This Storm

105 (Los Angeles, 8:00 A.M., 3/25/42)

Exodus, 7:14. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Pharaoh’s heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go.”

He watched. He pointed his binoculars east and tracked the migration. He’d spent his last free night at the Biltmore Hotel. A high terrace supplied the view.

Whole families trudged. They pulled handcarts piled with luggage and folded overcoats. Prowl cars trailed them. FBI men walked alongside. The pickup spot was north-northeast. Army buses revved their engines there.

Ashida watched. He stood by himself. His mother and brother had already been interned. They were sequestered at Heart Mountain. He was Manzanar-bound. The Owens Valley. Up in the Sierras. A two-temperature zone. Broiling heat, freezing cold.

He got off lucky. There would be no Mexican jail or U.S. prison. He sidestepped death by torture and brutal mistreatment. All praise to Dudley Smith.

Manzanar would suit him. Preferential treatment had been arranged. Dudley assured him of that. He canned his I’m catatonic act. They had a nice chat.

He detailed the text of the microdot postcards. He laid out Juan Pimentel’s spy-ring complicity. He did not snitch off the two Lazaro-Schmidts.

Dudley was Constanza’s lover. She was spy-ring complicit. Dudley would or would not determine this for himself.

He played God with Dudley. It was a jilted-lover move. He employed need-to-know tactics with Dudleyesque aplomb. He apologized for killing Pimentel. It left Dudley’s “business fronts” understaffed.

Dudley took it all in. There were no accusations. There were no probes or digs per the murder and no displays of pique.

They embraced. They vowed to retain close contact. Ashida pledged his loyalty.

I’ll remain assiduous. I’ll study any and all files you provide. I’ll press for a three-case solution and shot at the gold.

Dudley said, “Chin up, lad. We’ll both survive and prevail.” Dudley evinced psychopathic good cheer.

That was last night. He trained up from Baja then. He packed one suitcase and ordered a last room-service meal. He slept on the living room couch. Early sunlight roused him.

Ashida walked out. He affixed his blinders and took the back service stairs down. He cut through the lobby and walked north on Olive. The migration was due east. He looped in west of the swarm.

He cut east on 1st Street and passed Central Station. He took a last look up at the crime lab. The pickup spot was dead ahead.

He dawdled over. Two hundred Japanese huddled at 1st and Los Angeles. They pushed off the sidewalk and covered the street. Four buses were double-parked.

Army noncoms cinched luggage to above-the-bus racks. They unloaded handcarts and checked names off clipboard lists. Men, women, children. Knots of four, five, and six. Name tags pinned to overcoats. Families in tight little cliques.

Ashida scanned faces. The Japanese suck it up. The kids stuck close to mom and dad. He saw flat eyes and no spilled tears.

He jostled into the throng. He removed his blinders and donned his Man Camera. He picked out details. People recognized him.

Little girls clutching dolls. Who’s that man there? Little boys clutching toy trucks. It’s Running Dog Ashida.

Name tags pinned to coat lapels. More eyes pinned his way. Old men with canes. Running Dog Traitor. Luggage lashed to bus racks, piled skyscraper high.

He dialed his Man Camera close. He saw men hiss. He saw women dodge his lens. A fat man mimed spitting. A high school boy mimed FUCK YOU.

The boarding commenced. The noncoms herded people onto buses. Ashida stood his ground. Men elbowed and jostled him on purpose. Spit globs hit his coat. He heard Shudo/Werewolf/Watanabe. The crowd thinned a bit. He Man Camera’d the sidewalk and saw them.

Bill Parker. Elmer Jackson. Kay Lake.

They smiled at him. They waved at him. They made no moves to screw it up with words. His eyes clouded over. Tears doused his camera lens.

Two noncoms approached him. They called him Dr. Ashida. They said something about Major Smith and sitting up front.

Ashida waved to his friends. Elmer Jackson bayed like a hound dog. Kay Lake blew him a kiss.

The driver and gun guard gabbed. It was all baseball and promiscuous Wacs. They’d rigged up a jump seat. Ashida sat between them. Wire mesh closed off the hoi polloi Japs.

They looked forlorn and apprehensive. They played it stoic. They saw Ashida up front with the round eyes. Ashida supplied thought balloons. Race traitor/white man’s tool/running dog.

The bus rolled through L.A. and San Berdoo counties. Ashida’s bus took the pole spot. Three buses trailed it. The gun guard yakked Ashida up.

Manzanar ain’t too bad. The weather bites Chihuahua dicks. Families get housed all together. The mess halls are done up homey. You can plant your own garden. There’s Christian and Shinto chapels. There’s work assignments. Kids go to school.

That Major Smith’s a sketch. That’s some brogue he’s got. He’s got swell quarters set up for you.

The journey slogged. The driver and gun guard shot the shit and yakked over engine throb. The buses refueled at a filling station outside Visalia. The guards passed out sandwiches and declared a piss stop. The Sierras loomed off to the east.

The stop consumed an hour. The captive Japs hogged both rest rooms and pissed the local yokels off. Hooligans went Banzai and made like the Zeros at Pearl. The gun guards pulled their billy clubs and moved them along.

The slog resumed. The temperature dropped. The caravan chugged through steep mountains. Ashida shivered. The gun guard passed him a blanket.

They hit the Owens Valley. It was wide, flat, and bleak. Tall mountains bordered it. The air was dry and cold. Snow covered the peaks and iced up the ground.

There it is. Manzanar War Relocation Center. It’s all the way off by itself.

There’s all these claptrap buildings and all this barbed wire. The family huts extend a mile out. It’s perfectly symmetrical. It’s all jerry-rigged.

There’s all these wide streets. They’re unpaved and squared off. The crisscross goes on forever. It’s cold today. There’s nobody out and about.

Fifty-odd buses were parked by the guard gate. MP’s in hooded greatcoats smoked and chewed the fat. A first lieutenant stood off by himself. Ashida recognized him.

Al Wilhite. Ex-Burglary hardnose. Known Dudley Smith toady and apologist.

The new buses pulled up to the bus line. Wilhite approached the lead-bus door. The gun guard kicked it open. Ashida walked out first.

Wilhite saluted him. “Welcome to Manzanar, sir. Major Smith has requested that I show you to your quarters.”

They were jailhouse de-luxe. Dudley Smith vouched good hotels. The Biltmore in L.A. The del Norte in Baja. This three-room Manzanar suite.

A bedroom. A well-equipped lab. A workroom with built-in shelves and a large desk. A fresh set of three-case paperwork, all neatly stacked.

Plus a kitchenette. Plus an Army scrambler phone. He could make and receive his own calls.

His suite was detached. He had stormproof windows and a Mount Whitney view. Central ducts supplied heat. He had privacy. The shack rows stood a full hundred yards off.

Al Wilhite pointed to the paperwork. “That’s your job, for as long as it takes you. And, there’s a man at the Lone Pine Hospital. Major Smith would like you to interview him. He’s being treated for severe burns there.”

Dusk settled in. A mountain gale stirred loose snow. It swirled high and obscured rooflines. Manzanar went arctic cold. Steam heat warmed the suite.

Ashida dozed. Al Wilhite brought him his dinner. The MP’s mess hall employed local cooks. Those guys knew their stuff. The jailbirds rated Army cooks. They got substandard fare.

The meal was good. It included French champagne. Relentless Dudley. Ever the Dudleyesque touch.

Ashida heard voices outside. He checked his front-room window. Three young men stood by the steps. They wore Belmont High letter jackets and held whomping sticks. Go, Mighty Sentinels. Green-and-black, 4-ever.

He walked outside.

He said, “As you wish.”

He motioned them forward to beat him.

They came at him low and knocked him flat on a snowdrift. They arced their sticks and brought them down hard. They thumped his arms and legs. Swirling snow covered their faces.

106 (Los Angeles, 9:30 P.M., 3/25/42)

Ruth kicked him out. Lazy love gave her the frets. She cited her violin and an audition. You have other women, Liebchen. Go, pester them for a while.

Elmer hoofed it. Ruth dispensed good advice. Make the rounds. Visit the girls. Ask those questions you should have asked before this.

He hopped east. He split Santa Monica and cut back to L.A. proper. The SaMo PD ran shoreline blackouts. That meant doused traffic lights and house lights. He drove out of it and lit a cigar.

He passed the SaMo-city border. He went from no lights to muted lights and cellophane-dim stoplights. Folks drove faster. Wilshire opened up.

A light rain kicked in. He cut north to Laurel Canyon. He caught Brenda in her robe and up for a chat. She drew the line there. No transitory woof-woof tonight.

They sipped Cointreau and noshed salted peanuts. They discussed their hot-sheet biz. Elmer snagged his chance and steered the talk.

“Bev’s Switchboard keeps popping up in the klubhaus job. I was wondering if you knew who actually owns the place.”

Brenda blew smoke rings. “This priest Joe Hayes has a small percentage, but the Ness family’s got more of a percentage on the books. You know — that racket buster Eliot Ness, and his nephew, Wallace Jamie. That twerp who’s in the shit on the phone-tap probe.”

That hitches up. Jamie and Hayes. It bespeaks Fifth Column calumny. Thad Brown turned bonus paper on Mondo Díaz. The INS compiled it. Dig: Hayes and Jamie attended Dresden Polytechnic. Likewise, Mondo Díaz and Juan Pimentel. Sieg Heil — it’s Deutschland ’35.

“Bev’s is Sheriff’s-protected, right? Gene Biscailuz is taking a few points there.”

Brenda said, “Eight points, Citizen. One more than we’re paying Jack Horrall. That doesn’t mean that Gene don’t have misgivings. The rumor is that he’s been rethinking the protection, because Bev’s is so damn flat-out crooked.”

Elmer sipped Cointreau. “That’s some tasty dish. It’s funny how these things drop on you out of the blue.”

Brenda laughed. “You came here to pump me, Citizen. And I’m not talking about in the sack.”

Ellen kept late hours. The baby bawled nonstop and shitcanned her sleep. She was shooting some back-lot oater. Her hubby was off with the Air Corps. He might catch her bored and eager to yak.

Elmer cut to Hollyweird. He parked outside the Green Gables and elevatored up. He peeped the fire-escape window. The lights were on. Ellen wore a shorty nightgown. Ellen paced and smoked.

He climbed back inside and door-knocked her. Ellen opened up and went Ssshhh. He knew the drill. The baby’s sleeping, you dipshit.

They sat around and tipped Lucky Lager. Ellen cited a migraine. It quashed a stint in the kip.

They kept their voices low. The baby had keen ears and lived to disrupt. Elmer steered talk to Jean Staley.

This job I’m on. It’s strictly routine. Her name popped up. You two were fellow starlets, huh? Right here on the Paramount lot.

Ellen inveighed. Insomniacs ran talkative. Ellen lived to dissect and rehash.

“Jean was a strange-o. She fell into her actress gig, but I always made her for a grifter at heart. She had a strange-o kid brother. His name was Robby, and he wanted to be an actor, but he couldn’t get his foot in the door. He was a swish, and I think he was in with some swish boys who rolled pathetic old queens for kicks.”

Elmer cinched it. Robby was Tommy Glennon’s ex-squeeze. Jean told him that. He lashed up loose strands. The queer white boy, the Jap sword man’s pal.

“Was Robby tall? I’m working off witness descriptions of some fruit kid I’ve never seen.”

Ellen lit a cigarette. “Robby was short. He was a shrimp in the mode of Alan Ladd, but without the charm and good looks.”

Elmer said, “Jean and men. There’s got to be a story there.”

Ellen said, “Sure, if you don’t mind Communist no-goodniks and firebugs.”

“Shit, don’t stop now.”

“Who’s stopping?”

“Ellen, come on. Don’t—”

“Jean had this strange-o lover named Meyer Gelb. He recruited for the CP at Paramount, and he was hawking a pro-Red script titled ‘This Storm,’ which Jean told me was strictly from hunger. Meyer exerted a sick-o power over Jean. He made her marry a sick-o grip named Ralph D. Barr, who set fires and whipped his pecker out on the girls at Le Conte Junior High. Ralphie used to rig explosives and set contained fires for the cheap-o westerns the studio used to shoot out in the Valley. This was strange — because Meyer had these burn scars on his hands, and the rumor was that Terry Lux and some Chink plastic surgeon did skin grafts on him.”

Ellen dished good dish. It confirmed prior dish. It cinched up Staley/Gelb/Barr/Lux/Chink-o Chung et al.

“Sergeant Elmer’s in a trance. Don’t tell me this is ‘strictly routine.’ You’ve got your jaws locked on something.”

Elmer yukked. “All right. We’ve got all these strange-o types. What about other friends and known associates?”

Ellen crushed her cigarette. “There was this tall southern guy. He impressed me as a grifter, and he had a drawl sort of like yours.”

Cinch knots unraveled. Elmer pulled out his wallet and fanned the photo sleeves. He flashed his Wayne Frank picture. Ellen orbed in on it.

“Yeah, that’s the guy. And I hate to say it, but that Klan sheet looks pretty good on him.”

Surprise didn’t cut it. Shock missed the point. Spiritus Mundi said it best.

Kay’s shtick. We share one soul and one fate. Our shit’s all interlocked. We’re as one and fucked-up by life’s follies. We swirl as our foolish fate plays itself out.

Annie was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She looked 1:00 a.m. in-her-robe goooood. She scoped his dizzy demeanor and fixed him a quadruple scotch. He guzzled it.

The couch dipped. He saw the six-eyed beasts in the Book of Revelation. Wayne Frank grew six eyes and burned a Klan cross. Tommy Glennon levitated. Gold dust rained down on L.A. Joan Conville resurrected. Revelations ripped his way.

Mondo Díaz. Frankie Carbajal. The Dresden boys. Joan said it’s all one story. Kay said she’d marry him if he sussed it all out.

Annie said, “Penny for your thoughts.”

Elmer opened his eyes. The couch resettled. The Revelation gang waved good-bye.

“Ed Satterlee. You’ve spent time in the sack with him. Tell me something I don’t know.”

Annie furrowed up. “I think he’s a secret Red, but nobody knows it. He’s always saying we’ll win the war with Germany but lose the war with Russia, which wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He says we should be prepared for that, because the Reds are the wave of the future.”

