secured by the sheet-music stand. Words by Meyer Gelb and W. H. Auden. Once again, I came up against Comrade Gelb’s old Communist cell.

This storm, this savaging disaster.

Otto tapped the music stand and smiled at me. He said, “When I compose, I must always immerse myself in the mood the music attempts to express. Here, we have the chaos of my brain tumor and the muted light of my recovery, with recapitulative passages depicting the ongoing slog of the war.”

I hit a series of random chords, up and down the keyboard. They were meant to represent the overlapping jabber of the too-rude and too-voluble guests at Otto’s all-too-frequent parties. The chords covertly announced my intention to pump the Maestro for information on Jean Staley.

Otto said, “Tell me what that earsplitting passage represents, and perhaps I shall tell you a compatible tale.”

“Your parties,” I said. “Nesting grounds for parasites, all given to one doctrinaire view. All belligerent and convinced of their own uniqueness.”

Otto laughed and clasped my left hand; he poised it over the keyboard and banged a run of similarly unpleasant chords. I pulled my hand free and laughed with him.

Otto said, “Call it a crude parody of the German tanks approaching Leningrad in Comrade Dimitri’s new symphony, and anoint it the expression of my own loneliness and need to smother it with the company of idiots.”

I laughed and got to the point. “Jean Staley comes to mind there. She seems to have colonized your guesthouse permanently. One might call her ‘the woman who came to dinner.’ ”

Otto found this uproarious. I failed to add “while she’s been dodging a major police inquiry and perpetrating a bewildering mail ruse.”

“Jean has colonized my guesthouse before, and will colonize it again. She is a Communist, you see. She purports to despise private property, even as she appropriates it. She sublets the homes of the rich to suit the whims of the decadent Right, which I find delightfully hilarious.”

I banged right-hand chords up and down the keyboard. “I sense a provocative story, Liebchen.”

“Aaah, Katherine Ann Lake in her vamp mode, and ever the rival of other provocative women.”

“I’m hardly Mata Hari, Liebchen.”

“No, but you are the consort of inquisitive policemen, and I know when I’m being pumped.”

I laughed and covered my mouth. I was once again a conniving schoolgirl in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Otto sipped brandy and lit a cigarette. “I wasn’t there for the party that Jean midwifed, but I had given her my consent to sublet the house, and to do with it as she saw fit. Saul Lesnick had diagnosed my tumor, and I was taking a rest cure prior to my operation. So, I’m afraid my story lacks the level of detail that might give it a corresponding punch.”

Once again, Saul Lesnick. Once again, Meyer Gelb’s cell. Annie Staples called me early this evening; she told me that she had secured wax impressions of Dr. Saul’s office keys.

“I’ve never minded incomplete stories.”

“I know that about you, dear. You’re quite capable of ascribing your own endings.”

“Otto, you’re taunting me—”

“It was early in ’39. Jean sublet my home for a party she described as having a ‘pro-fascist theme.’ I left the sanitarium and returned here. I immediately felt that something evil had happened in my absence, but I was debilitated, and disinclined to confront Jean as to what might have occurred. I was stuporous from headaches and the medicine that was prescribed to alleviate the pain, so I don’t know where I was or who the other person was when the following occurred.”

The Maestro taunted and teased me. I almost blurted “Don’t string this out.”

Otto hit the tanks-approaching chords from the Leningrad Symphony. They were ever dark and foreboding. The Maestro knew how to build suspense.

“The conclusion, dear Katherine. A man approached me and berated me for living in a haunted house. I beat that man to death.”

I shut my eyes. Otto hit the ominous chords again. I barely heard my own voice.

“And then?”

“And then, I told Dr. Lesnick. And Saul told me he knew an FBI man who could make it all go away, for a goodly amount of money.”

“Was the FBI man Ed Satterlee?”

“Yes.”

“Was Jean Staley the conduit for the financial transaction?”

The Maestro said, “Yes, she was.”

This/storm/this/savaging/disaster/the rain/the gold/the fire/it’s all/one story/you see.

I drove home and sat down at my own piano; I picked out those notes and tried to will a single three-case solution. The gold robbery as genesis; the fire as corresponding catastrophe; the Communist cell as point of constellation. Meyer Gelb, Jean Staley, Saul Lesnick. Ed Satterlee as snitch-recruiter. Otto Klemperer kills a man; Lesnick and Satterlee quash public exposure. The Maestro Manse as a current constellation point. Gelb’s current plan to recruit four exiled musicians and turn them as informants.

Lee was off at Hollenbeck Station; he’d told me the East L.A. sweep should run through the night. The house echoed those twenty-odd notes. My thoughts went nowhere constructive. I thought of Joan through it all.

The doorbell rang; I knew who it was; who else perched and pounced this late?

I got up and opened the door. Bill walked straight past me and beelined to the liquor shelf. I allotted him time to guzzle a tumbler of scotch. I knew all his brusque movements and modes of peremptory address.

He’ll turn to face me. He’ll reveal unsettling moments from the East L.A. sweep. He’ll take me in because I’m the woman he loves, and I hit him in the face ten days ago. I’ll notice the coffee stain on his wilted white shirt.

Bill did just that; the stain was off to the side of his necktie. He stood ten feet away from me and made no move to close the gap. He said, “Thad and I braced a dink named Miguel Santarolo. He said Rice and Kapek sold the Greenshirts a large quantity of Jap guns. He laid out some planned 211s and snitched off Salvy Abascal’s Irish-cop hermano. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that Dudley has been murdering priest-killers down in Baja, or that he’s now a slavering fascist convert.”

I sat down on the couch; Bill sat down beside me. I took off his hat and sailed it across the room. It hit the piano and landed on the adjoining carpet. Bill shut his eyes. I put my hand on his chest and felt his heart race.

“Annie made those wax impressions. We’ve got access to Lesnick’s office now.”

“Have Ashida toss it. He’s primed to betray Dudley. There’s a glimmer of decency in him that we can exploit.”

I unbuttoned his shirt and ran my hand over his chest. Bill said, “Oh Jesus, Kay.” He fumbled at my legs and snapped one garter strap. I went dizzy. He kept his hand there and kept his eyes shut.

It was who kisses who now. I pulled off Bill’s shoes and unclipped his holster. He clamped his hand on my hand and held it to his heart. I threw my free hand back and hit the light switch by the couch. It was who kisses who in the dark now.

Bill surprised me there. He pulled me close and touched me under my sweater. We bumped noses and scraped teeth as we kissed in the dark.

97 (Los Angeles, 8:00 A.M., 3/11/42)

Mondo “El Tigre” Díaz. He defines intractable. Sweatbox #4’s his new habitat. Ashida played good guy. Blanchard played bad guy. They were ten hours in. They eschewed rough stuff. They fed El Tigre doughnuts and coffee. They plied him with booze and contraband weed.

El Tigre revealed zero. They stressed the Sinarquistas and his Peeping Tom busts. El Tigre came off bemused. He wore a sharkskin zoot suit and a coiled-snake pendant. He sported snarling-tiger tattoos.

Blanchard yawned. Ashida yawned. El Tigre told stale jokes. A lion is fucking a zebra. If a nigger and a Mexican jump off the Taft Building, who hits the ground first? Come-San-Chin, the Chinese cocksucker. That old chestnut.

El Tigre was twenty-nine. He graduated Lincoln High and LAJC. That was enticing. Ashida dispatched the Hollenbeck watch boss. El Tigre came off educated. See what you can find out.

Díaz lit a cigarette. He’d smoked all of his and half of Blanchard’s. He was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

“You guys have been good to me. I’ll concede that. You’ve read me pretty well, too. You know a tough nut to crack when you see one. I got popped for 459, back in ’38. It was a humbug roust. Two jamokes named Dougie Waldner and Fritzie Vogel leaned on me. They were rough boys. I withstood their grief, so you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll withstand yours.”

Blanchard yawned. “That Fritzie’s a mean one. He’s never learned the art of waiting your suspect out.”

Díaz said, “I’m the intransigent type. The day you wait me out will be the twelfth of never.”

Blanchard rolled his eyes. He ruffled the phone book on the table. The ’41 White Pages. Heavy and fat. The classic tell-me-now tool.

Ashida said, “You’re well-spoken, Mondo.”

“For a beaner. That’s what you’re saying.”

“No, I’m saying you’re well-spoken, by any and all standards.”

“Don’t butter me up, Charlie Chan. I’ve been buttered up by experts.”

Blanchard yawned. “Charlie Chan’s a Chink. You’re confusing him with Mr. Moto. Peter Lorre plays him in the movies. I popped that little twerp for possession of morphine. Some studio bulls put the skids to it.”

Ashida yawned. Díaz mock-yawned. Peter Lorre — snoresville. The room buzzer buzzed. Ashida got up and cracked the door.

A bluesuit passed him a folder. “That educational stuff you asked for. LAJC requisitioned it from the U.S. Passport Office. Your pal here did some traveling and raised some eyebrows.”

Ashida nodded. The bluesuit took off. Ashida shut the door and skimmed file pages.

Díaz had a Passport Office green sheet. He’d matriculated in Germany, circa ’35. He attended Dresden Polytechnic. He had a graduate chem degree. He’d joined the Nazi and left-wing Sparticist parties. He built bombs for Franco’s Falange and blew up Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War.

Díaz said, “Mr. Moto’s in a trance. He’s conniving something. He’s the inscrutable yellow man of the East.”

Blanchard said, “What gives?”