Ruth said, “Have you ever killed anyone, Elmer? You have heard my own horrible story, and I must insist that you respond in kind and answer me candidly.”

The bed sagged. They’d sweated up the sheets. The bedroom was cold. A sea breeze ruffled the curtains and induced goose bumps.

“I clipped a political fanatic in Nicaragua. He was trying to kill the police chief we had here in L.A. then. Jim Davis was grateful, and that’s how I got on the PD.”

Ruth finger-walked up his rib cage. She did deliberate things like that. Her panther eyes gleamed.

“You are a bloodthirsty type. I would have thought you would have more scalps on your belt.”

Book of Revelation. Six-eyed beasts. Tommy Glennon and Catbox Cal Lunceford. Additional scalps on his belt.

“That’s as far as it goes. I’ve never had the misfortune of passing through Nazi Germany, and I’ve never come up against the likes of Meyer Gelb.”

“You say Comrade Gelb’s name casually, as if you know this man in a personal way.”

“I’m working an investigation. His name keeps coming up.”

Ruth shrugged. “There is not much one can say about Comrade Gelb. He is a Communist, so he is both enlightened and deluded. He is also an extortionist, which has earned him my enmity. I owe my American passage to Herr Comrade, but many good people died as a result. My friends and I will not be impressed into informant duty, and we ardently applaud your coercive efforts with Miss Staley. Maestro Otto has passed along rumors as to Comrade Gelb and his left-right bund, but they impress me as nebulous poppycock.”

Elmer shrugged. “That’s all you’ve got on Meyer the G., huh?”

Ruth grabbed his hair and pulled their heads close. She did abrupt things like that.

“I formally met Gelb only once. It was in Munich, in ’36 or ’37. We met at a reception for Wilhelm Furtwängler. We were two Jews, and we briefly discussed our prospects for leaving Germany alive. Gelb bore an odd resemblance to a Sparticist hoodlum I knew in Berlin in the ’20s. His name was Fritz Eckelkamp, and he was quite the mad boy. I mentioned this to Herr Gelb, and noted that my rather bland comment disturbed him.”

Revelation. Spiritus Mundi. Six-eyed somethings. Ellen Drew’s dish. Jean Staley’s drift.

Ellen’s dish enticed. Terry Lux and a Chink plastic man grafted up Gelb’s hands. Jean’s drift gored and perplexed.

The train escape and gold heist. Jean finagles Fritz Eckelkamp through southbound roadblocks. The roadblocks stop north of Malibu. “Near this ritzy nuthouse.” It’s the Terry Lux clinic, for sure.

“Elmer, where are you? You are certainly not listening to me.”

Elmer fought off chills. His goose bumps grew goose bumps.

“I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

“I was commenting on Comrade Gelb, and I was saying that when the four of us were flown to La Paz, the airplane stopped in Juarez to refuel. An FBI man boarded the plane and queried us on Comrade Gelb. He wanted to know about Herr Gelb’s plans to relocate refugees, but it occurred to me that he already knew the answers, and that perhaps he and Herr Gelb were in league. He added that we should mind our p’s and q’s, or risk expulsion from America.”

Elmer tingled. “Was the FBI man’s name Ed Satterlee?”

Ruth said, “Yes, it was.”

107 (Tijuana, 9:00 A.M., 3/26/42)

The T.J. Express. Two trucks and two buses. Perched at the border. Japs and wets set to roll.

To internment camps. To PD road gangs. To San Joaquin Valley farms. Arriba, Japos y braceros. You’re plain old slaves now.

Salvy was late. Dudley briefed the Statie drivers and gun guards. They resented him. Juan Pimentel was their immediate boss and sub-Führer. El Dudley mollycoddled his killer. El Puto Ashida got a soft stateside berth. It pissed the slave crew off.

Salvy was late. It pissed him off. Salvy was set to ride north with the slaves. He was charged to glad-hand farm and road-gang jefes and dispense bonus cash. Salvy excelled at such tasks. Salvy possessed the gift of gab and the PR-man touch.

Salvy was late. Dudley was double-pissed. Al Wilhite called him last night. He reported Hideo Ashida’s first day in camp.

Hideo praised his accommodations. Youthful thugs beat him up. That was most regrettable. Hideo had pressing tasks. He had file work to assess and a french-fried Jap to debrief.

Kazio Hiroki. Note the suspect initials. Wilhite snagged him off the Hanamaka APB. Hiroki is bilingual. Hideo will brace him in English and Japanese.

Salvy was late. Dudley fumed and performed roll-out tasks. He head-counted slaves. He stashed heroin in engine compartments. He teethed on Constanza, nonstop.

He saw her naked. He saw her clothed. He dressed her in fascist garb. She wore brown jackboots and carried a riding crop. She surveyed Waffen-SS troops and found them unkempt. She lashed them and drew blood.

Salvy was late. Dudley teethed on Constanza. He loved her. He did not fully trust her. He’d run intermittent stakeouts on the La Paz post office. Hideo snatched and mailed Elmer J.’s microdot letter. Constanza must have received it.

His stakeouts continue. He wants to nail her at the location. Tell me why I should trust you. Declare your loyalty and lead me to the gold.

Salvy was late. Dudley teethed on Constanza. He saw her in white gowns. Her shoulder straps kept slipping. He saw her in Brownshirt riot gear. She raised her riding crop and whipped Marxist thugs.

“Mi hermano, I apologize for my tardiness. Greenshirt business has kept me occupied.”

There he was. Salvy snuck up on you. He was Latin decorous and ever deferential. Dudley raised a hand to slap him. Dudley hugged him instead.

“Your tardiness is confounding, but I trust and revere you, regardless.”

Salvy laid on back slaps. He had that Latin love-tap touch. Salvy beamed. Latins lived to ingratiate.

Dudley pointed to the lead bus. The driver goosed the gas. The engine purred. The gun guard jacked shells in his piece. The shackled slaves pitched boo-hoo.

“Bon voyage, lad. Call me from Fresno or Bakersfield. I’ll be staying with Constanza in La Paz.”

Salvy shook his head. “I cannot accompany the convoy, Dudley. La Causa needs me here. I have urgent duties in Ensenada, and at the encampment. There will be many other convoys, but I cannot go with this one.”

Dudley saw red. He flushed and felt his veins swell. Salvy love-tapped him. Poquito cuffs.

“Do not be angry, brother. I see that you are disappointed, and your anger hurts me. The Staties will perform my duties, and I will accompany the very next convoy. I promise you that.”

Dudley flushed, warm to hot. He stepped close and almost threw elbows. Salvy love-tapped him. Dudley almost screamed.

The box rows flanked a service counter. The boxes were pullout, shelf-parcel size. They were numbered off-kilter. 1823 adjoined 901.

Dudley stood by the stamp machines. The PO resembled a pint-sized Alamo. He’d caught an Army flight down. He wore civvies and a belt piece.

Constanza called him in Ensenada. She suggested a tryst and come-hithered him. He said, “Sí, mi corazon.” She said, “My place at six.”

It was 3:20 now. Constanza said she had afternoon errands. She mentioned the grocery store and the post office. She decreed this surveillance herself.

It was stand-around/blend-in surveillance. That’s the most boring type. Dudley read postal circulars and wanted bulletins. The bulletins tagged U.S. fugitives and deserters. Dudley yawned and stayed awake.

3:40, 4:00, 4:20. Dudley got impatient. His thoughts boomeranged.

Salvy had mollified him. He should have hit him and cowed him right back. Constanza had a darkroom. She developed her wildlife photos there. She might possess her own microdot camera.

The Wolf appeared. He enjoyed La Paz. He hunted wharf rats and peeped Mexican women. Constanza loved the Wolf. He slept between them most nights.

4:40, 5:00, 5:10. Constanza walked in and strolled to box 1823.

Dudley peeped her. She unlocked the box and pulled out four envelopes. She sifted through them. The last one tweaked her. She evinced surprise.

She slit the envelope. Dudley stepped close. She examined the contents. Dudley got muy close. He saw a soft-blotter page.

Constanza looked up and saw him. She smiled, Latin stylish.

She said, “My alert darling.”

He said, “I’ll need to read it, of course.”

The process consumed her. He watched her work. The darkroom cast pulsing red light.

She placed the page flat on a workbench. It was magnification glass — topped. A small arc lamp beamed light from below it. The light was bright-bright.

She sprayed saline water on the page surface. It brought up collodion and aniline dye. The page glowed purple now.

Constanza donned magnification-lens goggles. She loaded her camera and placed the lens up against the page. She moved the lens left to right and snapped photos. She shot twenty-four exposures per quadrant. Her photographic field covered the full page.

She unloaded the film and cut it into ninety-six strips. She placed them in a developing pan. She sprayed on emulsifier. It brought up ninety-six small prints.

Spanish words appeared. Constanza kept her goggles on and skimmed the out-of-order texts. She took a white grease pencil and numbered the prints from 1 to 96. She clipped them to three clotheslines.

The prints dried in an hour. Dudley donned the goggles. Constanza turned on a fluorescent arc light. She positioned Dudley beside print #1 and had him read left to right.

Message #1 was a variant. Hideo described the postcard texts. This was more of that.

Lists:

U.S. defense installations. Leftist and rightist plants there employed. Established gold prices now. Gold prices predicted, up to ’44. Jap sub berths upside Baja. Secret airfields. All upside San Joaquin Valley farms.

Message #1 dittoed postcard information. Message #2 was all new. It revealed this:

A list labeled “Defense Contacts.” Lists labeled “Farmers,” “Ordnance Makers,” “Airfield Supervisors.” San Joaquin Valley locations, listed below.

One ellipsis loomed large. There was no closing salute. Plus, no admiring nod to Juan Pimentel. Plus, no admonition: “Do not reveal to JLS & CLS.”

Dudley tracked the logic. The postcards were sent to Pimentel himself. Elmer Jackson intercepted them and shot them to Hideo Ashida. The postcard dots expressed exclusion. They nixed the two Lazaro-Schmidts. Said dots nailed them as submembers of a factionalized cabal. The postcard sender distrusted the two Lazaro-Schmidts. This dot sender trusted them fine.

One cabal. Stratified and well buffered. Factions within factions. The intelligent, the resourceful, the superbly self-protective. To wit: Pimentel and the Lazaro-Schmidts. To wit: Meyer Gelb and Kyoho Hanamaka. Allied with the reckless and near insane. To wit: Jim Davis, Saul Lesnick, Lin Chung. To wit: Tommy Glennon and Catbox Cal Lunceford. To wit: dead cops Wendell Rice and George Kapek.

Dudley removed the goggles. Constanza ran her hands through his hair.

“You see how many layers there are, and how little most of us in the middle range know.”

“I knew you and your brother were part of it. You all but told me some weeks ago. You wouldn’t have known what you know about the gold if you were fully on the outside.”

They stepped out of the darkroom. The normal light burned Dudley’s eyes. Constanza placed her hands over them.

“I have not betrayed you. I simply omitted what you had already surmised. I assumed that you already suspected Juan Pimentel.”

Dudley nuzzled her hands. “You forward dot mail sent to you. The various forwarding levels are buffered past comprehension. Pimentel was one step up from you and your brother. Beyond that, you have no idea who’s who.”

Constanza stroked his cheek. “I have never doubted your ability to assess and extrapolate.”

Dudley said, “I have a certain matter to discuss with your brother.”

Governor Juan’s office. It was a big-cheese refuge and spot to receive and anoint. Note the pedestal desk and throne chair. Short beaners sit tall here.

Dudley walked in. Constanza followed him. She shut the door and bolted it. Governor Juan looked up.

His chair sat on risers. His desk sat waist-high. Goldbug Juan. All these gold figures on shelves.

His perfect suit. Gray wool with flecked gold highlights. His gold collar pin and burnt-gold necktie.

Dudley walked up to him. Constanza sat beside the desk. She lit a cigarette. Juan’s desk lighter flamed.

Juan sensed intent. He slid his chair back. It bumped a window ledge. Dudley picked him up and threw him. He crashed into a bookshelf and fell to the floor. Gold-etched volumes fell on his head.

Dudley kicked him. The books scattered. Dudley kicked his face and split his nose. Dudley sliced a new harelip. Juan bit his coat sleeve and muzzled shrieks.

“I read a dot letter that Constanza received. It convinced me that I should issue a stern warning. There will be no sabotage on U.S. soil. Your cabal or clique or junta may not kill Americans.”

Juan whimpered. Dudley kicked his balls and kicked his legs. He pulled his Arkansas toad-stabber. It brought back ’28. He shot a 459 man and took a souvenir.

Juan whimpered. Dudley leaned over him. He grabbed his hair and carved a Jew star on his forehead.

Juan screamed. Constanza crossed her legs and blew smoke rings.

The Wolf watched them sniff cocaine and make love. They steamed up Constanza’s bedroom. Dudley held a hand out. The Wolf licked white powder off his fingertips.

They lay three abed. The Wolf purred and dozed. Constanza stroked him.

“The scar will never heal. You’ve marked him for life. He’ll look in the mirror and know that I’ve told you everything. He’ll recall that he raped me on my tenth birthday, and he’ll never touch me or tell me who to sleep with again.”

Dudley burrowed into her. He felt schizy. His heart raced. He fought chills. He saw three of everything. Constanza, the Wolf, the bed.

Constanza stroked the Wolf. Constanza stroked him. His pulse ratcheted down some. She gave him her breasts.

“We can use him, my darling. We can use him as he has used me. We can find the gold by ourselves, and keep all of it. These rumored comrades would not dare to trifle with a fearsome man such as you.”

The Wolf warmed him. Constanza warmed him. She threw a leg over them both.

“You must know something, my love. I consider it definitive. I will never be able to fully give myself to a man as long as my brother draws breath.”

He caught a midnight flight back. He still felt schizy. His pulse still raced. He ran too hot or too cold.

He smelled Constanza all over him. He held his hands out and shared her scent with the Wolf. He cabbed home to the del Norte. He unlocked the door and turned on the lights.

The Wolf hopped on his favorite chair and dozed off. Dudley smelled something familiar. Perfumed stationery. The envelope on the floor. He knew that—

The L.A. postmark, her handwriting, her now-banal scent.

He opened the letter. It ran six full pages. Claire cut loose on him.

His Irish pomp and bonhomie. People laugh behind his back. Her dope cure and how it purges his fowl touch and stink. His infantile brag. His groveling need for women. His puerile rule over weak men. His shanty mick cultivation of all things high-class. His jejune grandiosity. His vile regard for God’s law. The precise moments that Beth Short and Joan Klein saw through him. His rage cloaked in pitiful terror. His shallowness. His abject neediness. His idiot criminal schemes that all run aground. His sheer fraudulence. His effete eye for callow young men. His remorseless cruelty. His repugnant selfishness. His trifling life passed unmourned and casually unremembered.

He dropped the letter and weaved into the bedroom. His heart raced. He saw three of everything. He saw three nightstands on Claire’s side of the bed. He pulled open the top drawer. He saw three syringes and dope spikes and vials of morphine sulfate.

He grew three arms. He ripped off his coat and fashioned a sleeve tourniquet. His three hands shook. He saw three syringes, three spikes, three vials. He rigged the kit and punctured the stopper. It took three tries. His third try hit the vein. He went slack and fell back on the bed.

108 Kay Lake’s Diary (Los Angeles, 8:00 P.M., 3/27/42)

The PD kept a suite at the Ambassador Hotel. It was used to stash important witnesses and entertain politicos that Jack Horrall sought to impress. The Cocoanut Grove was three floors below; the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra was headlining tonight. “Song of India” drifted upstairs. It made me want to jump out of bed, grab Bill, and dance.

But we were naked, Bill wasn’t the dancing type, and he was occupied with my typed draft of Claire’s handwritten letter to Dudley. We were both anxious and apprehensive. Dudley should have received the letter by now.

Bill said, “You’re presuming a small kernel of self-knowledge in the man. One that he won’t be able to shake.”

“Yes, but not conscience,” I said. “I expressed Claire’s sentiments in my own words, and inferred that a great number of people see through him. He’s immune to remorse, and he has no germ of probity to appeal to. He has to be made to question his hold over those he commands and seeks to intimidate.”

Bill smiled and cleaned his glasses on a pillowcase. We sat with our backs on the headboard and sipped room-service bourbon. We were lovers and hotel cohabiters now; Bill’s marriage cohabited his conscience more than mine. Lee Blanchard didn’t care what I did with men. We were cohabiters in name only. Bill understood the arrangement more than I first thought he would.

He said, “I’ve got your script memorized, and I’ll be seeing Monsignor Hayes soon. I’ll lay out your version of Dudley and the klubhaus job, and make the monsignor fear for his own safety.”

“Claire’s recuperating. She’ll go to confession a few days after you. She’ll spear Dudley from oblique angles.”

Bill kissed me and pulled the sheet below my breasts. Seeing me nude always underlined exactly what this was and that I wasn’t his wife. I knew he’d say something dispiriting next.

“We cannot maneuver Dudley into criminal indictment without bringing down the PD. We cannot strategically circumvent him to any sure advantage. He’s simply too well situated, and too many powerful men owe him and need him.”

“He’s inviolate as long as he’s perceived as sane,” I said. “And the best way to unnerve him is through his women.”

Bill said, “He has to lose his shot at the gold. A three-case solve has to explode in his face. We have to hope that Hideo Ashida values a clean solve more than he values his loyalty to that shitheel.”

109 (Manzanar, 9:00 A.M., 3/28/42)

The file stacks. Newly compiled and exhaustively comprehensive. A full three-case brief.

He’d lost his Ensenada set. Post-Pimentel chaos had engulfed him. Dudley had supplied this replacement. It contained all-new paperwork.

Newspaper clips. Custody files and visitors’ logs. Bertillon charts. Detailed background briefs and summary reports.

Ashida worked at his desk. His beating-injury pain had subsided. He’d self-treated his wounds. He’d rested. He’d applied alcohol rubs and ice packs. He felt better now.

He’d scrambler-phoned Elmer and Kay this morning. He’d bug-checked the phone and tagged it pristine. Elmer and Kay updated him. They laid out the faux Claire letter. Faux daughter letters would follow. Plus, faux Claire and Bill Parker confessions to Joe Hayes. They laid out the Jamie and Ness family ownership of Bev’s Switchboard. Plus, the Hayes family-money cut. Plus, the L.A. Sheriff’s protection clause. Plus, Jean Staley as Ed Satterlee’s snitch. Jean drives Fritz Eckelkamp southbound, post — gold heist. Wayne Frank Jackson as Meyer Gelb’s KA.

Terry Lux and Lin Chung. They plastic-cut Meyer’s hands. Ruth Szigeti. She knew Eckelkamp in Berlin, circa ’20s. Circles constrict and overlap, circles remain in ellipses.

He updated Elmer and Kay. He laid out the microdot revelations. He pitched the left-right cabal, then to now. He stressed the Dresden Poly convergence. He told them everything Dudley had told him. Elmer and Kay stood up-to-date. They’d repitch Parker and Thad Brown. He stood up-to-date. He was set to push forward, now.

Ashida stacked the files. He worked chronologically. He jumped back to ’27. He read the Eckelkamp arrest reports and background sheets.

Alameda. A small East Bay burg. It’s couched between Oakland and Berkeley. Alameda’s the county seat. Their rinky-dink Sheriff’s force roams countywide. Fritz Eckelkamp pulls countywide 211s. County bulls pop him at his eleventh heist. He admits his prior robberies. It’s tacitly confirmed. His confession was coerced.

It’s old news, so far. The background brief’s got more snap.

Eckelkamp riffs on Weimar Berlin. The street skirmishes. The Nazi-thug-versus-Marxist-thug riots. Nazi thugs and Marxist thugs allied in blackmail schemes. A Nazi-Sparticist kidnapping ring.

Deutschland, ’26. Evidence of right-left alliance. Ensenada, ’40. The formal alliance meets. It pervades three case lines: ’31, ’33, ’42.

More background facts. Fritz Eckelkamp is born Protestant. He’s orphaned early. He’s raised by a Jewish family. He’s Yiddish-fluent.

Ashida cut back to Alameda. Fritzie is tried, convicted, slammed for twenty-five years. He’s sent to San Quentin. He studies law texts and petitions for a retrial. It’s now 2/31. His application is granted. The trial is scheduled for Los Angeles District Court.

Three newspaper stories were clipped to the file. They were perfunctory. Clip #1 announced eight convict retrials. Judicial errors had been determined. The retrials would take place in L.A. They would begin in mid-May, ’31. Clip #2 announced the gold-train run. It was set for May 18. There it is — San Francisco to L.A. Clip #3 announced a rail workers’ strike. It would cripple but not halt operations. The San Francisco train yards have endured labor strife. The strike would hit 4/25. That meant this:

Certain train runs would be combined.

U.S. government runs. California state runs. That meant the run. Ashida surmised this:

The convict-retrial run and gold-train run were secretly combined. Fritz Eckelkamp learned this. He had leftist contacts at the Frisco train yards. He planned the mass escape. He escaped for good. The other convicts were gunned down. Fritzie worked solo. He cut his fellow convicts loose, impromptu. He planned the derailed-track snafu. The escape went down. Chaos reigned. It suited Fritzie’s designs. Marxist realpolitik. Expendable convicts are killed. Only his freedom counts.

Ashida backtracked. He pulled the Alameda custody file and skimmed it. He caught a hot file note.

Fritzie met Leander Frechette in ’27. They were county-jail inmates then. Frechette. He’s these three things. He’s Negro/mentally dim/big and inhumanely strong. He’s the chief gold-heist suspect. He’s the bête noire of the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s and Deputy Karl Tullock. Frechette was a trainman and rail-yard worker. He’d been jailed for Assault One. He took part in a Frisco labor brawl. An obscure file note sizzled. A guard boss caught the odd friendship. Here’s this Kraut armed robber and dim colored youth.

Ashida surmised:

Frechette is not dim. He feigns insolvency. It complements his labor-thug pose. He conspires with Fritz Eckelkamp. He tells Fritz that he works gold-run jobs on occasion. The heist is theoretically planned. It’s a jailhouse-bullshit concoction. It’s conceived in advance of Fritzie’s San Quentin jolt. It’s all shuck and jive at that stage.

Ashida backtracked. He pulled Fritzie’s jail visitors’ log and skimmed it. He caught a hot file note.

Martin Luther Mimms visited Fritzie. There’s Mimms, in Alameda County. He’s a corrupt preacher/slumlord/race racketeer. He owned the 46th Street klubhaus. He’s tight with ranking L.A. cops. Jump — ’27 to ’31. Mimms springs Leander Frechette from the Santa Barbara jail. Mimms halts the beatings of Deputy Karl Tullock.

Mimms. He’s L.A.-based. He’s tight with high-up L.A. cops. Who’s the boss L.A. cop in 1931? It’s James Edgar “Two-Gun” Davis.

Names. Dates. Guesses. Extrapolation. Surmise.

Frechette creates the initial train-track diversion. He employs his fearsome strength and bare hands. The escape occurs. The train journeys south. There’s a second track snafu. It’s Frechette’s work, as well. Frechette off-loads the gold bars on his person. He hands them off to—

?????

Jean Staley facilitates Fritzie’s escape. She’s Fritzie’s lover. They haul southbound. They dodge roadblocks. Jim Davis aids the escape. He clues Fritzie and Jean in to roadblock deployment. Said roadblocks are pulled on U.S. 101 south. Right before this ritzy nut farm. It’s Terry Lux’s nut farm. This is all informed guesswork.

Elmer Jackson chats up Ruth Szigeti. She cites Eckelkamp’s resemblance to Meyer Gelb. Her statement startles Elmer. He almost blurts his big guess on the scrambler-phone call.

Ashida surmised. Let’s confirm or refute. This investigation is all about that.

Meyer Gelb has burn-seared fingers. They’re covered by graft marks. Meyer Gelb was hauled in and braced per the Griffith Park fire. His scarred fingers tweaked the Arson Squad cops. That has to be true. Gelb’s fingerprint ID has been compromised. What’s their next step? What would the Arson cops do?

They’d order up a Bertillon measurement chart. They’d establish a certified Meyer Gelb ID. That raises this question:

Was Fritz Eckelkamp Bertillon-charted? Did Alameda County or the San Quentin lab chart his measurements?

Ashida prowled file paper. He jumped ’27 to ’28 and Fritzie’s Quentin jolt. There it is. The Quentin lab charted him, 1/12/29. That’s one comparison point.

It takes two to make this work. Ashida jumped — Eckelkamp to Gelb. He jumped ’29 to ’33 and the Griffith Park fire. He thumbed Arson Squad and Red Squad reports. Comrade Gelb’s cell is hotly scrutinized. Comrade Gelb is hard-nosed. What’s with your fingers, Jewboy? Let’s Bertillon-chart this kike.

There it is. 10/18/33. The PD crime lab charts Meyer Gelb. Ray Pinker measures him.

Ashida studied the two charts. Ashida dripped sweat on the pages. He compared the height and limb-length numbers. He compared the finger spans. He compared twenty-three separate phrenological marks. Every single mark matched identically. This is no extrapolation. Fritz Eckelkamp is Meyer Gelb.

Now, we extrapolate.

Jean Staley lied to Elmer Jackson. She omitted a key fact. The roadblocks are pulled just north of Terry Lux’s clinic. Jean takes Fritzie there. Dr. Terry and Lin Chung perform plastic surgery. They make Eckelkamp Gelb. Jean Staley knows this, full well. Fresh-cut Gelb joins the CP and forms his own cell. Jean S., the Lesnicks, and Jorge Villareal-Caiz join up. Sieg Heil — they raise the Red flag.

Cut to summer ’33. It’s two months before the Griffith Park blaze. A rash of liquor store 211s plague the L.A. cops. Liquor-store jobs are Fritz Eckelkamp’s meat. Eyewits ID a man who resembles Wayne Frank Jackson. Let’s posit a two-man heist squad. Strange bedfellows. Faux Jew/face-cut Meyer Gelb and Klan klown Wayne Frank Jackson. Let’s posit that prefire Gelb/Wayne Frank bond.

Ellen Drew has already confirmed it. She has not confirmed a Gelb/Wayne Frank chronological point of convergence. Ellen Drew was a mid-’30s Paramount starlet. She met Gelb-who’s-really-Eckelkamp then. She met Wayne Frank Jackson then. Wayne Frank was alive then. She ID’d Elmer’s wallet pic. That cinched her identification.

Ergo:

Wayne Frank did not die in the Griffith Park fire. Ergo: somebody else did. Ergo: somebody snatched Wayne Frank’s dental chart from the office of his cut-rate dentist. Ergo: somebody planted the real dead man’s chart under Wayne Frank’s name. Ergo: those efforts confirmed Wayne Frank’s death. Ergo: Wayne Frank’s perceived death was deemed essential — but to who and to what criminal end?

Ashida surmised. Ashida tossed conclusions. Ashida linked three-case players, flesh-to-flesh. Eckelkamp-Gelb to Jean Staley to Leander Frechette. Leander to Martin Luther Mimms. Toss in the late Ralph D. Barr. Toss in Ed Satterlee. He suborned Jean Staley. He ordered her to fink out fresh-cut Meyer’s cell.

Saul Lesnick’s in that cell. Satterlee makes him his snitch. Kay Lake has duplicate keys to Lesnick’s office.

Ashida caressed the file stacks. He’d dripped sweat all over them.

It’s all one story. I will not be denied the full truth of it.

Kazio Hiroki. The same initials. It must be him. Al Wilhite has implied it. Who else could he be?

A waiting room adjoined the burn ward. Ashida sat alone. Wilhite drove him from Manzanar to Lone Pine. The interview had been prearranged. The subject requested Dr. Ashida. Dr. Ashida was his preferred interlocutor.

Hiroki was bilingual. They could chat in English or Japanese. Wilhite issued strict orders. “You will take no notes. You will write nothing down. You will report to Major Smith, verbally.”