Ashida dropped the file and grabbed the phone book. He applied a two-hand grip and a baseball swing and smashed Díaz in the head. He heard his nose snap and watched blood burst. He reversed himself and slammed downward. Díaz whiplashed and jackknifed and bounced off the chair.

Blanchard jumped up and stood back. Díaz burrowed into the chair legs and covered his head. Ashida pounded his back. He made like Mr. Moto. He talked pidgin singsong.

“Dresden Polytechnic.”

“Your chem degree.”

“Your conflicting memberships.”

“Fascist or Communist. I’ll hit you until you roll.”

Díaz scrunched down and covered up. Ashida phone-booked him. He hit Díaz in the back, Díaz in the legs, Díaz in the head. He caught side shots of drop-jawed Lee Blanchard. He heard Díaz singsong-yell:

“Fuck Salvy.”

“Fuck his puto Greenshirts.”

“I’m playing the left-right field.”

“I’m in with the real Kameraden.”

“We’ve got cutouts and mail drops and microdots.”

“We’ve got rebop straight from Buck Rogers.”

“We’re running shakedowns and we’ll have spaceships before this war is through.”

“We’re invisible.”

“We’re everywhere.”

“We’ll rule the postwar world.”

“Ask my cutout, Two-Gun Davis. Ask sub-Führer Meyer Gelb. We’re invisible and we’re everywhere.”

98 (Los Angeles, 11:00 A.M., 3/11/42)

Crash Squad confab. The big postmortem. Let’s kick loose leads to death.

The squad ran underweight now. Ashida split for Baja and pressing Army shit. The roster ran Elmer, Buzz, and Lee Blanchard. Plus Bill Parker and Thad Brown.

They hogged the Hollenbeck muster room. Thad brought a jug. They yawned and stretched and crapped out at one long table.

Elmer was bennie-bopped. Ashida’s absence jazzed him and gored him. Ashida grabbed Jean Staley’s postcards. They might contain microdots. That was all good. Ashida foxed him otherwise. He dumped that microdot letter in the mail slot. It would shoot to La Paz. He’d probably snitch the PO box number to Dudley. Ashida was playing Dud ad hoc. Betray him/rat to him/betray him. Ashida ran this treadmill to The Big Where?

The Big Where? was everywhere. Him and Buzz were half-ass estranged now. Buzz overthumped Frankie Carbajal. They half-ass made up, in the wake. They agreed to withhold certain shit that Frankie revealed.

Like Frankie’s sabotage rat-out. Like Abascal’s double-cross on Dud. Like Abascal’s plan to work wetback saboteurs and plant bombs on U.S. soil. The withhold felt dicey and clammy. The withhold felt good. Him and Buzz were running pure rogue now.

Dud vetted the Tommy Glennon snuff and told him to keep the gold bar. Dud vetted his shot at Wayne Frank’s killer. It all felt dicey-clammy and good. This new Crash Squad had formed. It was him, Kay, Thad, and Bill Parker. Ashida half-ass cosigned their main gig.

Cornhole Dudley Smith. Nullify his evil shit. Notch a clean klubhaus solve. Ashida was a wild card. Buzz was wild card #2. Buzz was running hurt-crazed and kill-crazed. He laid Joan’s diary scoop on him. The scoop gave Buzz this big hotfoot. Yeah — but toward what goddamn end?

Everybody yawned. Everybody stretched. Crash Squad vexation meets Crash Squad exhaustion. The jug went around. Elmer abstained. Booze defused his bennie drift. Thad B. intoned some bad news.

“This Greenshirt fuck Abascal fucked us. He got a lawyer to get Díaz, Santarolo, and Carbajal moved into Federal custody. Hollenbeck Patrol raided their domiciles and turned sixteen revolvers and automatics that Rice and Kapek sold them. The Feds are holding those little Nazi shits under Alien-Sedition Act provisions. My guess is they’ll be in stir awhile, and then get deported to Mexico.”

The room rippled. Abascal be wicked whammy. Elmer caught a whiff of Ed the Fed Satterlee here.

Buzz yawned. “This priest Joe Hayes is Tommy Glennon’s bun boy.”

Parker said, “Ouch — he’s my confessor.”

That roused some yuks. The jug went around. Elmer abstained. Buzz lit a big cigar.

“Archie Archuleta recruited out of the CYO at St. Vibiana’s. You got lots of rich-ass Catholic laymen contributing to the cause. Who knows how many 211s those dinks have pulled so far.”

The room rerippled. Buzz stifled a big yawn.

“Here’s something that may shock the more naïve among you. The Dudster’s hatching racket schemes down in Baja. I don’t see no dropped jaws on that one, so I’ll add that he’s partnered up with Salvy Abascal on that front, which makes him a second- or thirdhand accomplice to all of Salvy’s seditious shit.”

The room triple-rippled. Elmer slapped the table and focused eyes his way.

“Look, Dud’s covered as long as Jack Horrall serves as Chief. We’ve got our next chief right here in this room, and it’s either Brother Bill or Brother Thad. We all know how bent the Dudster is, but we’ve got ourselves a homicide job right now. The next chief can put the hurt to Dud — but we should only talk up real case leads.”

Thad said, “Hear, hear.”

Parker said, “Elmer’s right. And all our Dudley Smith accusations are second- and thirdhand supposition.”

Buzz said, “I hate that mick cocksucker.”

Blanchard said, “That’s hot off the ticker tape. Roll the presses on that one.”

More yuks ensued. Elmer slapped the table. He was bennified out to the planet Pluto.

“I got a lead, but I can’t reveal my source on the first part of it. It’s a no-shit, somebody-killed-those-guys-at-the-klubhaus lead.”

Thad said, “We’re listening.”

Blanchard said, “Elmer tends to draw things out.”

Elmer laughed. “My source told me a crazy Jap and a queer white kid frequented the klubhaus. The Jap was a nutty sword man who killed chickens and licked blood off the swords he used, and the fruit kid was a jazz-club habitué. Rice and Kapek popped a Jap like that in January, and I witnessed the property log-in, but all the paperwork and property has gone missing, and I can’t remember this Jap’s name.”

Thad said, “Okay, that’s the first part, and you’ve still got our attention.”

Elmer said, “You’ve got the gist right there, which Frankie Carbajal confirmed last night. But he added that the Jap sold curios for a living, which narrows down a possible make on him. There was queer action going on in the upstairs bedroom, and any Jap sucking blood off samurai swords looks like a real lead to me.”

Buzz grabbed his crotch. “I got your real lead, throbbing twelve inches.”

That roused yuks and yawns. Blanchard nipped on the jug and stubbed out his cigarette.

“Here’s your real lead, but I’m not sure how it pertains to the klubhaus job. First, there’s this. Ashida broke Mondo Díaz, but he took off and split back to Baja — which I don’t like, given what he is to Dudley. It turns out that Díaz is a chemistry whiz, and he went to college in Germany, and he knows something called ‘microdot technology,’ and he betrayed Salvy what’s-his-name and threw in with some left- and right-wing guys he calls the ‘Kameraden.’ They’re out to profit off the war, they’re running a shakedown racket, they’ve got mail drops and intermediaries, so nobody knows nothing they’re not supposed to. It’s all one big fucked-up megillah, and Mondo’s personal high-up was a certain ex-chief of ours named James Edgar Davis.”

Oooga-booga. Nobody’s yawning now. Elmer recalled Joan’s diary. Joan laid out good Davis dish.

Thad slapped the table. The room simmered down quick.

“We’ve got to act on this. For the PD’s sake, if nothing else.”

Parker said, “I happen to know that Dudley has plans to pentothal Davis. We need to get to him first.”

Sweep fever resumed. They went Mex sweep to Chink sweep in a hot tick. Two squads formed. One Squad: L. Blanchard, T. Brown. Two Squad: B. Parker, E. Jackson, B. Meeks.

We rendezvous at Kwan’s, 1300. Chink-o-phile Davis haunts C-town nonstop. He’s Chink-fluent and Chink-defined. He’s got a rumored C-town pied-à-terre.

The sweep could wait. Elmer detoured first. He racked his brain and snagged that log-in Jap’s name. There it is. It’s Robert “Banzai Bob” Yoshida.

He dipped by Central Station and combed the Alien Squad files. He found what he missed the first time.

Banzai Bob’s log-in sheet. 1/24/42. No habeas tab. The klubhaus job occurred 1/29. Banzai Bob was a railroad clerk. Banzai Bob was not a curio dealer.

Elmer called the Lincoln Heights Jail and talked to the watch boss. The boss checked detention records and came back on the line. He said Banzai Bob had been in stir, 1/24 to now. That nixed him as a klubhaus-job suspect. Elmer told the boss to plant Bob in a sweatbox. He’d be right there.

He bopped to Lincoln Heights. Banzai Bob spoke good English. Bob was native-born. He voted for FDR three times. This internment drive’s the shits. He’ll be on the bus for Manzanar, 3/25. It’s like Pharaoh and the Jews. Let my people go!!!

Elmer commiserated. Elmer slipped Bob a ten-spot and a stack of girlie mags. Bob was delighted. Bob revealed this:

He didn’t know no queer white boy. He didn’t know no klubhaus or jazz-club crawlers. He didn’t know no curio men. His daddy bequeathed him his samurai swords and nail-studded dick sheaths. Who knows where Daddy got them. Daddy was bughouse crazy. Daddy committed seppuku on 10/8/39. Sayonara, Daddy.