Wilhite sat downstairs. He’d worked off Dudley’s APB. Hiroki hid in plain sight. His cover was interned Jap, vouched by forged papers. He’d journeyed north-northeast. Baja to L.A. L.A. to Manzanar. He had a cot in “C” row, bachelor barracks 3.

Hiroki was clearly insane. He torched his barracks and scorched himself, severely. A doctor noted preexisting burn scars. The doctor told Hiroki that some Army cops wanted to brace him. Hiroki said, “Dr. Ashida, one hopes.”

A nurse walked in. Ashida stood up. The nurse walked him to the ward proper. It was three rooms off a hallway crammed with drip gizmos. Ashida smelled medicinal salve and charred flesh.

The nurse opened the door and about-faced. The room was small. There was a crank-up bed and guest chair. Air vents diffused salve and burn stink.

Hiroki was bandage-mummified and cranked up to face guests. An intravenous bag fed him pain juice. His face was uncovered. It was him. It’s all one story, you—

Ashida pulled the chair up. He said, “芦田先生.”

Hanamaka said, “花丸司令官.”

His voice was firm. His neck was unbandaged. His vocal chords were most surely intact.

Hanamaka shut his eyes. Ashida unscrewed the fluid bag. He pulled out an envelope and poured in three crumbled Benzedrine. Get your man perked up and loose-lipped. Dudley taught him the trick.

They traded pleasantries. Hanamaka alternated English and Japanese. So happy to meet you and あなたの最近の人生に興味を持ってきました. 渡辺事件. 警察 署の仕事. Juan Pimentel and のメールドロップニュース.

Ashida quick-translated. I’ve followed your recent life with interest. The Watanabe case. Your police department work. Mail-drop news from Juan Pimentel.

“I would say that I’m notorious, more than justifiably famous.”

Hanamaka switched to English. “I’m sure that you and Major Smith know a great deal about my endeavors, going back some years.”

Ashida sat down. “Yes, but I’m sure you can fill in a few gaps.”

The stimulant took hold. Hanamaka’s carotid vein pulsed. His hands twitched. He spoke more rapidly.

“I should tell you that I love fire, and that the small barracks blaze was merely an experiment. I wanted to see if I could eradicate the burn scars the Griffith Park fire inflicted, along with the print-eradication scars that Meyer Gelb and I so foolishly marked ourselves with.”

Ashida said, “Meyer Gelb is really Fritz Eckelkamp. Terry Lux and Lin Chung cut him a new face shortly after his escape from the gold train.”

Hanamaka smiled. “The American Jew is the German Gentile, and quite the covert anti-Semite. The leftist firebrand is really an armed robber.”

“That statement tells me a great deal about this politically diffuse cabal of yours.”

Hanamaka said, “I’ll quote Meyer here. ‘This storm, this savaging disaster.’ The disaster is History, and the cabal was formed as a means to survive it.”

Ashida smiled. “I’ll quote the Book of Proverbs. ‘Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.’ ”

Hanamaka sipped water. Benzedrine spawned dehydration. He held a small canteen. He sipped through a glass straw.

“Bible to Bible, Dr. Ashida. I read the Los Angeles papers on New Year’s Day. A rainstorm of biblical proportions had unearthed a man’s body in a wooden box. I knew that a reckoning of biblical proportions was about to occur.”

Ashida tingled. “Yes?”

“Yes, and I had been thinking about Karl Tullock for some time already. Two months earlier, I had read a locally distributed golf magazine, published in San Diego. An article described a driving range, soon to be built on the exact spot where Tullock reposed. I’m sure you’ve heard the complaint ‘It’s hard to find good help these days.’ That complaint proved itself especially true in the world of the domestic Fifth Column. I dispatched Wendell Rice and George Kapek to find the box and dispose of it before the excavation crews began work. Rice and Kapek bungled the job, because a reckoning was preordained.”

Ashida coughed. The burn stink stifled him.

“Who set the Griffith Park fire?”

Hanamaka said, “Ralph Barr, on Red Meyer’s orders. Meyer wanted to create an apocalypse that would take the lives of many oppressed workingmen, which would be a Marxist-fascist ruse to rival the temerity of the Reichstag fire. Meyer also knew that Karl Tullock had found a spot on the CCC crew, and was closing in on Wayne Frank Jackson as a gold-robbery suspect. Meyer wanted Tullock dead and Wayne Frank believed to be dead. When weather reports predicted one-hundred-degree heat and strong winds that day, he put Ralph to work creating a very subtle accelerant.”

Ashida inched his chair back. Hanamaka oozed contagion. The Mummy escapes his crypt. His wrapping suppurates.

“Wayne Frank was suspected of a string of liquor-store heists in the summer of ’33. It was shortly before the fire, and liquor-store jobs were Fritz Eckelkamp’s well-established pattern. Was Eckelkamp-Gelb Wayne Frank’s partner on those jobs? The gold heist occurred two years and three months previously, so I would assume that Wayne Frank met Gelb before May of ’31, or am I mistaken here? Were those robberies a means of Wayne Frank’s introduction to Gelb and your cabal et al.?”

Hanamaka shook his head yes. Hanamaka shook his head no. He was fully Benzedrined. His eyeballs glowed.

“You must realize that the Comintern and their kindred fascist counterparts are criminals first and foremost, over and above whatever ideologies they might express. You should not be surprised to see armed robbery as a recurring motif in this account of political misdeeds. On that note, yes. Gelb was Wayne Frank’s partner in those robberies. Yes, Karl Tullock suspected Wayne Frank of complicity in the gold heist. Tullock had, in fact, been shadowing Wayne Frank — but Wayne Frank’s presence on the CCC work crew was at first largely coincidental. Wayne Frank had been scouting potential targets for Meyer’s ‘workingman’s apocalypse,’ and the work crew seemed like a good candidate. But then he saw Tullock’s name on a hire sheet, and told Meyer. That was when Meyer truly conceived his notion of workingmen burned alive.”

Ashida coughed. “Sensei, when did Meyer Gelb and Wayne Frank Jackson meet?”

Hanamaka said, “Wayne Frank met Meyer in his Fritz Eckelkamp incarnation. They met in the Alameda County Jail in 1928, before Fritz was sent to San Quentin. Wayne Frank was serving time for plain drunk and vagrancy, and Fritz Eckelkamp was plain Fritz. That jail became a point of convergence for the gold heist — Fritz, Wayne Frank, and Leander Frechette. That was the genesis of the robbery. That was the moment that Fritz inculcated Wayne Frank with Marxist rhetoric and converted him. It was culminatingly the moment when Fritz and Wayne Frank saved Leander from a gang of race-baiting jailhouse thugs, and ensured that the robbery would actually occur.”

Wayne Frank Jackson. Elmer’s Klansman brother. Revealed as a Comintern dupe.

“Something troubles me, Sensei. It’s Wayne Frank’s statements pertaining to the robbery. His brother Elmer speaks of Wayne Frank as no more than a sad fantasist.”

Hanamaka smiled. “You are quick to note that, Sensei. Let me add that Wayne Frank was then a man of intemperate appetite, and is now a man of strict circumspection. He went on a bender shortly after the robbery, and awoke one morning in an opium den in San Francisco. A nosy Chinese man told him he had been mumbling about the robbery while in his opiate haze. Wayne Frank was already a seasoned treasure dreamer, albeit one who had now transcended his sad origins. That moment in the opium den shocked him. He incorporated the gold robbery into the repertoire of his once-obsessive persona. He used it as a means to publicly express ‘I could not have done this.’ ”

Explication. Revelation. Ashida had clenched himself numb.

“You torched the klubhaus, didn’t you? You were holed up down the block. You used the same accelerant that Ralph Barr used in Griffith Park.”

Hanamaka said, “Yes, and those were taxing days for me. Some unknown person killed Rice, Kapek, and their friend Archuleta, and the puerile Cal Lunceford was chaperoning me. They were all manipulated and given tasks via mail drop, and the murders felt like yet another preordained catalyst. I felt you, Major Smith, and the other policemen converging. I took advantage of the Negro riot and burned the klubhaus. I wanted to divert your investigation and create a new level of chaos, and the angry Negroes proved themselves to be convenient scapegoats.”

Ashida said, “Whose body stood in for Wayne Frank’s? A dental-plate substitution must have been worked.”

Hanamaka smiled. He was Sensei Death. He was Mr. Death’s-Head.

“Wayne Frank’s assignment was to kill Karl Tullock during the fire, and then disappear. We were afraid that Tullock had informed other Santa Barbara policemen of his suspicions, so Wayne Frank’s disappearance was deemed a necessity. Wayne Frank decided to kill a second man during the fire, and pass that man off as himself. Wallace Jamie was quite young then, but he was already acquainted with another comrade named Joe Hayes. Wallace and Father Joe were fellow travelers on the Right, and dabbled on the Left. They would reunite a few years later, at a German technical college. Wallace had a meddlesome younger brother named George. Wayne Frank got George a job on the CCC work crew. George ran a German-American Bund cell, and began recruiting at the work site. George was also about Wayne Frank’s size and build. Wayne Frank decided to kill him and disguise it as his own death. George only came to work occasionally, and was never carried in any sort of official CCC log.”

Gears snapped in place. Ashida heard clicks. He’d guessed abstract parts of it.

“And then?”

“Then Meyer had Terry Lux build prosthetic dental work off of Wayne Frank’s actual teeth. Then the fire occurred. Then Wayne Frank beat George to death, knocked out all his teeth, and inserted the prosthesis. Meyer preinserted forged dental records for Wayne Frank at a downtown L.A. dentist. It facilitated the coroner’s decree. Wayne Frank died in the fire. Then Wayne Frank deftly disappeared.”

Ashida said, “Leander Frechette?”

“Last seen in San Francisco, some years ago.”

“And the gold? Where is it now?”

Hanamaka went C’est la guerre. “Meyer entrusted it to a Mexican Stalinist. I think he was a money conduit for the assassination of Leon Trotsky. The gold was transported to Mexico, to be deployed for political purposes, with one bar left in a Los Angeles storage facility, to cover pertinent expenses. Meyer has hoarded the gold, and now it is pledged to the cause of postwar resettlement. Only Meyer and the Mexican Stalinist know where it is. Meyer trusts the Stalinist, because he made him endure a rigorous initiation. Meyer had him butcher forty Trotskyite priest-killers, and make it look like fascists did it. The man fawningly complied.”

Ashida watched the fluid bag drain. The mixture was down to mere drips.

“Where is Meyer Gelb hiding?”

“No one knows that.”

“Let’s return to the gold.”

Hanamaka shrugged. “It has lain fallow, and has exponentially increased in value. A good deal of time has passed. A convergence in Dresden brought about an enlargement of our original band of Kameraden. Wallace Jamie brought Joe Hayes, Mondo Díaz, and Juan Pimentel in. You killed Pimentel, and I’m sure you know of the other men.”

Ashida checked the fluid bag. It had drained dry.

“Would you call Meyer Gelb the key architect of the gold robbery?”

“No. It was Wayne Frank.”

“Where is he now?”

“I have no idea.”

“Are the Kameraden really Communist or fascist?”

Hanamaka said, “At this point, who can tell?”

110 (Los Angeles, 9:00 P.M., 3/28/42)

Oooga-booga. The DTs, dead sober. It’s like this gag song. I gots jitters like Jell-O in an earthquake.

Ashida called him and Kay. He relayed his talk with Kyoho Hanamaka. Wayne Frank masterminded the gold heist. Wayne Frank was sure as shit alive.

Elmer boozed and noshed at Linny’s Delicatessen. His table fluttered. The pickle jar leaped. The walls talked back to him. He is Risen, He is Alive.

Buzz was three blocks over, on Bedford. They were set to 459 Saul Lesnick’s office. Buzz brought cans of paint and brushes. Buzz brought pistol silencers. The rendezvous time was 9:30.

Elmer snarfed Old Crow and pastrami. Him and Buzz had spent the day at Kay Lake’s place. Kay dished Buzz her version of the whole story. It put Buzz up to speed with him, Kay, Whiskey Bill, and Thad Brown. Buzz buzzed straight to Meyer Gelb. He vowed to find that whipdick.

Whiskey Bill showed up. He brought subpoenaed phone bills for Ed Satterlee and Doc Lesnick. He wrote a quickie writ and ran it by a PD-lapdog judge. PC Bell kicked loose bills going back six months.

They divvied up the bills and worked at Kay’s dining room table. The bills listed the callees’ names and phone numbers. The tally job took four hours. It revealed this:

Doc Lesnick and Ed the Fed called each other boocoo times. They were snitch and snitch runner. There was no surprise there. Ed called Bev’s Switchboard nineteen times. Woo-woo — it’s a spy mail drop. Ed called Padre Joe Hayes fourteen times. Hot potato — El Padre went waaaaay back with the spy-ring boys and owned points in Bev’s.

Here’s a scorcher. Doc Saul and Ed the Fed called the Baja phone-relay number fifty-nine times, all in all. Up till Ashida and Pimentel torched the relay room. Those calls indict both callers up the ying-yang.

Satterlee called Tommy Glennon’s L.A. hotel room. Satterlee called Tommy’s La Jolla crib. Mark that forty-two times, total. Satterlee and Lesnick called Jean Staley’s Hollywood place. Mark that twenty-three calls.

Here’s an El Scorcho. Ed the Fed called Baja’s governor, Juan Lazaro-Schmidt. Mark that fourteen calls. Hideo said El Juan was jungled up with El Dudster’s rackets. El Dud was bonking Juan’s sizzling sister. Hideo said the seditious sibs were spy-ring complicit.

Doc Saul and Ed the Fed called AX-4869. It’s a darktown exchange. They called the number twenty-four times, total. Dig: it’s the hideout-house number. Kyoho Hanamaka holed up there. Cal Lunceford died there. The klubhaus was just up the street.

Ed the Fed called Martin Luther Mimms. Twice at his crib, thrice at the Congregation of the Congo. Mimms was deeply gold heist — embroiled. Ed and Doc Saul called Wallace Jamie — fourteen and nineteen times apiece. Both gents placed umpteen calls to Drs. Terry Lux and Lin Chung. Both gents called the C-town flop of James Edgar Davis.

A final head-scratcher scratched. Ed the Fed placed a recent spate of late-nite calls. He called all-nite eateries and cop spots. As in Lyman’s and Kwan’s. He called them interchangeable. Who you lookin’ fo, Brutha Ed?

Elmer paid the bill. He schlepped over to 416 Bedford and donned his B and E wig. Buzz was parked curbside. Elmer got in and tossed him a french-dip sandwich. Buzz snarked it.

Beverly Hills. The psych-doctor district. Pitch your woes to Doc Saul. He’ll fuck you up worse than you are.

416 was a mock-château job. Lobby, elevator, stairs. Offices above. Kay made keys off Annie Staples’ wax mounts. It was a walk-in caper.

Buzz said, “The building’s empty. Everybody up and left two hours ago.”

Elmer grabbed their tool kit. It was two grocery sacks, double-wrapped. Buzz jiggled the keys. They choked back B and E giggles and charged.

They crossed the sidewalk. Elmer lugged the bags. Buzz held the keys. The lobby door opened easy. They checked the directory. Saul Lesnick, M.D.: suite 216.

They took the stairs. The second-floor hall was pitch-dark. Elmer flashed his flashlight and read door plates. There’s 216.

Buzz unlocked the door. They stepped in and locked themselves in. Elmer hit the lights.

The waiting room featured agitprop art. Workers Unite!!! Beefcake boys waving scythes. Elmer made the jack-off sign. Buzz unlocked the inner-office door.

Elmer hit the lights. There’s the psychee’s couch. There’s the psych doc’s desk. There’s file cabinets. There’s more Commo wall art. Tanks rolled through Red Square. Butcher Stalin screamed. The Russki alphabet resembled DT hieroglyphs.

Buzz yanked at the file drawers. They were locked. Elmer dug into his bag. He pulled out the two silencers and tossed one to Buzz.

They tap-screwed their roscoes and stood back. They aimed in unison and blasted the drawers. The silencers went pfffft. Bullets pierced the file locks and ricocheted through the drawers. The office got all gunsmoked up.

They slid the file drawers open. They both went wooooooo. They thought they’d find patient folders. Nix to that. They found wire-recording spools.

Elmer grabbed all of them. He dumped them in the bags. Buzz hit Old Saul’s desk. The drawers were locked. Buzz aimed tight and blasted them open. Gunsmoke smoked the whole room now.

Elmer dug through the drawers. Old Saul stashed his jerk-off books there. It was Nazi shit. Hopped-up Hildegards in black tunics whipped terrified Jews. The Hildas wore jackboots and had tits out to here. The Jews wore skullcaps with propellers on top. Full-page ads hawked dick-size enhancers and eugenics brews.

Elmer tossed all the drawers. He thought he’d find correspondence and an address book. Nix to that. He found more Nazi shit and a jack-off suction device.

Buzz flashlight-flashed the walls. He said, “Looky here.” Elmer tracked the beam.

He saw wires spackled to wainscot strips. He saw wires stuck to wall junctures and tucked under rugs. He saw painted-over wires stuck to lamp stands.

“He’s bugging his patients. I don’t see no other explanation.”

Buzz said, “Let’s fuck that fucker up.”

They pulled the wall wires. They unspooled the rug wires. They dumped the lamps and yanked the microphones. They got out their paint and brushes and refestooned the walls.

Buzz painted swastikas and hammer and sickles. Elmer painted X marks over them. Buzz painted “Death to Traitors!!!” Elmer painted “America Forever!!!”

111 (La Paz, 10:00 A.M., 3/29/42)

Cocaine and cigarettes. Their standard breakfast. Rut and talk. Their standard MO.

They stuck to Constanza’s bedroom. Peons puttered, just outside. Constanza motormouthed. She plumbed two topics. Her brother and the gold.

Dudley played attentive lover. His thoughts ran afield. Al Wilhite found Kyoho Hanamaka. Hideo was debriefing him. Hideo had failed to report.

The bed sagged and grazed the floor. It succumbed to overuse. They banged the headboard loose last night.

Constanza said, “I was thinking of the brand you stamped upon my brother. I would imagine he’ll employ Terry Lux to prettify the damage you did.”

Dudley sniffed cocaine off a bread plate. He shivered. He got the chill, the numb teeth, the whoosh.

“Terry’s the best at what he does. I could hardly begrudge your brother his services. I’m dining with Orson Welles in Ensenada tonight. He utilized Terry recently. Terry deftly allayed some damage I inflicted.”

Constanza lit a cigarette. “Fierce you. Such utility. Such brutal agency.”

Dudley kissed her breasts. Constanza and cocaine. His morning bifecta. She seized his body. His mind whooshed elsewhere.

The microdot letter. The planned sabotage. He’d warned off brother Juan. He did not report possible attacks to Fourth Interceptor. Kyoho Hanamaka. Constanza’s former lover. He’d described Kyoho’s self-torch job. Constanza said he saw too much in Deutschland and Russia. It was his time to die. He simply gave up.

“You haven’t mentioned the gold in at least three minutes, darling. Are you relinquishing your grasp?”

Constanza primped him. She wiped his face with a bedsheet. The whoosh raised a sweat.

“Allow me to gloat over my brother. You enacted a long-overdue revenge.”

Dudley lit a cigarette. “I pentothaled a rather sodden Kamerad. He described a convergence at a German technical college. The late Juan Pimentel, and young men named Díaz and Jamie. Joe Hayes, whom I’ve mentioned before, was a member of their bund. The mid-’30s, I think. I’m wondering if the overall cabal was formed then.”

Constanza said, “No. I believe it all began to germinate before the fire. I would call the meeting of Kyoho and Meyer Gelb the point of germination. Meyer was recruiting for the Comintern at the Paramount Studio. People fell under his sway. The Kommisariat was Meyer’s idea. He predicted the world conflict, as we see it today. His prophecy preceded Kyoho’s sojourn in Germany and Russia.”

The Wolf cocked his head. Constanza’s scent aroused him. He probed Constanza’s mind. She disclosed just so much. This vexed the Wolf.

Constanza said, “I have a lead on the minutes for the Baja conference. What would you pay for them?”

Welles was late. Film folk ran breezy and tardy. He knew that beast inside and out.

He’d extorted them. Harry Cohn paid him well. They misbehaved. He snapped furtive photographs. They starred in Columbia cheapies, resultant.

Johnny Weissmuller jumps jailbait. Tallulah Bankhead snarfs muff at lezbo hot spots. Duke Ellington sires Kate Hepburn’s mulatto love child.

Welles was late. Like Salvy was late in T.J. Salvy refused to chaperone the Japs and the wets. The Wolf teethed on it.

Dudley ordered a private room. The del Norte staff salaamed and obliged. Welles drew flocks of autograph hounds. This room would hold them off. Orson called and requested the audience himself. It was a snitch and snitch-runner confab. It mandated privacy.

Dudley drummed the table. He felt fluttery. The flight back induced jitters. Cocaine exacted a price. He missed Constanza more than he should.

Dudley Liam Smith. Such a schoolboy crush. How unsound of you.

The door swung open. Such élan. Orson Welles entered rooms. He walked to the table. He was six-three and porcine. He exuded bonhomie and snitch fear.

Dudley stood up. They shook hands. Fat Boy’s clasp was damp and weak. Dudley wiped his hand on the tablecloth. He made a blunt show of it.

They sat down. Dudley poured champagne. It was one-dollar swill. L’auteur, le gourmand. He’ll gag on it.

“It’s good to see you, Dudley.”

“You’re looking sleek, lad. Would you consider me brusque if I asked what brings you to Ensenada?”

Welles sipped champagne. He almost but not quite pulled a face.

“It’s quite the ad-lib proposition. Howard Hughes flew us down. Dolores del Rio’s sister needed a blind date.”

Dudley went Tu salud. “Allow me to chart your train of thought, lad. You have information for me, and you thought you’d kill two birds with one stone.”

Welles guffawed. Note the coward’s cringe within.

“That’s Dudley Smith for you. He cuts to the third act, and forswears the amenities.”

“On that note, lad. You’re not here to waste my time, and who am I to deny Miss del Rio’s comely sister your presence?”

Welles coughed. “Well, I’ve been making appearances for the OIACC, as you well know. I’ve been traveling with a small jazz combo, and I’ve put together a few incidental things I thought might interest you.”

Dudley sipped rotgut champagne. He pulled a face and gagged it down.

“I’ll set the scene, lad. You’re traveling throughout Latin America. The combo plays inoffensive music during the cocktail receptions that precede your dinner talks.”

Welles said, “Right you are. And one of the musicians was a froufrou kid I first met at an admittedly bent party at Otto Klemperer’s place in ’39. Otto was holed up in a sanitarium then, and—”

Dudley clamped his champagne flute. The stem snapped. Fat Boy missed it. Dudley dropped the shards on the floor.

“—and the kid told me he was there at the party, which chagrined me quite a bit. He went on to tell me a rather outrageous story about the America Firsters he met—”

Dudley cut in. “Describe the party, lad. Set the scene for me.”

“Well, it was what you might call a masked ball, and the theme ran decidedly right of center. People wore Nazi costumes, and I screened an admittedly risqué film that I’d shot. I wore a mask, but the fruit kid recognized my voice from my radio broadcasts, although I’m reasonably sure that no one else did.”

I was there. You wore a Red Guard costume. I saw parts of your film. It repulsed me.

“Please continue, lad. You’ve piqued my interest, quite adroitly.”

Welles smiled. Mere hints of praise induced simpers.

“Well, the kid told me that he’d seen some real-life Nazis, whom he’d seen in newsreels, there at the party. They were talking out on the porte cochere, and they’d removed their masks. It was about dawn, and there had already been quite a ruckus. Some comatose woman was carried away, on the Q.T., which was—”

The She was a He. Dead is not comatose. Do you know who you’re talk—

“Here’s where it gets intriguing, if a bit outlandish. The kid told me the real-life Nazis were discussing the ‘Führer’s ultimately futile war’ and some sort of ‘future exoneration scheme.’ One man said they should assassinate Hitler, or deliberately fail at it, but publicize the failure. Another man said their ‘Red Kameraden’ should do the same thing with Stalin. There was some talk of potential postwar escape routes to Latin America, specifically pro-fascist or pro-Communist countries.”

Dudley said, “Please continue. It’s like your War of the Worlds broadcast. You’ve got me on the edge of my seat.”

Welles beamed. “Well, the kid sounded sincere about all this, and I’ll admit to having a soft spot for good stories. This was one story I couldn’t quite shake, and I tossed out hints to a few left-wing and right-wing types I met at various functions. I got a lot of murky responses, and heard rumors that this so-called plot derived from Mexico.”

Dudley lit a cigarette. “I’m tipping off the edge of my seat. Please continue.”

Welles laughed. “All right. Here’s the conclusion, and we jump from the winter of ’39 up to the present day. The kid told me a man named Wallace Jamie was at the party. He saw him unmasked, and he just recently put together who the man actually is. He recognized Jamie from newspaper photographs, a few weeks ago. That’s because Jamie’s in Dutch on that big Federal probe. The kid also said he recognized two other men who’d been at the party. Their pictures were in the papers, because they’d been murdered. I’m talking about Wendell Rice and George Kapek. They didn’t actually attend the party. They wore chauffeur’s garb and stood outside, on the porte cochere.”

Autopsy pix. The dead cops. Gasping mouths. Ice-pick punctures. Single hand-span bruises.

“It’s a small world, eh? Then the kid tells me that he knows another fruit kid, who’s also a jazz musician, up in L.A. He didn’t know the other kid’s name, but he said that when those murders were all the rage in the papers, the other kid told him he’d been to jam sessions at the clubhouse where the bodies were found. He bragged that he and a so-called ‘Red-fasco woman’ killed Rice, Kapek, and a Mexican friend of theirs. I’m telling you all this because Claire told me you were involved in the police investigation.”

112 Kay Lake’s Diary (Los Angeles, 9:00 A.M., 3/30/42)

Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz. “Clean Gene” to his supporters. “Last Seen Gene” to his detractors. Frequently glimpsed at the Saints and Sinners Drag Ball.

We met the Sheriff at Kwan’s Chinese Pagoda; Uncle Ace set a table for four in the Chiang Kai-shek Conference Room. Hop Sing goons peddled trinkets out of the room, twenty-four hours daily. REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR!!! signs and I AM NOT A JAP!!! T-shirts were current hot sellers. Ace also sold Jap shrunken heads. They were purportedly harvested by Chinese death squads, in retaliation for the Rape of Nanking. Elmer gave me the true lowdown. Chinese kids at Nightingale Junior High were the culprits. They robbed recently planted graves in Japanese graveyards. Dr. Lin Chung performed the decapitations and supervised the shrinking process.

Thus, breakfast with Sheriff Gene. Bloody Marys, hangtown fry, and Emperor Tso’s flapjacks. Elmer, Bill, and I sat across from the Sheriff; he was three morning cocktails in and emitted a glow. His eyes clicked: Bill to Elmer to me. He already knew Bill and knew Elmer through Brenda — but what’s this young cooze doing here?

Bill kicked things off. He’d sent the note requesting the sit-down and had braced Biscailuz in advance. Brusque Bill: the meeting pertains to Bev’s Switchboard.

“We know you’ve got points in Bev’s, Sheriff. We’d be going the search-warrant route if that weren’t the case.”

Biscailuz said, “I can read tea leaves. You’re talking about a raid.”

Elmer butted in. “Nobody’s judging you for those points, boss. Everybody’s got operating costs. You know damn well that Brenda and me are letting Jack H. dip his beak.”

Biscailuz winked at me. “Miss Lake’s got judgment written all over her. I know girl Bolsheviks when I see them.”

I laughed and lit a cigarette. Bill lit up out of my pack.

“There’s a great deal of seditious drop mail passing through Bev’s. I want to raid the premises and seize it. Wallace Jamie and the Ness family hold the deed to Bev’s, and a priest named Joe Hayes has a profit percentage. We’re not looking for publicity, and we’re not looking to turn this into indictments. We only want to depose Wallace Jamie, in order to turn leads on the klubhaus job and two related cases from ’31 and ’33.”