Banzai Bob conceded this:

Yeah, he sword-slaughtered chickens. So what? He was a part-time Buddhist priest. It was like them Jew rabbis. They kosherized food. He decapitated it.

Sayonara, Bob. You’ve been exonerated. Elmer laid tracks for Kwan’s.

Two Squad was set to go. Buzz supplied beavertail saps. Bill Parker supplied rock salt — packed shotguns. He cautioned Elmer and Buzz. The PD was Hop Sing — allied. Ace Kwan was Jack Horrall’s lapdog. Go easy on Hop Sing storefronts.

They fortified on mai tais and pork fried rice. Ace Kwan served them. Ace professed ignorance. Don’t know Jim Davis’ hideaway!!! Ace lied like a rug.

They lit out on North Broadway. It brought back New Year’s Eve and french-fried Eddie Leng and the start of all this multitudinous shit. They lit out three abreast. Elmer gassed on their mission. Oooga-booga. They packed pump guns and walked tall.

They bypassed Hop Sing fronts. They leveled rival tong fronts. They blew out plate-glass windows. They raided chop suey pits and bookie joints. They dumped the fly-specked produce in open-air stalls. They prowled Chink-smut theaters on East College Street. They saw surreptitious Chinamen slam their underhung ham.

They ran field interviews. They got Don’t know where Chief Davis live!!! ten million times. They tore through “O” dens. They dumped hopheads off dope pallets and got ditto. They knocked over the late Eddie Leng’s Kowloon. Elmer spotted a Four Families warlord. Buzz dunked his face in a bowl of wor-wonton soup. The warlord revealed this:

I see Dudley Smith and Lin Chung!!! They wrestle Davis into car!!! Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me!!! Parking lot on North Hill!!! Broad-daylight abduction!!!

That was lead #1. A B-girl at Moo-Shoo’s Mandarin disgorged lead #2.

Jim Davis live above garage off Alameda and Ord. He fly Hop Sing and Don’t Tread on Me door flags. He keep sewer rats as pets.

Two Squad hotfooted on over. They kicked down said door. Jim Davis was gone. The ex-chief lived in a rodent resort. Note the swastika wall flags. Note the beaver pix taped beside them. Sewer rats ate out of dog dishes. A box of hand grenades sat by the bed.

They tossed the place. Buzz snatched the beaver pix. No further leads surfaced. Bill Parker decreed a breather. They schlepped back to Kwan’s and revitalizized.

Uncle Ace served lunch-crowd leftovers and Singapore Slings. He told Elmer Miss Lake called and said to call her back. Elmer ducked over to the pay phone and slug-dialed Kay’s number. He got two rings. Kay came on the line. She said, “Elmer, is that you?”

“It’s me, for sure. I’m at Kwan’s, and Ace told me you wanted to gab.”

Kay said, “Lee called me from Chinatown. He told me about Mondo Díaz and what he said about Jim Davis and the ‘Kameraden.’ Díaz said they were running shakedowns, and Annie Staples told me some things that got me thinking.”

Elmer yukked. “Well, shit, then. When you think, I listen.”

“All right. Annie told me that Jean Staley wasn’t really a Red, and that she and Meyer Gelb planned to extort a group of Jewish refugees that Otto Klemperer has befriended. Otto shares a minor history with your friend Jean, and she’s been staying in his guesthouse while she’s been sending you postcards from her automobile trip.”

Elmer went woooo. “I can tell you found out some things that I didn’t tell you.”

Kay said, “I’ve got that knack — which is why you love me so much.”

Elmer said, “Hold that thought. A notion just smacked me, and I’ll let you know if it pans out.”

Brentwood was swank. Lots of leafy streets and big Spanish houses. Brentwood north of Sunset was woodsy swank. You had deep-set yards and cribs more like estates.

Elmer surveilled the Maestro Manse. He hunkered low in his sled. Dusk came and went. He settled in for a loooooong eyeball stint.

He parked behind Jean Staley’s ’35 Ford. He got her DMV stats and ID’d her car. He went by Central Station, en route to here. He burgled Hideo Ashida’s locker and stole a priceless something. He laid said something on the front seat of Jolting Jean’s car.

The Maestro Manse was done up modernistic. Elmer perched across the street and got the looooooong eyeball view. He pissed in a cardboard coffee cup and smoked cigars. He scratched his balls and brain-strained Jean Clarice Staley.

Jean, the carhop. Jean, the ex-starlet. Jean, the faux Red and Fed fink. Jean, the ritzy-house subletter. Jean’s jungled up with Meyer Gelb. Red Meyer extorted movie stars and Commos. That was back in the ’30s. Meyer and Jean got current blackmail plans. There’s these hebe exiles swapped out of Krautland. Meyer’s got designs on them.

Jean, baby — say it ain’t so.

Tommy G. tattled her good. Jean went back with Fritz Eckelkamp. That cinched her to the gold heist. Jean was hitched to an arson dog named Ralph D. Barr. That cinched her to the fire. Tommy G. revealed all this. Tommy G. dubbed Jim Davis his spy conduit. Mondo Díaz tapped Chief Jim, likewise.

Elmer lit a fresh cigar. Elmer pissed in his piss cup and tossed the piss out the window. Elmer scoped the Maestro Manse and heard a door slam.

Then a cough. Then high-heel taps. Then Jean herself. She made for her car. Moonglow lit her up. She wore a tight skirt and a camel-hair coat. She wore nifty tortoiseshell glasses.

Elmer hunkered extra low. Jean crossed the street and went for her sled. She opened the driver’s door. The roof light flashed. She saw you know what and fucking SHRIEKED.

Elmer jumped out and swooped down on her. Jean dumbstruck’d the gold. She was bug-eyed and all trancelike. She sensed nothing else on planet Earth.

She touched the bar. She traced the mint marks. She caressed the bar and all but drooled. She fondled the contours. It’s the Fatted Calf. Come, let us adore—

Elmer swooped and clamped her mouth shut. Elmer said, “You can keep it, if you tell me some things.”

Santa Monica was close. They car-o-vanned to the Goody Goody Drive-in. They sat in Elmer’s car. Elmer ordered coffee and spiked it with 151.

It was cold and clear. The beach was close. Cars whirred by on Wilshire. Jean snuggled close to him.

Elmer nudged her back. Ixnay, sister. Don’t you vamp me tonight.

“Tommy Glennon’s my source on most of this. Some police-file dirt fills out the rest.”

Jean said, “How is Tommy? I haven’t seen him in a coon’s age.”

“Tommy’s off for parts unknown. Sort of like you, with that fake-postcard shuck you were running on me.”

The gold bar sat on the floorboard. Jean kicked off her shoes and foot-fondled it. Her nylon stockings went screee.

“You’re telling me you sussed out the drop at Bev’s Switchboard, and you know what’s going on there.”

Elmer sipped spiked coffee. “Let’s start with Tommy. He was making what he called ‘gibberish calls’ to some sort of relay phone down in Baja. He got his so-called scripts for the calls at Bev’s. All of this here shit is specifically spy shit, and you’ve got to have some sort of knowledge of it, because everybody knows everybody in this tight little world of yours, and all this shit is rolled up in a tight little ball.”

Jean lit a cigarette. “You’ve got to be more specific than that. I don’t know anything about Tommy making ‘gibberish calls,’ and I don’t know anything about spies in Baja or elsewhere. I was in the CP back in the ’30s, back when it was the thing to do. I met some questionable folks, but I’m not part of any spy ring run by the Comintern or the domestic CP, or anybody else. Get it? I renounced Communism, and you know what I am in my heart?”

Elmer smiled. “You’re a shakedown girl.”

Jean smiled. “Give Sergeant E. V. Jackson a gold star, because he hit it right on the head.”

Elmer respiked their coffee. “Let’s get back to Tommy for a second. All that code-call stuff got decoded and sent to a brother and sister in La Paz, way south in Baja. There’s some hotshot left-wing/right-wing cabal looking to make hay with whoever wins this here war. Does any of this make sense to you?”

Jean said, “No. But I’ve been around CP guys and their pals for a long time, so I can tell you that the far Left and the far Right share a lot of spit, because what they really hate is the square white man’s U.S.”

Elmer sipped coffee. The 151 subverted the bennies and had him seeing wisps.

“There’s a klubhaus off of 46th and Central. Two cops named Wendell Rice and George Kapek got snuffed there. They had a Mex pal named Archie Archuleta. He got snuffed, too.”

Jean shrugged. “If you’re asking me if I know anything about all this, the answer is no.”

“Frankie Carbajal, Miguel Santarolo, Mondo Díaz, and Salvador Abascal.”

“No. It sounds like a cavalcade of cholos to me, and I don’t play the Latin-lover field.”

Elmer smirked. “What about Two-Gun Davis? He’s the ex — L.A. police chief.”

Jean tossed her cigarette. “Strictly from hunger. He’s a fellow traveler all over the spectrum, but he sways distinctly right. We talked about Meyer Gelb that first time we met, and Meyer and Jim Davis go back a ways. Jim’s also tight with Saul Lesnick, for what that’s worth.”

Elmer teethed on it. Elmer flashed the klubhaus smut pix. Jean squinted at them and went nein.

“If you’re asking me who the two skirts are, I’ve got no idea.”

“Sex shows at the klubhaus? Queer stuff at the klubhaus? A nutty Jap who licks blood off swords, and his homo companion?”

“Elmer, I know nothing about that clubhouse, so why would I know something about the strange-o types who congregate there?”

Elmer teethed Jean overall. “Tommy said you knew Fritz Eckelkamp. That takes you back to ’31, Eckelkamp’s escape, and the gold robbery later that same day. You’re tight with Meyer Gelb, so that takes you back to ’33 and the fire that killed my brother. Them first two events are all hooked together, and don’t tell me they’re not. They’re both a ways back, and now we got the klubhaus job tethered in, and the same names keep popping up. There’s some kind of story here, and you’re the only one I got to tell it to me.”

Jean sipped spiked coffee. She took little sips. 151 was hoodoo hooch.

“I’ll tell you what I know. I’ll start at the start, and you can fill in whatever blanks you can.”

“That’s what I need to hear.”

“You haven’t issued any kind of threats yet. I haven’t heard you say ‘Give me this’ and ‘Roll over on this guy, or I’ll run you in.’ ”

Elmer shook his head. “I don’t know where I can go with any of this, without it causing a big upscut and getting shot down, because it’s all too damn embarrassing for everybody concerned, and the smart thing to do is make it all vanish. I’d like to find out the whole story on my brother and get a clean klubhaus solve, and running you in wouldn’t help me any there.”

Jean said, “Okay, then. I’m fifteen years old and crapping out in a Jesuit college dorm in San Francisco. I meet Fritzie Eckelkamp, who likes his stuff underage, and one thing leads to another. It’s ’27 now, and Fritzie goes down behind his robbery string in Alameda. He’s up in Quentin now, and we correspond and keep in touch. Fritzie wangles a retrial in L.A. and gets on that train that’s all loaded up with gold. Before you ask, I don’t know if Fritzie got hipped on the gold before or after he escaped from the train, or if he had anything to do with the heist. All I know is that he sure got hipped on it in good time, and this gold bar you promised me didn’t come from nowhere.”

Elmer sipped spiked coffee. Jean sipped spiked coffee. She scooched her legs and surefire vamped him.

“Don’t stop there, now.”

Jean caught some breath. “Fritzie told me there might be a crash-out, and he said to wait by the phone. I did, and I sure as hell got the call. I was twenty-two then, and I dressed all high school girl. I stole a car in Sacramento and picked Fritzie up in San Luis Obispo. There were roadblocks all the way southbound on the 101, but the cops bought my schoolgirl act and neglected to check the trunk. The roadblocks were lifted, north of Malibu and this swanky nuthouse. I got Fritzie into L.A. and dropped him at a fleabag hotel in Echo Park. That’s when I met Meyer Gelb, and that’s when Fritzie stopped being the so-called man in my life, and Meyer took over the job.”

She’d played kosher so far. The last part felt rehearsed. Her Fritzie-Meyer spiel played too pat.

“Keep going. You’re doing good in my book.”

Jean said, “Some time passed. I’d been selling maryjane in Sacramento and moving it through Tulare County, into Nevada. That made it a Federal bounce. A Fed named Edmund J. Satterlee popped me, and I gave up Meyer as a Commo to buy my way out. Ed fed me a diet of Communist tracts, and I faked a conversion and joined Meyer’s CP cell in L.A. Ed got me a screen test at Paramount, because he was chums with the studio cops, and that’s when I entered my silly-starlet phase. The deal was, Ed learned that Meyer recruited for the Party at Paramount, and that he ran a handbook there, and he wanted me to keep tabs on him. That’s how I became a so-called movie actress.”

Elmer tossed a tweaker. “What’s Fritzie doing while all this is going on?”

Jean rebuffed it. “I told you. Fritzie walked out, Meyer walked in.”

It still played hinky. It still played too pat.

Elmer said, “Keep going. You’ve got me tantalizized.”

Jean removed her glasses and buffed them on her skirt. She was buck-toothed and half cross-eyed. She was still a hot dish.

“So, I met a prop man at Paramount and married him. Ralph D. Barr. I lied the first time we talked. I was afraid you’d roust me if you knew I was hitched up with this big arsonist and Griffith Park fire suspect. Of course, Meyer and Ralphie were two peas in a pod, and they both loved fires, floods, cataclysms, and storms. Ralphie was an active firebug, but Meyer was just a fire talker and a gasbag. He was preaching apocalypse before the big fire, working up the rubes at garment workers’ marches and the like. Then the fire occurred, and Meyer and me and the other fools in the cell got leaned on, and it all went away until you knocked on my door.”

Elmer sighed. “So that’s it, then?”

Jean sighed. “That’s it.”

“Wayne Frank Jackson, Karl Frederick Tullock, Kyoho Hanamaka. Ring any bells for you?”

“Well, Wayne Frank’s your brother, who I didn’t know from Adam — and you still haven’t told me why you thought he was murdered and not just burned up by accident. I don’t know the second guy, and Kyoho was pals with Meyer, but I hardly knew him. Meyer said he swung right and left, and that he was some big-deal spy for the Jap Navy.”

Elmer brain-drained it. “Gelb and Hanamaka have got these allegedly burn-scarred fingers. I’m wondering if they got them in the Griffith Park fire.”

Jean shook her head. “Meyer was with me the day of the fire. Him and Kyoho were strange-o types of the first order, and they burned their fingers doing print-eradication dips, if you can feature that kind of action.”

Elmer beagle-eyed Jean Clarice Staley. She read 96.6 % kosher overall.

“Let’s get back to Gelb, Tommy the G., and that spy shit we discussed.”

Jean squirmed. She was hot to grab the gold and scram.

“Like I said, I’m strictly from shakedown. I pulled jobs with Tommy, mostly on political types, but I just sent incriminating photos and wire recordings through intermediaries, so I never knew who the marks were. I’m really just a courier and an informant. I finked Saul Lesnick to Ed Satterlee, years before Ed exploited his daughter’s vehicular-manslaughter beef and turned Saul as his own snitch. All I’ve done spywise is forward mail for Meyer through Bev’s Switchboard, which is the Grand Central Station of spy mail, because it’s 1942, and everybody and his spotted dog is Fifth Column and thinks this new world war is the gateway to untold riches. Also, Bev’s is in L.A., and L.A.’s close to Mexico. Meyer says the alleged el jefe of this alleged right-left conspiracy is a Mex, but I think it’s all fantasia, because I think Mexico’s a repository for all of Meyer’s nutty get-rich-quick schemes and political notions. Bev’s is Sheriff’s-protected, and—”

Elmer cut in. “Why’d you send me them postcards? Why’d you pretend to be traveling?”

Jean turned on her baby browns. Jean laid on the oooh, baby and soft-soaped him.

“You’re a cop, Elmer. I sure go for you, but that’s what you are. I told Meyer you were nosing around, and he told me to scram for a while. I had a bunch of microdot postcards I was supposed to forward, so I decided to send them through you, because I knew you’d save them, and then I could retrieve them. Also, Bev Shoftel was starting to think that Sheriff Biscailuz was souring on their protection deal, so sending the cards to you seemed safer, because then I could resend them through Bev, if her biz was still protected.”

Jean, baby. Say it ain’t so. You exploited my redneck ass and ran me in circles.

“Ed Satterlee requested a search warrant for Bev’s. How does that snatch you?”

“It doesn’t snatch me at all. Ed’s business is Ed’s business, and thanks for the tip.”

“Where’s Meyer live? Nobody can pin an address on him.”

“Nobody knows where Meyer lives. He’s just that secretive. We communicate through Bev’s.”

“What’s Fritzie doing now?”

“I told you. Fritzie walked out, Meyer walked in. Fritzie’s out in the vapors.”

“You arranged a party at Otto Klemperer’s place in the winter of ’39. Tell me about that.”

Jean foot-stroked the gold bar. Her nylon stockings went screee.

“I know the Maestro through Meyer. He contributed to Meyer’s Free Spain funds, which were all scams to begin with. The Maestro was holed up at Terry Lux’s dry-out farm in Malibu, because he’d been suffering from these bad headaches. Some America First guy, a priest from a wealthy family, came to me through Tommy Glennon, who I already told you was my kid brother Robby’s squeeze. The priest laid out the theme of the party. It was supposed to be all about some event in Nazi Germany four or five years before. There was supposed to be costumes and masks, and it all sounded strange-o to me. That’s it. I set the party up, but I didn’t attend it. I heard rumors that something went very bad — but everyone I knew who was there held their mud about what all happened.”

Elmer brain-strained it. “Was the priest a man named Joe Hayes?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know a man named Dudley Smith?”

“No, but I’ve heard of him. He’s supposed to be a hatchet man for the L.A. Chief of Police. People are afraid of him.”

“Klemperer and Meyer Gelb. Give me some more there.”

“What’s to give? Otto throws parties, and Meyer attends.”

“You attend, too. Here’s my guess there. You’ve got these music and movie hotshots passing through, and Meyer trawls for his marks.”

Jean said, “Bingo.”

Elmer said, “Bingo how?”

Jean said, “Meyer’s always trawling for marks, and he’s got no conscience in that regard.”

Elmer smiled. “Rat him, then give me something I can use, in case this whipdick and I ever meet.”

Jean lit a cigarette. “Otto’s befriending these refugees. They’re all Jewish musicians, let out of Germany. Meyer’s set to run a squeeze on them. He says it’s all hooked into some mysterious cabal, but I think he’s just in it for the gelt.”

Kay knew those folks. They were okay by her. They’d endured too much grief as it was.