Elmer butted in again. “I know you know Ed Satterlee, boss. A little birdie told me Ed was looking to hang a search subpoena on Bev’s, but you kiboshed it. Ed’s Fifth Column up the wazoo, to the extent that Mr. Hoover’s got him under house arrest. That’s the sort of shitheel who sends drop mail through Bev’s. We figure these here traitors are beset by factionalism, and Ed was looking to gain some sort of advantage with that subpoena plan.”

The Sheriff drained his third cocktail. “Let’s see if I’m reading you right. This ‘we’ you keep mentioning is you two policemen and Miss Lake. You’re not proxies for the PD, which means you’re open to a little horse trading. Which means you’ll throw Uncle Clean Gene a bone.”

Bill fumed. I kicked his leg under the table. My message was Concede. We need him more than he needs us.

“Ed Satterlee told Elmer that he’d accord him the opportunity to erase his own name on any Fed-probe recordings currently held in custody. I’ve been charged to erase recordings that might implicate Chief Horrall. With Satterlee suspended from duty, a new strategy to enter the evidence vault will have to be conceived and executed. If such a plan can be implemented, I’d enter the vault myself, and erase every single wire-recorded mention of your name.”

Biscailuz winked at me. The novelty of a woman in the room floored him. Brenda wasn’t sure which way he bounced. He ordered girls out of the girl book. He kept a copy of the boy book handy.

“That’s okay for starters, Bill. It takes care of me, but it doesn’t take care of mine. For what it’s worth, I like Wallace Jamie, and if he’s Fifth Column, I’m a Hottentot. Moreover, his Uncle Eliot will be mayor of Cleveland soon, and I want him to owe me. So, I won’t permit you to depose Wallace, but I will permit you to seize anything and everything on-site at Bev’s.”

Elmer butted back in. “You ain’t said what you mean by ‘mine.’ ”

“ ‘Mine’ means ‘me and all my deputies.’ ‘Mine’ means ‘erase every spool in Fed custody, to make damn sure me and mine don’t get smeared.’ ”

Bill said, “It’s a deal.” Clean Gene dropped his eyeglass case and ducked below the table to retrieve it. He wanted to look up my skirt. I’d have to tell Brenda: the Sheriff veers toward girls.

Bill and I tucked in at the Ambassador. We discussed the Lesnick burglary first thing.

Doctor Saul hadn’t reported it. That much was sure. Bill threw feelers out at Beverly Hills PD. Elmer and Buzz robbed his office and desecrated it. Their wall artwork defamed the Kameraden. Saul Lesnick — j’accuse. We’re onto you and yours.

“We,” “We’re,” “Us.” Sheriff Gene picked up on it and parlayed it to his tactical advantage. I extended “We” to include Annie Staples, and described our phone chat early this morning. Annie called me. She said she was servicing Saul Lesnick tomorrow night; the assignation would take place at Brenda’s Miracle Mile trick spot. This was to our benefit. Doctor Saul unburdened himself to Annie and would most likely whine about the burglary-desecration. And Elmer would be there to film it.

Room service delivered club sandwiches and coffee; Bill and I lunched on the bed. Assignation, rendezvous, shack job. Bill crossed himself every time I said the words.

“The phone records,” he said. “What’s the first thing that comes to mind? Where do they most conclusively point?”

I said, “To collusion and conspiracy. And, given what we know about the principals, a conspiracy that must be judged as politically and socially diffuse.”

“And what string of calls plays most out of sync with the rest?”

“Ed Satterlee’s late-night calls to Lyman’s and Kwan’s. Two all-night PD watering holes. The calls serve to pose the question: ‘Who was Ed the Fed looking for?’ ”

Bill snagged his trousers off the floor. He dug through the pockets and pulled out three mimeographed sheets of paper. The cheapo typeface and multiple exclamation points screamed Sid Hudgens! I breezed through the text; it was the Sidster’s privately circulated subscription scandal sheet.

The inimitable Sidster. Ever alert for watchful postal inspectors. He laid out the lurid lowdown — but stopped short of pure pornography. He used initials in lieu of real names. He gave you the tantalizing tattle and dystopian dish. Celebrity abortions, miscegenist liaisons, lezbo love nests. Alluring alliteration. Muff-munching matrons at the Lincoln Heights Jail. Doped racehorses and fixed fights. Draconian drag queens. A regular “Police Blotter” feature. Perennial poop. Filmland fellators and cunning linguists, caught “in flat-footed flagrante.”

I laughed out loud. Bill said, “We shake down Sid for his subscriber list. We lay out Dudley and all the known Kameraden. You write the text, and insert the appropriate initials. We wallpaper Dudley, the comrades, and every conceivable man jack that might be inclined to do the Dudster dirt.”

D.S.: that hellhound Hibernian. Malevolent Mexicans. S.L.: that sicknik psychiatrist and shitbird shrink. Feckless Fascists and riotous Reds. Waterlogged wetbacks. Pustulant policemen and jungle-bred Japs.

I fell off the bed, laughing. I’d never laughed so hard. I thought my roars would never stop.

113 (Lone Pine, 2:00 P.M., 3/30/42)

They reset the stage. The burn-ward room, the bed, the chair. Benzedrine in the fluid bag. The burn salve and charred-flesh stink.

The Mummy and Mr. Moto. Their second encounter. A vitalized Hanamaka. Ashida, poised to interrogate.

“Tell me about the klubhaus, Sensei. You might begin by giving me your overall impressions.”

Hanamaka plucked at his bedsheets. He was drug-vitalized. His mind sped. His limbs spastic-twitched.

“Egalitarian and degenerate. Those two words define the klubhaus. Mr. Hudgens of the Herald is quite the cheeky man. The German spelling of house. A touch first bestowed by policemen, there on the scene. One can be certain of that.”

Ashida said, “The sexual activity. The use of narcotics. The seemingly at odds political views.”

Hanamaka grinned. Sensei Death rides again. His breath was foul. His teeth rattled. He oozed putresence.

“ ‘At odds’ aptly describes the atmosphere. ‘Fugitives from normalcy’ might best describe the klubhaus clientele. There were no racial or political barriers to hinder conversation. The constant jazz music served to alleviate tension. There was a single consensus among the fugitives. ‘The most discordant jazz is our voice.’ ”

Ashida prickled. The queer white boy. A jazz player. His Jap sword man pal. Elmer J. shared the lead.

“Jam sessions. Phonograph music. The proximity of the jazz strip. Diverse characters passing through.”

Hanamaka jiggled his water cup. “You’re leading me, Dr. Ashida. You want me to identify a specific denizen, and you’re disingenuously setting the scene before you ask.”

Ashida coughed. “A white youth. Blond and tall. Most often accompanied by a Japanese man given to licking blood off samurai swords. That was the Japanese man’s parlor trick. I’m assuming he performed it at the klubhaus. The white youth was homosexual. Forensic evidence indicates homosexual activity upstairs.”

Hanamaka shrugged and shook his head. Sensei Death emits deceit.

“No. I did not encounter such men at the klubhaus. I disdain homosexuals and Japanese who perform parlor tricks. Such individuals would most certainly catch my eye and rouse my indignation.”

Ashida jumped tracks. “Let’s discuss the gold. I want to conclusively determine the chain of possession.”

“The chain began with Leander Frechette and the Reverend Mimms. Meyer considered Leander reliable, because they dated back to Meyer’s previous incarnation, as Fritz Eckelkamp, and Leander was there for the conception of the robbery, along with Wayne Frank Jackson. Meyer trusted Leander, and, by extension, the Reverend Mimms. Meyer put great stock in Negroes, and held them to be avant-garde. The Reverend Mimms’ buffoonish black nationalism delighted him no end.”

Ashida undid his necktie. “Please continue, Sensei.”

“Leander had been exonerated by the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s. He had withstood the brutal ministrations of Deputy Karl Tullock, and had prevailed. The Reverend Mimms bailed Leander out of custody, and was a noted friend of Chief Jim Davis, a nativist huckster known to have close friends on the Left. He later became a comrade — Kamerad, as you must know.”

Ashida said, “The gold. Let’s continue with the chain of possession.”

Hanamaka sipped water. He’d cracked his glass straw. Blood dripped off his lips.

“You must realize that unforeseen events intervened, along with fortuitous circumstances. Dresden Polytechnic, for example. The serendipitous convergence of Hayes, Díaz, Pimentel, and Jamie. The Spanish Civil War converged. Meyer earned his share of battle stripes there.”

Ashida shook his head. “You’re repeating yourself, Sensei. Let’s return to the chain of possession. I’m trying to establish a chronology.”

Hanamaka shrugged. “Frechette and Mimms returned the gold to Meyer at some point. I don’t know where it was stashed during what I would call an ‘intervening period.’ Juan Pimentel took possession of the gold after the Baja conference, at Meyer’s directive. It has since gone to the Stalinist priest-killer. I mentioned him to you in the course of our first interview.”

Ashida said, “Wayne Frank Jackson. Where was he during this interim period?”

“He was in periodic touch with Meyer, but beyond that, I have no idea.”

The room broiled. Steam heat jacked the burn stink. Ashida removed his suit coat.

“Frechette and Mimms returned the gold at some point, and Meyer once again took possession. Were Frechette and Mimms reluctant to relinquish it? Did a disagreement occur? Was force employed?”

“I was surprised at how easily they forfeited the gold. It shocked me at the time. Meyer gloated over the ease of the transaction. He held Negroes to be the most malleable of beasts. He considered them exalted, prone to whimsy, and subservient at their core. When one exalts, one is compelled to demean.”

Ashida coughed into his handkerchief. The burn stink and salve stink accreted.

“Let’s return to the klubhaus. I find it illuminating that you decided to nest there, in a hotbed of degenerate behavior and impolitic discourse. Were you sent there? Were you told to observe, inform, or attempt to impose order?”

Hanamaka licked his lips. The blood had congealed. He looked worse today. The give-and-take taxed him more.

“José Vasquez-Cruz sent me in. I knew him from Meyer’s cell, when he was Jorge Villareal-Caiz. He was a Kamerad, in both his guises, and in the latter he was a captain in the Mexican State Police. He smuggled me out of Baja in the wake of Pearl Harbor, at the behest of Governor Lazaro-Schmidt. So, yes, El Capitán installed me in the house down the street. As you state, I was told to visit the klubhaus and ‘observe and inform.’ Most preposterously, I was also told to attempt to restore order.”

The room went ice-cold. Ashida glanced out the window. Snowflakes brushed the screen.

“The klubhaus offended you. You discontinued your visits. I’m wondering if you were told to investigate the murders of Rice, Kapek, and Archuleta, on your own. The comrades must have feared the police investigation. We had drawn very close to a number of your people. Were you told to investigate? Did you arrive at a suspect or suspects?”

The Mummy cranked his bed up two notches. The Mummy pushed himself off his pillows and bowed at the waist.

“I prevaricated on the topic of your white youth and his Japanese friend. I cannot tell you whether or not the youth was homosexual, but he was surely tall and blond. He played the saxophone, and he worshipped the Negro jazz greats most exaltedly. A woman frequently accompanied him to the haus. She was frizzy-haired and roughly thirty years of age. And, yes, the white youth had a Japanese friend, who was plainly psychopathic.”

Man Camera. Time Machine. The klubhaus job now stands some sixty days in. We’re back in the upstairs hallway. There’s dent marks on the wall facing the bedroom. There’s his working hypothesis.

Two killers. One male, one female. Rice, Kapek, and Archuleta — terped to the gills. The man and woman lead them downstairs. The woman stands to the right of the victims. She sways. She punctuates the death march. She kicks out at the wall and leaves shoe-mark indentations. There’s his overarching conviction. The crime was organically homosexual and homosexually spawned.

“The blond youth, the woman, and the sword man. Did you hold them to be murder suspects?”

“Instinctively, yes. They stood out as unique in a most unique milieu.”

“Once again, Sensei. Who possesses the gold at this moment?”

Hanamaka said, “Once again, the Stalinist Mexican. The most exalted slayer of priest-killers is our Führer and most exalted comrade. I would give you his name, but I don’t know it.”

114 (Los Angeles, 9:00 A.M., 3/31/42)

They huddled at Kay’s place. Bill Parker snagged four wire players and four earmuff sets. Four socket plugs supplied juice.

They worked at the dining room table. Elmer divvied up the spools. Lesnick had scrawled analysand names on the boxes. They stuck to Claire De Haven, Orson Welles, Otto Klemperer.

Those three adjoined the whole megillah. No Kameraden wires existed. That meant no Meyer Gelb.

Kay distributed coffee and ashtrays. Buzz plugged in the cords. El Buzzo crowed a bit. He’d triple-checked their subpoenaed phone bills and snagged a doozy.

Ed the Fed Satterlee. 2/14/42. He calls a bail bondsman, up in San Fran. Buzz calls the bondsman and hits pay dirt.

Here’s the pitch. Leander Frechette’s been jailed for a soft-prowl 459. Ed the Fed bails him out.

Attaboy, Buzz. You pin-mapped Big Leander. Now, what about these calls?

Ed’s late-night calls. All to Lyman’s and Kwan’s. Interchangeable calls. All to pay phones there. Who you looking for, Ed?

Everybody set up and lit up. The room got smokeified. Everybody pushed buttons. Wire spools spun.

Elmer heard static and line fritz. It cleared inside six seconds. Doc Saul and Orson Welles schmoozed the big Leningrad siege. They exhausted that topic. Welles bemoaned his weight. Doc Saul said he’d prescribe pharmaceutical cocaine.

It got boring then. Welles pitched boo-hoo. He was a genius. Boo-hoo. America was a philistine encampment. Boo-hoo. “I get more ass than a toilet seat, Saul. How come I’m so damn unfulfilled?”

Boo-hoo. The government should subsidize his movies and pay him a hundred Gs per. Boo-hoo. “I should lose weight. A hatcheck girl at the Trocadero blew me. We steamed up the hatcheck booth.”

Kay pulled off her earmuffs. It cued the whole gang. Elmer dumped his earmuffs. Buzz and Whiskey Bill followed suit.

Kay said, “Claire’s weeping. Dudley takes his pleasure, and then ignores her. He spends hours tending to his clothes. A cobbler custom-fitted him for jackboots.”