Elmer said, “No soap. No shakedown, no extortion. That’s straight from me. Tell Meyer I’m looking to hurt him. Tell him I’ll put him in the shit if he goes ahead.”

Jean said, “Okay, sweetie. I’ll pass it along.”

Elmer kissed his fingers and brushed back Jean’s hair. La Jean swooned a bit. It felt half real/half fake.

“Take the gold and go someplace safe. This whole deal could blow up in our face.”

Jean dumped the bar in her purse. She dropped a wet one on him and booked triple quick. The bar was triple fat and heavy. Her purse sagged down to her feet.

99 (Los Angeles, 1:00 A.M., 3/12/42)

The mad eugenicist. The butcher plastic surgeon and tong affiliate. Your host, Lin Chung.

Slumlord Lin. The crazy sawbones owned half of Montebello. He packed Chink refugees into gimcrack cribs and charged usurious rent. An opium den flanked his office. “O” fiends test-trialed Lin’s “Youth Forever” blends. Lin and Dr. Saul Lesnick synthesized them. Let’s build a hophead master race.

Lin’s office was Führer bunker — sized and all knotty-pined. Physical-culture posters drooped off the walls. Norse vixens performed calisthenics. It refracted Leni Riefenstahl and Triumph of the Will.

Dudley watched Herr Doktor work. Lin jacked a spike with sodium pentothal and geezed up Jim Davis. Chief Jim was strapped to a gurney. He’s a suckling pig at a luau. A sock is stuck in his mouth.

Chief Jim went loosey-goosey. He was prone to run his mouth and blab impolitic. In truth serum, veritas. Let’s see what results.

Lin bowed and left the office. Chief Jim looked knocked-down euphoric. Dudley lit a cigarette and blew smoke in his face.

Hideo called him, postsweep. It spurred the abduction. Mondo Díaz snitched Davis as his spy-ring conduit. Lee Blanchard observed the snitch. Blanchard will likely resnitch it to Bill Parker. Hideo further revealed this:

Elmer Jackson showed him a microdot letter. Hideo ran first-round tests and failed to raise the text. Elmer refused to forfeit the letter. Hideo grabbed it and dropped it in the crime lab mail slot. It was addressed to a Baja PO box. La Paz/box 1823.

Elmer snagged the letter at Bev’s Switchboard. Bev’s stood self-indicted now. It’s a seditionist mail drop. Dudley called the La Paz post office. He spoke Spanish and came off Army-SIS brusque. He picked up a ripe tidbit. Miss Constanza Lazaro-Schmidt rented box 1823.

Chief Jim looked ripe to pluck. Dudley pulled his gag. Jim coughed and gurgled euphoric. Jim looked gaga guileless and eager to please.

“I’m anxious to hear your thoughts about several events and the numerous people who may have attended them, Chief. We have a celebrated gold robbery in 1931, the celebrated Griffith Park fire of 1933, the recently celebrated klubhaus murders, microdot communiqués, the Sinarquistas, and individuals named Tommy Glennon, Meyer Gelb, Jean Staley, Fritz Eckelkamp, Wendell Rice, George Kapek, Archie Archuleta, Karl Frederick Tullock, Martin Luther Mimms, Leander Frechette, George Lincoln Rockwell, Kyoho Hanamaka, Eddie Leng, Donald Matsura, Mondo Díaz, Miguel Santarolo, Frankie Carbajal, Juan Lazaro-Schmidt, and his sister, Constanza.”

Chief Jim deadpanned the names. He said his pet rat Lucifer fucked his pet rat Brünnhilde. Dr. Saul fed them eugenics potions and imbued them with eternal youth. He planned to name their ratlings Hitler, Stalin, and Saul Junior.

Dudley said, “You’re veering off a bit, Chief.”

Davis said, “Lucifer raised money for some far-right boys. Meyer Gelb’s a kosher cowboy. He’s right-left and who knows what else. Meyer gave a speech at this Mexican confab. Vodka and schnitzel. The ‘Horst-Wessel-Lied’ and the ‘Internationale.’ Meyer’s a goldbug. He wants the gold, but who doesn’t? There’s good colored trim at the klubhaus, but I like fourteen-year-old white girls myself. There ought to be a law — and, frankly, there is. Preacher Mimms preaches the new gold standard. Meyer’s a kosher extortionist. Kyoho refueled Jap planes at the Blue Fox on the Day of Infamy. He took Ernst Kaltenbrunner and some apparatchiks to the Fox his own self. Lucifer’s a muff-diver. That’s a rare trait in rats. Is this the DTs, Dud? I’ve had the DTs before.”

The confab. Goldbugs. Blathering nuts and realpolitik. Oddball egalitarianism. Aus der Neuen Welt.

“I wonder if I might ask you a few more specific questions, Chief.”

Davis said, “No. I won’t let you. They’re my DTs and my pretty pictures I’m seeing. I fucked Theda Bara and Vilma Bánky, and you didn’t. I fucked your Irish mama. Lucifer fucked Marlene Dietrich in Dresden. There were these white boys and spic boys in this college there. Wallace Jamie, Joe Hayes. Juan Pimentel and Mondo Díaz. You want microdots and phone relays? They’ve got them. Jamie’s America First. Father Joe blows Father Coughlin. They own a drop in West Hollywood, but Blow Job Bev’s got her name on the deed. This Juan spic was there at the confab. Talk about your spy brain.”

Aus der Neuen Welt. Realpolitik. Lucid instants couched in dross.

Postwar-strategy talks at a donkey club. We all want the gold. That means you. We’re all goldbugs. We’re all in this together. It’s all one story, you see.

100 Kay Lake’s Diary (Los Angeles, 2:30 A.M., 3/12/42)

My émigré friends lived in adjoining bungalows. They were night owls to begin with; they required no urging to stay up late, socialize, and make music. Elmer called me at home an hour ago and told me that he had braced Jean Staley. He said we should discuss the fruits of the interview, and told me I should pass a message to “those refugee chums of yours.”

“Jean was in on some shakedown deal with Meyer Gelb,” Elmer said. “And I figured out he had an eye on your chums. Tell them to breathe easy. I paid Jean off and sent her back on the lam again. She’s indispensable to that shitbird Gelb, so he won’t be squeezing your chums, no way at all.”

I called the Koenigs and relayed the good news. Hence this impromptu celebration. My refugee chums had learned one aspect of the L.A. gestalt very quickly. When in doubt, throw a party.

Magda Koenig whipped up a pot of goulash; Ruth Szigeti journeyed out to a liquor store and stocked up on booze and mixer. I called Elmer back and told him he’d be a fool not to attend. He said, “We both know I’m a fool, but I’ll be there anyway.”

Bill called me a few minutes later. He relayed the latest sweep leads and closed with “For what it’s worth, I love you.” He hung up, just as I started to swoon.

The party was running full steam now. Ruth had invited four of her most recently acquired lovers, two of each sex. There was an usherette from the Aero Theatre and Miss Barbara Stanwyck. There was Brenda Allen’s sought-after male prostitute, “Ten-Inch” Tony Mangano. There was sepia songster Billy Eckstine, hot off a record-breaking engagement at the southside Congo Club.

The goulash was spicy and tasty; Miklos Koenig made mean rye-whiskey Manhattans. Ruth shared brief bedroom intervals with Babs and Tony, and returned from them both looking pooped. The disparate batch of folks seemed to get along swell. Ruth played Paganini’s 24th violin caprice; Billy Eckstine held pace with her and warbled an a cappella “Ebb Tide.” Elmer the J. walked in the door and withstood a refugee stampede.

Miklos Koenig and Mr. Abramowitz pumped his hand and pounded his back; Magda demurely kissed both his cheeks. Elmer and Ruth shared a look that might best be described as lustful and opportunistic. Miklos force-fed Elmer a bowl of goulash; Elmer told him it was savory, but ain’t this the sort of grub the Communists eat? Babs asked him to fix a slew of her unpaid traffic tickets — which Elmer graciously agreed to do. Elmer addressed Billy Eckstine as “Sir.” He apologized for the Vice Squad raid on the Harlem Hutch in August ’38. Sir Billy impulsively embraced him.

Elmer and Ruth fell into each other’s gravitational pull. I eavesdropped on their screwball conversation. Elmer said things like “You’re Jewish, right?” and “I’ll bet Hitler’s boys were right on your tail.” Ruth asked Elmer how many Negroes he’d lynched and if his mom and dad bullwhipped their slaves. Elmer told Ruth she had green panther eyes. Ruth told Elmer he had beady eyes and said that she preferred circumcised men.

Dawn came up. I played hesitant Liszt on Miklos Koenig’s piano while Magda Koenig scrambled two dozen eggs. It was a very fine party. I looked out the front-door window and spotted a Ruth-meets-Elmer vignette. They leaned up against a wilted palm tree. I watched the not-too-dumb cracker and the Jewish refugee kiss.

101 (Ensenada, 7:00 A.M., 3/12/42)

He worked all night. SIS maintained a small crime lab. Their photographic gear excelled. He examined the Jean Staley/Elmer Jackson postcards. He found microdots on two out of six.

The cards were two-ply pasteboard. He separated the pieces and got microscopically close. The dots looked like pinpricks. He dialed down and exposed them at maximum power. They remained dots. No text was revealed.

Ashida swigged coffee. He pondered ways and means and got an idea. He walked to the photo room. He pulled a Minox Riga camera and loaded it with high-resolve film. He shot twenty-four exposures. He photo-snapped the postcard pieces and developed the film.