Buzz said, “That’s a good one. All I’ve got is your maestro chum haranguing the doc about Beethoven. The late quartets are some shitfire ‘Apotheosis.’ Lesnick told him Beethoven’s got certified coon blood, which accounts for his rhythmic stance. He read it in some eugenics journal. Herr Goering is going to exhume the body and take bone samples. They’ve got some Nazi breeding farm in Norway. Kraut wenches and Norse-god men screw all day. The wenches pop frogs for the Fatherland.”

Elmer said, “Count me in.”

Kay laughed. Whiskey Bill rolled his eyes. They redonned their earmuffs and went back to work.

Boo-hoo, boo-hoo. Orson Welles talked drivel. Elmer listened in. Boo-hoo. The plight of the artist. Boo-hoo. The burden of social consciousness. “I drilled Norma Shearer, Saul. That old girl shtups with the best.”

Elmer switched spools. He swapped Welles for Claire De Haven. Claire defamed El Dudster and Joan Conville. “Really, Saul. She’s beyond Amazonian. She’s something out of the National Geographic.”

Parker pulled off his earmuffs. It cued the whole gang. Elmer dumped his earmuffs. Kay and Buzz followed suit.

Parker said, “Klemperer’s telling Lesnick about the headaches that he diagnosed as a brain tumor, and he’s fawning over Lesnick for saving his life. Then there’s a gap, where the two discuss the war, and then it gets good. Klemperer begins talking in fragments. He says that a man was ‘hectoring’ him and ragging on him as a Jew and a leftist, and the man says that he knows ‘Meyer’s girl Jean.’ Klemperer tells Lesnick that this man is taunting him, and he ‘plays horn’ in Negro jazz clubs. Klemperer repeats the phrase ‘He’s taunting me’ at least a dozen times. Then he states that he beats the man to death. Then he begins fawning over Lesnick again. Then he states, ‘And you took care of it, Doctor — you and your FBI friend.’ ”

Elmer went wooo. “The FBI friend’s sure as shit Ed Satterlee.”

Kay said, “Otto told me that story. He confirmed that Satterlee was the FBI man, but the story itself was fragmented to the point of incomprehension.”

Buzz said, “The part about this guy being a horn player gores me. For one, it takes us back to the jazz strip again, and we all know our current klubhaus suspect is a queer and a jazzman.”

Parker shook his head. “Our homicides occurred on January 29. This Klemperer-Lesnick session occurred the week after Pearl Harbor. That exonerates this particular jazzman, and it’s not like he’s the only jazzman in captivity, queer or otherwise.”

Buzz shook his head. “Yeah, but this guy tells the Maestro he knows Meyer’s girl Jean. That’s fucking significant, and it takes us back to the klubhaus job and the whole shooting match again.”

Kay lit a cigarette. “Yes, and I’m not convinced that Otto killed anyone, which means that this particular jazzman could be our jazzman, who’s good for the klubhaus job and possibly a whole lot more.”

Parker shook his head. “Jazzmen are jazzmen. There’s millions of them. Gelb and Staley aside, I don’t consider this any sort of real lead.”

Elmer said, “We’ve got Hideo deposing Kyoho Hanamaka now. He’s our key source. Somebody should talk to Hideo and see what Hanamaka spilled on the klubhaus angle, and if any of it pertains to our queer jazzman and his Jap playmate.”

Buzz lit a cigar. “Meyer Gelb. This whole deal comes down to him. He’s Fritzie Eckelkamp cut into Gelb, which takes him back to ’31 and the gold job. He’s all over this whole thing, and I am currently doing everything within my power as a member of this white man’s police department to find him and have a long chat with him.”

Parker sighed and redonned his earmuffs. It cued the gang. Talk gets us nowhere. Let’s get back to work.

Elmer redonned his earmuffs. Kay and Buzz followed suit. Elmer fish-eyed Buzz. El Buzzo radiated the lynch mob gestalt. Buzz had Meyer Gelb on the brain. Ditto El Dudster. Buzz figured Dud would kill him soon. Buzz figured he should kill Dud first.

Elmer switched spools and spun spools and smoked himself hoarse. He played the analysand field. Orson Welles boo-hoo’d and bragged up his conquests. Claire De Haven boo-hoo’d and skewered Dudley Smith. The Maestro extolled the Bruckner symphonies and the upcoming “exile migration.” Elmer perked up and took note.

Well, shit. There’s Meyer Gelb, again.

Elmer pulled off his earmuffs. It cued the whole gang. Kay dumped her earmuffs. Parker and Buzz followed suit.

Elmer said, “Here’s the Maestro. He’s talking up his comrades Ruth Szigeti, the Koenigs, and old man Abromowitz. They’re being repatriated to L.A., and he wants to help out. Lesnick talks the Maestro into getting them jobs as movie-studio musicians, then says to have them keep their snouts down and report to Comrade Gelb.”

Buzz cracked his knuckles. “I intend to have words with that whipdick.”

Kay said, “That entails finding him first.”

Parker four-eyed Elmer. He tapped his wristwatch. We’ve got pressing biz downtown.

They reconvened outside the Fed Building. Elmer lapel-pinned his badge. Parker displayed his search warrant.

“A Fed district judge signed it. He’s an old law school classmate, and he hates Fey Edgar like death itself.”

Elmer skimmed the legalese. Limited premises/custody vault only/all wire recordings on-site. On-site listening consent granted/one day only.

“We’ve got to erase the whole kit and caboodle. That’s the only sure way to cover ourselves and Sheriff Gene’s guys. It’s a whole shitload of work, with the Fed squadroom right down the hall.”

Parker pinned up his badge. “The judge called ahead. We’re covered there. We’ve got the means to scotch the whole probe, but they’ll know it was us. We’ll have to ride out whatever shit hits the fan.”

Elmer gulped. “Fey Edgar will wet his pink-lace undies. He’ll be on the horn to the U.S. attorney inside half a second.”

Parker winked. It fell flat. He possessed no savoir faire. He lacked Dudsteresque panache.

They breezed in and breezed up the side stairs. The Bureau owned the full third floor. A desk agent manned the lobby. They walked up. He looked up. Parker passed him the paperwork.

He read the full writ. He said, “The vault, huh? You fellows must be turncoats. A whole lot of PD guys are going to burn in this deal.”

Parker said, “We’ve been detached to the grand jury. We’re on your side as far as this one goes.”

The agent yawned and stretched. He passed the paperwork back. This rebop left him nonplussed.

“Judge Leffler called ahead. You know the rules, right? You can listen to whatever you want, but nothing leaves the room. You know how to use the machines?”

Parker nodded. Elmer broke a sweat. The desk man led the way back.

Elmer stared straight ahead. They passed boocoo doorways. Elmer heard squadroom bustle and counted his footsteps. He hit eighty-nine. The desk man turned right and unlocked a door.

Some vault. Just this dumb room crammed with boxes. Note the wire spools sticking out. Two player contraptions. Two earmuff sets. One beat-up desk and two chairs. A wire log clamped to a clipboard.

The desk man said, “I leave you to it.”

Parker saluted him. Elmer feigned nonchalance. The desk man vamoosed. Parker locked the door.

Elmer went wheeewww. Parker picked up the log and skimmed it. You had twenty-some pages. Maybe eight hundred calls and taps.

Parker scanned pages. Elmer dumped his coat and undid his necktie. He futzed with the gizmos. He plugged in the earmuffs and ID’d the erase switch. Parker got all bug-eyed.

He crossed himself. He waved wolfsbane. He did all this papist shit.

“The Feds bugged the pay phone at Kwan’s. We’ve got EX-4991 calling MA-2668. PC Bell tagged the call at 3:14 a.m., on March 6. It’s a West L.A.-to-downtown toll call, and it runs sixteen minutes.”

EX-4991. That’s Ed Satterlee’s home number. Holy heart attack—

The wire log listed box 56. They tore through four box stacks and found it. Two spools were stuffed in one envelope.

Elmer rigged the two gizmos. The wires spooled up tight. Parker passed him his flask. They traded pops and tamped down their wigs. Parker kicked the chairs back. They sat side by side. They donned the earmuffs and replayed the call.

The phone rang. Static and line fuzz bled into this:

“There you are. I figured I’d get you sooner or later, and 3:00 a.m. in a Chinatown slop chute doesn’t surprise me at all.”

Ed Satterlee speaks. He’s crusty, per always.

“Ed, I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

Mike Breuning speaks. He’s servile, per always. Elmer and Parker swapped looks.

Satterlee said, “I gathered that. You called the Bureau nine goddamn times. You’re lucky I’m a night owl, or I wouldn’t have caught you at all. I’m just hoping you aren’t jerking my chain.”

Breuning said, “It’s Dudley, Ed. He’s gone batshit. You wouldn’t believe some of the stunts he’s been pulling.”

Satterlee said, “I’d believe anything you might want to tell me about Dudley Liam Smith, which is one damn good reason why I do my best to avoid him and stay on his good side.”

Breuning said, “I’ve got to get out from under him, Ed. He’s gone off the deep end, and I thought maybe you could help.”

Breuning speaks, frazzled. He’s caught the snitch virus. Oooga-booga. Snitch fever permeates the call.

Satterlee whistled. The phone line hissed.

“If you’re asking for help, you’ve got to pay for that help. If you’re offering me an up-to-date derogatory profile on Dudley, I’d be inclined to help you, if and when the time is right.”

Breuning said, “That’s awful damn equivocal.”

Satterlee said, “Lay it out for me. And it better be a little spicier than Dud’s framing a few jigaboos for the Rice-Kapek job.”

Breuning speaks. He’s delirious now. Dat snitch voodoo’s gone to his head.

“He’s hooked on Benzedrine and opium. He’s geezing morphine, but he thinks nobody knows. Bill Parker’s checkmating him. He’s gone full-fledged Nazi. He parades around in Nazi uniforms and preens like a fruit. He’s running heroin and wetbacks. He’s selling Japs off as slave labor. He’s in with this Sinarquista hump Salvy Abascal, who’s playing him like he’s the village idiot. He was in with Joan Conville and Hideo Ashida on some gold angle, but Joan’s dead and Ashida will be heading to Manzanar, and now he’s flapping in the wind all by himself. He told me he found the guy who killed Joan’s dad and made Joan kill him. He killed a drag boy at a pervert party in ’39, and Dick Carlisle and me cleaned it up. He’s murdering Reds in Mexico. He killed a Statie captain who was screwing his Commie girlfriend. The Baja governor’s sister has got him pussy-whipped, and Abascal’s got him hoodwinked. I’m way far exposed, Ed. I’ve run point for Dud for eleven goddamn years. I need a safe-haven deal with an outside agency. He’s a Nazi and a traitor, and he’s chopping the heads off these Redshirt guys who kill priests. I’ll depose, Ed. I’ll give Dudley up. He’s a feather in your cap, Ed. He’s the biggest scalp you’ll ever take. Ed, you’ve got to help—”

The line fritzed. The call died. It cut off Mike Breuning’s sobs.

Doc Saul slogged it. His gourd was elsewhere. That was evident. Boolah, boolah. Annie gave it the college-girl try.

Elmer and Parker watched. Elmer ran the camera. They were dead bushed. They’d erased all the Fed vault wires. It took ten hours. They heard Mike Breuning’s sobs the whole time.

They discussed the Breuning-Satterlee call. They caught Breuning’s snitch virus. Ed the Fed was house-arrested. He posed no threat to Dudley Smith. They stole the Breuning-Satterlee wires. They could ditz Dud with them. They could pass the virus on.

The crawl space was tight-cramped. Elmer and Parker smoked it out. Smoke hazed the see-thru mirror. Elmer placed the camera lens flat on the glass. Their sound gear caught pillow talk.

Saul waved off the woof-woof. He was abstracted and limp-noodled. Two-minute Saul. He’d rather talk anyway.

Grave Saul. Distracted Saul. He suffers from de white man’s burden. De chickens be comin’ home to roost.

Annie said, “What is it, sugar? What happened to my stallion of the sack?”

Elmer yukked. Parker oozed pious censure. Annie smoothed out the bedsheets. Saul assumed a crucifixion pose. Nobody knows de trouble he’s seen.

Annie goo-goo-eyed him. Annie tickled his ribs and got bupkes.

“You’re remote tonight, baby. You’re wearing that crown of thorns, as my preacher daddy used to say.”

Saul said, “You wouldn’t understand. I can’t blame you for what you don’t know. You’re game, but you’re not enlightened.”

Elmer yukked. Annie winked at the see-thru. Old Saul sighed.

“Hoodlums laid waste to my office. They stole valuable recordings and smeared jingoistic slogans on the walls. I can’t go to the Beverly Hills Police or the FBI, and I certainly can’t go to my friend Ed Satter—”

Saul stopped cold. Annie tweaked on Satterlee. Old Saul tweaked her tweak. Elmer tweaked both tweaks.

Parker said, “He nailed her reaction.”

Elmer went Yep. Old Saul eyeballed Annie. He pushed off his pillow and zoom-lensed her.

“Do you know Ed?”

Annie shrugged. What’s with this Ed? I don’t know this Ed whoever.

“I tricked with Eddie Cantor once. It was after this Save the Jews wingding. He’s the only Ed I know.”

Parker said, “She’s not convincing.”

Elmer went Yep.

Old Saul jumped out of bed. He was stooped and chicken-chested. His cashew dick flop-flopped.

He orbed the walls. He patted the walls. He poked at wall junctures. He’s an old CP hand. He knows from wall bugs and honey traps.

He poked wall moldings. He pulled a spackled wire off a baseboard and yanked it out from under a rug. Annie jumped out of bed. She faced the see-thru, buck naked. She flashed this fetching Oh shit look.

Old Saul caught it. He dropped the wire and went for Annie. Elmer and Parker jumped.

They tore out of the crawl space. They tumbled into the bedroom and dog-piled old Saul. They floor-pinned him. He sissy-kicked and flailed. Annie snagged the sap in Elmer’s waistband.

She applied a good grip. She whipped shots at old Saul’s genitalia. Old Saul screamed. Elmer gassed the floor show. Annie yelled “You Fucking Traitor” roughly ten zillion times.