The darkroom was well stocked. Ashida did the cut-and-dunks inside four hours. He hang-dried the prints. He got all cardboard grain. No microdots were exposed.

He found a paint atomizer. He sprayed a large piece of posterboard black. He taped the twenty-four photographs to sheer sheets of paper and placed them on an easel stand. He placed the posterboard on its own easel. Both stands were frame-only and hollow-backed.

He poked pinholes in the posterboard and placed the two stands close together. He rigged the posterboard easel in front of the photo easel. He aligned the stands just so.

He squinted through the pinholes. He saw the taped photographs just so. He dragged a forensic arc light up into position. He hit the juice and illuminated the back-easel sheets from behind.

It was very sheer paper. Ashida naked-eyed the flaws in the bond. He reloaded his camera and cut the overhead lights.

Black room, blinding arc light. He placed the camera lens up to the pinholes and snapped shots into the flare. The pinholes limited his photographic field and homed it in on the invisible dots.

He shot twenty-four exposures.

He developed the film.

Microdots appeared.

They were naked-eye visible. The text appeared as a blur.

Ashida microscoped all twenty-four prints. He dialed deep and brought up bursts of visible text. It wasn’t coded. It was Spanish language. The sentences ran out of sequence. He poked his pinholes randomly and photographed the dots that way. He juggled prints and microscope slides and rigged up a first-draft sequence.

He quick-translated to English. He scanned words and cribbed up a text. Said text was all LISTS.

Of U.S. defense manufacturers.

Of pro-Communist and pro-Axis comrades/Kameraden within.

Of gold prices now.

Of gold prices predicted, up through ’44.

Of sub berths on the Baja coast.

Of secret airstrips geared for takeoffs and landings. All situated north of L.A. All in the San Joaquin Valley. All near agricultural-crop properties.

This admonition. Typed in boldface:

“EYES ONLY. DO NOT REVEAL TO JLS & CLS UNDER ANY CIRCS.”

JLS, CLS. Surely the Lazaro-Schmidt siblings.

Ashida jumped microscopes and rigged up fresh slides. He dialed down to maximum power. He brought up more text. It was all numbers and single letters.

The import hit him. It was Bible code. He’d learned the rudiments in grad school. Chapter and verse listings. King James page listings. Substitutions to transpositions to coherent text.

Ashida combed the lab and squadroom. He found a KJV Bible in the watch sergeant’s desk. He worked with scratch pad, pen, and microscope.

He jumped Bible-to-scope. He fought eyestrain. He jumped Genesis-to-Revelation and covered all sixty-six books. Numbers-letters, numbers-letters. Chapters and verses. Sacred text to microdot text.

He worked for five hours straight. The translated text read thus:

“My trusted Comrade, or should I say Reichsführer, second only to me. We have veered left and right as this storm rages. Tovarich and Kamerad mean the same to us now. The NKVD and Gestapo are as one. ‘Hail’ or heil, makes no difference. I say both to you — Captain Juan Pimentel.”

Ashida pulled up to chez Hanamaka. Genesis to Revelation. A recent memory perks. Cause and effect perk, in retrospect.

The bookie-drop raid. The phone-relay system identified and destroyed. Forty-odd men burned alive. Pimentel acts boldly. He incinerates evidence and kills co-conspirators. Comrade, Kamerad, tovarich. The perverse brotherhood survives.

Plus, something Dudley told him. A cove cave south of Ensenada. Pimentel acts boldly. He flamethrowers saboteurs. Comrade, Kamerad, tovarich. The perverse brotherhood survives.

Ashida parked in the carport. He’d called Pimentel and suggested a meet. Pimentel suggested this place.

Ashida arrived early. He wanted to reconnoiter. He wanted to check his photo device.

He got out and examined it. The trip wire stretched the full carport width. The photo housing was dust-streaked. It appeared operational. He pressed levers and heard car-tire thuds. The picture tube showed three rear license plates.

Two Baja diplomatic plates. One U.S./state of California plate.

Ashida memorized the numbers. He walked up to the house and unlocked the door. He had his own keys. Dudley trusted him.

The front room was breezy cool. Dudley kept the windows open. The telephone still worked. Dudley saw to that.

Pimentel was late. Ashida left the door cracked. He’d hear Kamerad #1 arrive.

Ashida dialed the Mexican Motor Vehicle Bureau. A male clerk took the call. Ashida cited his Army rank and serial number. He stiffed the plate request and stressed diplomatic.

The clerk went Un momento. Ashida eyed the door. The clerk came back on the line. He kicked loose the name and address stats.

Juan Lazaro-Schmidt. Constanza Lazaro-Schmidt. Two La Paz addresses.

Ashida hung up and dialed the Ensenada operator. He asked her for a stateside hookup. The main DMV in Los Angeles. Person-to-person. The head clerk, por favor.

The operator Sí, sí’d him. Ashida hung up and eyed the door. Pimentel was late-late now. The phone rang inside three minutes. Ashida jumped on the call.

He laid out his Army credentials. He recited the plate number. The clerk had him hold the line.

He held. He watched the door. The clerk came back on the line. She kicked loose the name and address stats.

Claire Katherine De Haven. A 1910 DOB. A Beverly Hills address.

Ashida hung up. The room warmed up. He walked to the back window and took some deep breaths.

He counted lies, omissions, distortions. What he’d told Dudley. What he hadn’t told Dudley. Joan’s diary. The East L.A. sweep. His end run with Elmer Jackson. His microdot findings. What he learned about Juan Piment—

“Alone at last. However you might judge me, you can’t say that I haven’t been patient.”

Ashida wheeled. Pimentel wore Statie black. His tunic was custom-tailored. Silver daggers marked the Waffen-SS. Braided shoulder boards marked the Red Guard.

Ashida said, “Should I call you Reichsführer? I don’t know the equivalent rank in the Russian Army.”

Pimentel blew a kiss. “You’ll call me sweetie pie in just a few minutes, once you’ve seen what I have to show you.”

Ashida backed away. He bumped a window sash and froze. Pimentel crooked one finger and walked past him. He turned down a short hallway.

He sashayed. He rolled his hips. He did mambo steps and went Tra-la-la. Ashida followed him. The hallway dead-ended ten feet ahead. Brushed-oak panels. No doors inset. A tight cul-de-sac.

Pimentel tapped a wall plank. A panel slid back. Ashida saw pulleys and hinges. A dark space opened up.

Pimentel said, “Kyoho was quite the pack rat. Dudley never discovered this little cache.”

Ashida caught up. Pimentel pulled a light cord. Presto — cul-de-sac, cubbyhole, closet.

It’s six feet wide and deep. It holds period costumes. They’re all nineteenth century and displayed on wall pegs. Pastel silk gowns. Cossack cavalry wear. German Navy kit. Imperial couture. The czarist era. The reign of Otto von Bismarck.

Pimentel giggled. “Does it make you feel special? There’s really just a very few of us who know.”

“Like the Lazaro-Schmidts? Like Claire De Haven?”

Pimentel went tsk, tsk. “The disapproving American. Ever so judgmental. He can’t see through to the roots of what we have here. It’s like your national treasure, the motel. Couples dress up to meet in sordid little places. We have this snazzy dressing room, and a surfeit of bedrooms upstairs.”

Ashida said, “Couples?”

Pimentel touched his coat sleeve. Ashida pulled away. Pimentel went tsk, tsk.

“Well, the Lazaro-Schmidts are a couple, however much you might disapprove. And Claire met José Vasquez-Cruz here, up to the point that he was revealed to be a Communist priest-killer, and our gorgeous comrade Dudley killed him. People come here to don costumes, and who can blame them? We all want to be something more beautiful and gilded than what we really are.”

Ashida shuddered. “What costume will you wear? Are you a comrade or a Reichsführer at this moment?”

“That’s hardly the question. The question is what you’ll wear.”

Ashida froze. Pimentel leaned close and kissed him. Ashida grasped his arms and opened his mouth. He felt Pimentel’s tongue. He felt Pimentel’s hand between his legs.

He kissed back. He smelled mothballs and old wool. He shut his eyes and saw Bucky and Dudley. He opened his eyes and saw the moles on Pimentel’s eyelids. He smelled talc and cheap aftershave.

He stifled a screech. He shut his eyes. He clamped down and bit Pimentel’s tongue off. Blood burst into his mouth. Pimentel screeched. Ashida pulled his piece and emptied the clip.

Pimentel pitched and flailed. He took down a row of hatboxes. He smashed into mothball sachets and gold brocade gowns.

102 (Los Angeles, 3/12–3/25/42)

This kiss.

His first kiss with Ruth. It started something. Kay told him she peeped the event and saw worlds implode. He hasn’t forsaken Brenda, Ellen, or hot-damn Annie Staples. Ruth hasn’t forsaken her hot-damn yen for both girls and boys. Kay told him about this other kiss. That kiss got him all brain-broiled.

Kay visited Hideo Ashida. He was plunked in the Army stockade outside T.J. Dudley extracted him from the Statie jail. The beaner cops popped him and held him there. He snuffed that Juan Pimentel cat. Hideo Ashida, tagged for Murder One.

The Mex cops tortured Hideo. They beat him and attached electrodes to his balls. They installed hungry rats in his cell. The Dudster wangled a writ and secured him a stockade berth. Kay saw him there. Hideo was woozed up on morphine. The Army docs prescribed it for his thumped-upon head. Kay asked him why he juked Pimentel. Hideo babbled, “This kiss.”

“This Kiss” tweaked him. It cinched him up to “This Case” and all the attendant queer shit. Queer Tommy Glennon. Queer Joe Hayes. Queer Huey Cressmeyer and queer klubhaus traffic. Pimentel got snared in a queer-bar raid. San Diego, ’37. That cinch-up cinched numerous threads.

He goosed Thad Brown. Thad record-checked Captain Juan, back to his bassinette. He glommed El Juan’s Statie file and some adjunct paperwork. Pithy dish was revealed.

Pimentel studied in Krautland. He attended Dresden Polytechnic, circa ’35. Class lists came with the paperwork. Wallace Jamie, Mondo Díaz, and Padre Joe Hayes were Dresden alums. Pimentel studied relay-telephone techniques. That cinched him up to a slew of pay-phone snafus. Pimentel studied microdot technology. Pimentel hobknobbed with Nazis and Reds at that Baja shindig. That cinched him to this whole shit-shrouded conspiracy.

Hideo killed him at Kyoho Hanamaka’s place. He called the Staties and surrendered right there. Pimentel — microdot whiz. Hideo — forensic whiz. Microdot postcards. The Staley-Jackson snafu. Hideo’s pledge to decode them postcards.

The overall dish strained his brain waves. He dished it straight back to Kay. She dished Bill Parker. Whiskey Bill dished Thad Brown. They held an All-Dish Summit at Lyman’s. Buzz Meeks joined them. They made no progress toward a three-case solve.

Ace Kwan dished some dish. Ace said Dudley pentothaled Jim Davis. Chief Jim revealed gibberish. Dud ensconced him at the Terry Lux nut farm. Jim’s got congestive heart disease. Jim’s going through the DTs. Jim’s tick-tight with Mondo Díaz. Jim’s cinched to the left-right combine. Sieg Heil, you fat sack of shit.

Jim’s stuck in stir. That’s one witness down. Link Rockwell’s witness #2. He’s in the Navy brig in Sarasota, Florida. The Navy won’t permit extradition. Whiskey Bill’s preparing a hot question list. A Navy lawyer pledged cooperation. He said they’d film the interview and send it along. Witness #2’s scratched for now.

Witness #3 crapped out. Adios, Ralph D. Barr. He was Jean Staley’s ex-hubby and a Meyer Gelb KA. Ralphie: Paramount stagehand/firebug/noted whipout man.

He got popped in Detroit. The Motor City bulls nailed him for Red agitation. It was summer, 1940. He firebombed the love shack of a high-up Ford man. The cops hard-nosed him. He snitched Gelb and ex-frau Jean. He said they recruited him for the CP. Ralphie torched his cell in the Detroit City Jail. Ralphie self-fried in true firebug fashion. Scratch witness #3.

Scratch three more witnesses. Díaz, Carbajal, Santarolo. Salvy Abascal interceded on their behalf. He called in Catholic fat-cat favors. Papist lawyers sprung the trio from PD custody. They’re now in Fed custody.

Bill Parker requested further interviews. The U.S. attorney rebuffed him. Parker was a Federal bar — licensed lawyer. He called Fey Edgar Hoover personally. Fey Edgar rebuffed him. Parker requested a sitdown with Ed Satterlee. Fey Edgar rebuffed that request. Ed the Fed had been placed under house arrest.

Scratch seven witnesses. Scratch the Parker-Jackson shot to erase the Fed-probe recordings. Scratch that avenue to secure acquittals for Jack H. and Fletch Bowron. Ed the Fed was their conduit. Ed the Fed was set to unlock the evidence vault.

Lawyers will fuck you when no one else will. Salvy Abascal is a lawyer. He’s an overall shitheel to rival Dudley Smith. Yeah — and him and Buzz have got a hole card to lay Salvy’s ass low.

Frankie Carbajal’s key revelation. This delirious dish:

Abascal is jobbing his Irish Kamerad. Abascal is planning sabotage behind El Dudster’s back. Abascal has piggybacked Dud’s run-wetbacks racket and has infiltrated saboteurs in with the wets. The saboteurs are set to bolt their San Joaquin Valley huts. They’re fruit-pickers and bomb-tossers. That’s a hot new one.

Him and Buzz got advance warning. They’ve withheld the word. It bought time. He bought them time with Dudley. He told him they slayed Tommy Glennon. He got the green light to slay Wayne Frank’s slayer in return. Dud cares naught for the klubhaus job. All Dud wants is the gold. Yeah — but it’s all a lot bigger than that.

Strategies. Plays, plots, ploys, plans. His overworked brain’s overheated and pitched to a boil.

He’s prowled the jazz-club strip. He’s trawled for the Jap sword man and his queer white companion. He’s notched no solid leads. He’s likewise trawled for the two skirts in the klubhaus smut pix. You get lucky sometimes. He spotted them at the Congo Club. They were full-fucked forthcoming.

We’ve been to the klubhaus. Link Rockwell and Archie Archuleta drew us in. We posed for the pix. Our male costars wore masks. Link worked the camera. We never met Wendell Rice and George Kapek. We don’t know who snuffed them. We don’t know no Jap sword man and no queer white boy. You sound us, Daddy-O?

Sí, yo comprendo. Vaya con Dios, you slovenly sluts.

He jumped locales then. He jumped darktown-to-J-town and trawled for the sword man. He’d eliminated Banzai Bob Yoshida. Sword man was allegedly a curio dealer. He pounded J-town under shit conditions. The bulk of the Jap populace was now stuck in stir. The remaining Japs fish-eyed him and played it sullen. Sword man? Queer friend? Eat shit and die, White Oppressor!!!

The klubhaus job was thus dead-stalled. He worked around it. He finally finagled an Annie Staples — Orson Welles tryst. Brenda put it together. Welles tricked out of the service and gassed on big blondes. The fuckfest transpired at the Miracle Mile love nest. Sergeant E. V. Jackson voyeurizized.

Annie seemed to enjoy it. Der Wunderkind surely did. Annie steered Fats to some pillow talk per Major Dudley Smith. Welles described the savage beating Dud put on him. Welles described Terry Lux’s plastic job and his snitch recruitment. Welles went on a goodwill tour conceived by FDR. Dud wanted rat-outs on Commies and other such scum. Welles was Claire De Haven’s part-time lover. Dud was jealousy-jammed. Welles considered the Dudster insane. I’ll tell you this, Annie. He’s dropping into some hellish abyss.

Annie excelled at the Welles tryst. Kay paid her to make wax impressions of Saul Lesnick’s keys. Annie delivered there, ditto. Who’s set to raid his office? Him and Buzz are good bets.

Yeah — but all bets are off on the gold now. Joan’s dead. Hideo Ashida’s imprisoned. Dud’s the sole gold quester still extant. The gold to the fire. That’s your ’31 to ’33 parlay. Jean Staley dished there. It felt incomplete. What if nobody killed Wayne Frank? What if he fried of his own dumb volition? What if kid brother Elmer’s got nobody to clip for revenge?

His brain’s overheated. He’s overworked. He’s running bag for Jack Horrall and Fletch Bowron. Gold-star contributors are dumping gelt on their defense fund. They fear Fed-probe convictions and expulsion from office. He’s siphoning cold cash to their lawyers. Bagman Elmer rides again.

He’s overworked. His brain’s overheated. His body and soul’s overtaxed. Temptress — thy name art Ruth Klarfeld Szigeti.

She’s from Budapest. He’s from Wisharts, North Carolina. She’s forty-three. He’s twenty-nine. She’s Jewish. He’s a Scottish preacher’s kid out of some unholy bog. Her dad conducted the Hungarian National Opera. His dad peddled Klan kode books. He’s seen some whopping bad grief in his day. She’s seen the Nazis machine-gun three hundred Jews and dump them in a ditch.

The Nazis made her watch. The Koenigs and Sandor Abromowitz stood beside her. They didn’t get blasted themselves. Here’s the big why of that.

The Jews were Commies and big anti-Nazis. Ruth and friends snitched them out for asylum. Their life savings bought them tickets to Mexico and the U.S. The dead three hundred were musicians and college profs. The death-squad Nazis were distantly allied with Meyer Gelb. The slaughter warned Comrade Gelb. His postwar scheme was a distant jerk-off dream at this moment. It could go blooey at any point.

Ruth was braced in advance of the slaughter. You will survive. You will emigrate and inform. You will facilitate extortion. You will fink at Comrade Gelb’s behest.

Comrade Gelb. Comrade Jean Staley’s shakedown boss. Comrade Elmer bought Comrade Jean off and scared her out of L.A. Comrade Elmer derailed Comrade Gelb’s current shakedown play. Comrade Elmer’s a big hero to Ruth Szigeti and friends.

The Koenigs and old man Abromowitz have crowned him their king. Ruth throws herself at him in bed. Ruth’s omnivorous. She throws herself at cocktail waitresses and pizza-delivery boys. It doesn’t faze him. Her big hurt fazes him. He plays the fool to quash the hurt and make her laugh.

Ruth runs abrupt. She whips him the woof-woof and hops out of bed to practice her violin. He lives to jolly her and eradicate her grief for a while. She flaunts her death-camp tattoo. He tickles it and makes her howl. He tells her Marine Corps and cop stories and lays on the laffs.

They’re both treading quicksand. He’ll escape his patch or he won’t. She’s got it worse than him. Her quicksand is all in her memory — and it sure as shit won’t go away.

103 (Los Angeles and Baja, 3/12–3/25/42)

Fractures.

Fissures.

Absences.

Checkmates.

Stalemates.

Abandonments.

Banishments.

Rifts.

Claire left him. Young Joan left him. Beth left him. His Mexican family has cut him adrift. Juan Pimentel is dead. Hideo Ashida has been imprisoned. Salvy Abascal is off, preoccupied. He’s running their biz ventures sans Salvy’s aid and Greenshirt collaboration. He’s neglecting his Army duties and his triple-murder case. The gold quest lies dormant. Army doctors have diagnosed Hideo’s “advanced fugue state.”

Hideo masterminded the gold quest and their three-case inquiries. Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle have been removed from the klubhaus job. A hostile faction runs that investigation now. Elmer Jackson and Buzz Meeks are running rogue. Elmer read Joan’s diary. The rogue redneck knows the gold heist and fire jobs intimately.

He misses Claire. He misses Young Joan. He misses Beth. His wife and daughters have booked passage to Ireland. He misses Hideo most poignantly.

Hideo killed Juan Pimentel. A lust motive glimmers there. A hidden closet was revealed at chez Hanamaka. It was packed with garish costumes. Captain Juan’s severed tongue was found on the floor. Responding Staties noted Hideo’s blood-smeared lips.

Hideo has withheld from him. He senses that. His hideous omissions feel paradoxically defined. Juan Pimentel’s death plays non sequitur. He interfered in some vexatious manner and caused Hideo to react. Hideo was doing microdot work at the SIS lab. Singed cardboard and misplaced equipment suggest it. The microdot work revealed something. Hideo is near catatonic and in no shape to tell him what.

He had requisitioned a full range of three-case paperwork. A range of newly discovered files was cached within it. He gave the paperwork to Hideo to study and analyze. He searched Hideo’s quarters in Ensenada and L.A. The paperwork has gone missing. Hideo remains his sole hope for a three-case solution and shot at the gold.

Missing paperwork. Three-case principals, missing in action.

Link Rockwell — in Navy custody. Díaz, Carbajal, Santarolo — in Fed custody. James Edgar Davis — exiled to Terry Lux’s retreat.

Count Joe Hayes missing. He called the Archbishop and requested a formal chat with Monsignor Joe. His Eminence brusquely refused. Count Orson Welles missing. He’s off carousing and moviemaking. He’s an unproven snitch, so far.

Impasses.

Stalemates.

Checkmates.

Credit Bill Parker’s strategic aplomb.

Jack Horrall has not returned his phone calls. Parker’s Fed maneuvers have put Jack squarely in his debt. Thad Brown has fallen under Parker’s pious spell. The two great rivals for postwar Chief of Police. Now allied against Dudley L. Smith.

He’s made moves to restore a counterbalance. He’s requisitioned a second set of three-case paperwork. He’s saving it for Hideo’s hopeful return to health.

Hideo haunts him. He pulled strings with U.S. Army courts and secured binding writs. Hideo will not stand trial for the murder of Juan Pimentel. He will not rot in Leavenworth or a Mexican prison. Hideo will be interned at a U.S. relocation center later this month.

Three-case paperwork will await him. The U.S. Army is building him his own crime lab. Hideo will waltz the day that fascist Japan surrenders.

Countermeasures.

Logical applications.

Counterbalancing tasks.

Kyoho Hanamaka haunts him. He’s the crux of all explication. He’s the secret sharer. The gold heist and fire precede his tour of fascist-Communist hot spots. His friendship with Meyer Gelb precedes. His German-Russian schooling sets the course of hellish events to come. The gold is hoarded and left to snowball in value. World war looms as inevitable. Hanamaka envisions a postwar brotherhood. The gold will finance the survival of totalitarian rogues in extremis. A conspiracy is born. Murderous pratfalls occur. Personal agendas surface. 1942 marks a chaotic nexus. He must exploit it.

Countermeasures.

He’s issued a second APB on Kyoho Hanamaka. He’s tapped police agencies, jails, hospitals. Plus relocation centers and travel hubs. He’s blanketed Mexico and the U.S. Kyoho Hanamaka — arrest and detain.

Countermeasures.

Makework.

Tasks to tether him.

He’s adrift. He’s not demoralized. Constanza tethers him. They thrive as one imagination. Constanza loves the Wolf and trusts in his powers. They envision the gold and lust for it as one shared dream. Brother Juan lusts for the gold — but lacks their imagination. Brother Juan attended the ’40 conference. He knows things he might not have revealed. Constanza was Herr Hanamaka’s lover. She rutted with the one man who knows the whole story. Her body consecrates their dream quest.

Constanza withholds from him. He’s yet to brace her. He needs to know the mail-drop secrets of box 1823. He falters with women, on occasion. It’s his Achilles’ heel.

Constanza’s passion exceeds Claire’s. Terry Lux told him that Claire is kicking morphine at his retreat. Kay Lake urged the treatment and visits Claire daily. The Wolf views Kay Lake suspiciously and considers her a deadly proposition. His own opinion vacillates and finally rests at disbelief. The Lake girl is grandiose and heedless to her core. Claire has always overestimated her and vilified her to a fault. Kay Lake and Claire De Haven now live in rapprochement. They are casualties of early-wartime L.A. Only the war could have spawned such a fatuous misalliance.

He found Claire’s morphine stash in their hotel suite. He injects the drug periodically. He drifts off on a cloud where no woman ever beats or betrays him.

104 Kay Lake’s Diary (Los Angeles and Baja, 3/12–3/25/42)

We were fated, Bill and I. He knocked on my door last December 6; he’d concocted an injudicious plan to entrap Communists and recruited me on the day before Pearl Harbor. He instilled my bitter loathing of Dudley Smith and introduced me to Claire De Haven. I was sucker bait for the heady series of events that have followed. I was at loose ends, in the Joan Conville manner. Bill hopped from crush to crush and ensnared us both. He pointed Joan on her way to self-immolation and allowed me to glimpse a blithe evil that I cannot turn my back on. The late diarist has provided the current diarist with the means to rectify her botched knife assault. I shouldn’t have done it; I could not have taken a human life and lived with the consequences. And why kill when one can facilitate a self-immolation of the sort that consumed my dear friend?

Joan’s words indicted Dudley. I will draft a freshly revised indictment. It will take various epistolary forms. I will create scripts for the Catholic Bill and Claire to perform for their confessor, Joe Hayes. The scripts will contain innuendo and misinformation calculated to push Dudley to blunder. Dudley is blunder-prone now. Elmer told me that Salvy Abascal has monumentally betrayed him, and has hinted at possible deadly ramifications. Dudley collects protégés. Witness Mike Breuning, Dick Carlisle, and — most auspiciously — Hideo Ashida. I encountered Breuning at Lyman’s a week back. He was in his cups and mourning the loss of some essential Dudley Smith. He told me that Dudley’s women are leaving him, one by one. Dudley’s corps of able and compliant men must be made to follow. This is the basic design of my malicious levy of words.

Hideo’s current gambit is no words. I have visited him at the Army stockade and am convinced that he is feigning a catatonic state. He is doing this in order to circumvent confrontation and capitulation in all matters pertaining to Dudley Smith. Dudley Smith and Hideo Ashida love each other deeply. Dudley’s love is fraternal. It’s the love of a brutalized Irish boy who saw British soldiers murder his brother, leaving him alone to suffer the whims of a sodden and vicious mother. Dudley holds Hideo Ashida to be James Conroy Smith, reborn. Dudley worships brilliance and mastery and possesses the generous gift of acknowledging it in all manner of people. He sees Hideo as his fascist-utilitarian kin. Hideo’s love for Dudley is wholly lustful and at odds with his fulsome knowledge of Dudley’s evil.

Hideo has omitted and withheld from Dudley. Dudley will not crack unless Hideo cracks first. Dudley sees the Smith-Ashida alliance as a perfect wartime union. Hideo sees it as a vouchsafe of his wartime survival and fugitive sexual urge.

I will rob Hideo of his early-wartime love. I will covertly engage and collaborate with early-wartime fury and racial animus. I will rip Hideo free of Dudley Smith — so help me God.

I am possessed of a ghastly agency here. The war facilitates me; I consider the war to be a dear friend. I worship catastrophe in the manner of the nineteenth-century romantics. Chaos vitalizes me and assigns me tasks. I accede to the fact that this is my personal madness.

The war gave me the great Otto Klemperer and his nightmare story of beating a man to death. The war gave me a small part in the American passage of Shostakovich’s new symphony. The war gave me a brief colloquy with an imbecilic monster.

I’ve been visiting Claire during her dope cure at Terry Lux’s clinic. Jim Davis is now enrolled there. Two male nurses were walking him back from the infirmary. He recognized me from various PD functions and said hi.

I asked him how it felt to betray your country and side with fascist and Communist killers. I asked him why he molested underaged girls. I asked him how it felt to disembowel four human beings and let an innocent man take the rap.

Davis didn’t seem to understand me. Terry most likely had him doped up.

Claire and Chief Jim head the sick list; numerous three-case witnesses top the custody list. Hideo Ashida remains in stir. The internment push has leveled Japanese communities throughout Los Angeles County. City jails, work farms, and barracks shantytowns overflow with imprisoned Japanese. They’ll soon be scoured Jap-free. The exodus to permanent relocation centers will kick into high gear. Hideo Ashida will head northeast to the Owens Valley. Dudley Smith will surely enhance his accommodations. I might run into the Dudster some fine visitors’ day.