115 (Ensenada, 8:00 P.M., 4/1/42)

Fat Boy unfurled a portable screen and set up his projector. Dudley cut the lights. His suite subbed for Grauman’s Chinese.

Fats boomeranged. He returned to L.A. and shot straight back to Ensenada. He supplied that klubhaus lead. He’d retrieved a memory. It spurred this return visit.

Orson met a fruit kid on his goodwill tour. The kid attended the Walpurgisnacht party. He was a jazz musician. He knew another fruit kid. That kid attended klubhaus jam sessions. That kid was a jazzman. That kid bragged up the klubhaus snuffs. That kid and “some Red-fasco woman” snuffed Rice, Kapek, and Archuleta.

It was secondhand drift. It comprised a hot lead, regardless. It supplanted prior leads. It confirmed the queer white boy and Jap sword man.

Here’s Orson’s memory. Orson met that other kid. The kid appeared in the Walpurgisnacht smut film. He’d bragged up his Jap sword-licker friend and some darktown clubhouse. It had to be him.

Hence, Orson returns. Hence, this home movie. Roll it, Fats.

Dudley pulled a chair up. El Gordo adjusted the film spools. He wore Bermuda shorts and a loud Hawaiian shirt.

“Your man’s the clarinet player. When the camera pans to the woodwind quintet, you’ll see him.”

Dudley cued Welles. Lights, camera, action. Wagner hit the sound track. Trumpets and low strings. It’s Götterdämmerung. Dig the bleak intercessional strains.

A title card: “Berlin, ’29.” It denotes bleak atop bleak. Here’s Alban Berg’s Lulu and grainy stock footage.

It’s a street riot. It’s Reds versus Brownshirts. There’s Marxist banners and swastikas ablaze. Bullyboys wield two-by-fours. The Brownshirts outnumber the Reds. It’s a rout. Blood flows in crisp black-&-white.

There’s a quick cut. Weill and Brecht replace Berg. There’s “Mackie Messer.” Lotte Lenya warbles it.

Bam! — there’s a new title card. “Near Munich, 6-30-34.” Bam! — we’re outside a country inn. There’s a dumb paper moon. The inn looks one-dimensional. We’re on a cheap studio set.

Four black-clad SS men approach the door. Two men are Negro. Two men look Samoan. Fat Boy Welles provides surreal laffs.

Schubert usurps The Threepenny Opera. It’s a woodwind quintet. We’re inside the inn. There’s a Nazi-garbed ensemble. Three string men and one oboe. The queer boy’s on clarinet. It’s his skin flute in lieu of hard flesh.

Welles said, “That’s him.”

“Him.” Their triple-snuff suspect. He’s blond. He’s innocuous. He’s lanky, and seems to be tall.

A quick cut. Auf Wiedersehen, Schubert. “Mack the Knife” returns.

We’re in a small bedroom. We’re peeping an all-boy bacchanal. It’s a daisy chain. The lads wear Brownshirts and nothing else. They’re cinched groin-to-buttocks. They pump and gesticulate. There’s pelvic thrusts twenty boys long.

The SS men enter the room and shoot them. They employ toy Lugers. Cap-gun pops hit the sound track. The daisy chain collapses. The bugger boys disengage.

Dudley studied the film. He’d seen stray cuts at the party. He recalled none of it now. He was gone on hop then. He was flat sober now.

The screen blurs. “Mackie Messer” goes garbled. Wagner rides again. It’s Das Rheingold. More trumpets and more low strings.

The screen unblurs. The daisy chain replicates. It’s men and women now. They’re linked groin-to-mouth.

The camera cuts away. Walter Pidgeon appears and struts as Adolf Hitler. He’s Homerically hung. He rubs his toothbrush mustache. Claire De Haven kneels and gobbles his schvantz.

116 Kay Lake’s Diary (Los Angeles, 7:00 A.M., 4/2/42)

I’m writing a letter to Hideo Ashida now. I will hand-deliver it to Manzanar. I will include a wire recording of Ed Satterlee’s phone chat with Mike Breuning. I may send the second recording to Dudley Smith.

It’s beginning to cohere. Joan’s “all one story” is careening toward final explication. Hideo recounted his first interview with Kyoho Hanamaka; second and third interviews may well have occurred. My letter will urge Hideo to move beyond mere dissembling and omission. I will demand that he repudiate and fully betray his dear Dudley.

I’m exhausted. I visited Claire at Terry Lux’s retreat last night; we gabbed until dawn and had steak and eggs in the lounge. Jim Davis sat a few tables over; a male nurse attended him. Comrade Jim is faltering. He had trouble lifting his fork.

Claire’s morphine cure is proceeding. She talks and smokes incessantly and rails against her once-dear Dudley. She reads the Bible and obscure prayer books and often coils a rosary around one hand and forms that hand into a fist. Dear Claire. She showed me letters that Beth Short and Joan Klein have sent her. I studied the girls’ cursive styles and unformed sentence structures. Dudley has seven daughters; these two are his favorites. Their expressed condemnation would dismay and perhaps bitterly wound him. I would, of course, craft both texts.

Elmer and Bill leaned on Sid Hudgens. They imposed a gag order on Sid’s scandal-sheet machinations and secured his subscriber list. I will write the text that Sid’s 461 paid subscribers will read. The sheet will be sent to key SIS personnel and ranking officers in the Mexican State Police. Every known comrade/Kamerad will receive the sheet; it will go out to Jack Horrall, notable Feds, Archbishop Cantwell and L.A.’s papal high brass. It will go out to Dudley himself. I will smear Dudley Smith in the Salacious Sidster’s trademark style. I will instigate insidious ink. Everything that I write will be true.

Hatred fuels me now. It fuels this letter I’m writing. I now pass my hatred along to Hideo Ashida.

I described the Saul Lesnick — Annie Staples misadventure. Bill and Elmer tossed Doctor Saul in the Lincoln Heights drunk tank and let him stew for six long hours. They hauled him to the City Hall DB then. I observed the interrogation through a wall mirror; a wall-mounted speaker served up sound. Lesnick vividly confirmed the Kameraden’s postwar strategy and stoutly defended the grand ideals of enlightened dictatorship. Bill and Elmer let him blather. Lesnick laid out no less than the world as he saw it. It was one creepy credo. Sid Hudgens would label it “dippy dialectic” and a “miasmic manifesto.” It featured the doctor’s eugenic rationale for slaughtering infants. It ballyhooed Hitler’s Norse breeding camps. It included a stirring defense of the Moscow show trials and Stalin’s mass execution of deviationists and perceived traitors. Stalin’s agrarian purges and Hitler’s assault on the Warsaw Ghetto Jews were plain poppycock. Doctor Saul voiced an intense distaste for one Sergeant E. V. Jackson. He told Elmer that he’d be castrated and sold into slave labor once the comrades took over the world. Elmer turned to the mirror and winked at me.

Doctor Saul talked himself out; Bill got the interrogation down to brass tacks. He asked the questions. Elmer hovered and tapped a phone book on the sweatbox table. Lesnick gulped and credibly snitched.

He’d heard rumors about the gold but possessed no specific information. He was conversant with the Kameraden’s mail drop and microdot shenanigans. He did not know who the prior Führers were and did not know who the current Führer is. He knew Meyer Gelb and Jean Staley. He did not know that Gelb was once Fritz Eckelkamp and did not know where Gelb hid out. He described Ed Satterlee as an apostolic theoretical Trotskyite and committed Marxist. Ed was the Kameraden’s fix-it man. Lesnick professed ignorance of the klubhaus. He had never been to the klubhaus. He did not know Kyoho Hanamaka. He had never met Wendell Rice, George Kapek, and Archie Archuleta.

Bill released Lesnick. Go, shitbird. Twist in the wind. Describe your ordeal to your comrades. I watched Lesnick weave through the City Hall lobby. He bumped into an old friend on his way out the door.

The man was the L.A. Bürgermeister of the Negro Nazi League, and was known to pimp colored girls to DA Bill McPherson. The long-lost soulmates embraced. I overheard their conversation. Lesnick suggested lunch; the Bürgermeister suggested Kwan’s. He went way back with Ace. Ace owned a sweatshop that enslaved eight-year-old kids. The kids stitched the League’s banners and armbands.

The Fifth Column is everyone. Hideo Ashida told me that. It was New Year’s Eve. Hideo had just returned from Venice. Joan Conville plowed a car full of wetbacks and left six dead. Bill Parker put the fix in. He had the hots for the big redhead. It’s all one story, you—

We know most of it now, Hideo. There’s a good deal still to be learned. It entails your betrayal of Dudley Smith. I command your loyalty in this moment. You know what he is. You know this is true.

Bill and Elmer are set to raid Bev’s Switchboard. Do you recall the speech I gave two weeks after Pearl Harbor? Pershing Square was packed. I decried the Japanese internment. You were beaten for being there and being a Jap. I baited the crowd. I told them their options were do everything or do nothing. I’m telling you that now.

117 (Lone Pine, 4:00 P.M., 4/2/42)

Sensei Hanamaka, aka “The Mummy” and “Dr. Death.” He’s faltering. He’s entered an implosive state.

His grin’s stretching wider. His fangs protrude more. He’s caving in. He’ll die soon. He’ll become a Jap Shrunken Head.

Interview #3. It reprised 1 and 2. The salve and burn stink. The visitor’s chair and the hospital bed.

Ashida said, “I’d like to hear your impressions of Wendell Rice and George Kapek.”

Sensei coughed. His fluid bag drained. Sledgehammer dope hit his veins.

“They were second-generation rightist. Rice’s father was in the Silver Shirts. Kapek’s father is a gauleiter in rural Czechoslovakia. I saw them the first time in the winter of 1939. They were chauffeuring America Firsters to a Nazi-themed party in Brentwood. They served well in the manner of henchmen, as evinced by their minor roles in moving illegals under the aegis of Carlos Madrano. Such employment continued into the era of José Vasquez-Cruz, abutting the era of your mentor, Dudley Smith.”

Ashida flinched. He hasn’t called Dudley. He’s put it off repeatedly. Three crucial interviews. What to tell/what to omit/what to obfuscate.

“Again, were they homosexual? The crime seems to be homosexual in its origins.”

“I would not call them homosexual. I would call them fetishistic. Their fetishism was fueled by dope and liquor, along with the trinkets that Archie Archuleta procured for them in Little Tokyo. What would you pay for a slaughter sword deployed at the Rape of Nanking? Your mentor, Dudley Smith, might well be described as a fetishist. Juan Pimentel considered him such.”

Dudley was. Dudley is. Kay’s faux Claire missive. Fetishism implies the lavender look. Dudley’s “effete eye for callow young men.”

Slaughter swords. The Jap sword man. His queer white boy friend. Confirmations accrue and overlap.

“You appear to be deep in thought, Dr. Ashida. I consider it peculiar that you are not taking notes. Did Major Smith tell you not to? I could see where he might want to avoid a public record of our talks.”

Ashida bristled. Don’t torque me, Tojo. He’d heard Elmer J. tell a Jap suspect that.

“Major Smith is a close friend, and my former commanding officer. I consider all his suggestions, but do not consider them commands.”

Hanamaka leered. Opportunist Ashida. Race traitor Ashida. The white man’s lapdog. He heels at Major Smith’s command.

“Let’s return to the trinkets. What were the other types that Archuleta procured, in addition to the swords you mentioned?”

Hanamaka said, “Torture devices. Vile ones. Suits of armor in the shape of Japanese soldiers, fitted with interior spikes meant to inflict horrible death on the wearer. I would call devices such as these militaristically homosexual. Archuleta brought a sampling of them by the klubhaus one day while I was there. He said he was the middleman for a ‘fruit’ who sold them to ‘strange-o types’ he encountered on the jazz strip, although the ‘fruit’ did his primary business through the U.S. mail. Archuleta mentioned the ‘fruit’s’ sister very briefly. She was the purported brains of this mail-order business. The sister visited the klubhaus one night. I recall her vividly.”

Elmer on Jean Staley. Jean and her “froufrou” kid brother. Robby, ex-jailbird and would-be actor. Not a musician.

We’re up against prior descriptions. The would-be killer’s tall and blond. Jean Staley is short and dark-haired. A tall blond brother seems unlikely. Archuleta’s fruit and the queer-white-boy killer? Probably separate men.

Hanamaka coughed. Blood dripped down his chin. Ashida cracked his evidence kit and pulled his Jean Staley mug shot.

He flashed it. Hanamaka nodded yes. His ID was conclusive. It tied Robby Staley to the Jap sword man. It tied Robby to the queer white boy, once-removed.

Hanamaka yawned and shuddered. The dope jolt had depleted him. Metamorphosis. Here comes your Jap Shrunken Head.

“I think I know you now, Dr. Ashida. One thing continues to perplex me, though. Do you consider yourself Japanese or American?”

Ashida said, “You don’t know me at all. I’m as American as you’re not.”

The main-gate guard left him a package. It contained one letter and one wire spool. An MP sergeant lent him a player and listening earmuffs.

It snowed. Manzanar was socked in tight. Hold for the mid-April thaw. You freeze or broil here. Manzanar’s a two-climate zone.

Ashida holed up. The heating vents hummed. He read the letter four times. He played the wire recording twice.

He paced his suite. He looked out at the snow. A mess corporal brought him his dinner. The burn-ward doctor called. Kyoho Hanamaka died at 8:29 p.m.

The letter rankled. Kay was nothing but Kay-like. She was imperious, didactic, jejune. Kommisar Kay. Categorical and Manichean. There is no way but my way. If I believe it, it’s true.

Your options are do everything or do nothing.

The wire call revealed Dudley in extremis. Mike Breuning levied a multicount indictment. Mike closed with sobs.

Ashida sat in the dark. He sipped champagne and willed the Baja-to-Manzanar call. The MP’s mess hall served chilled champagne nightly. He’d come to expect and enjoy it.

He thought about Kay. She tried to seduce him last December. Kay’s faux Claire letter. Dudley’s effete eye for callow young men.

The phone rang. Ashida grabbed the receiver. Static cut off his “Hello?” Dudley was Dudleyesque. His blunt approach channeled Kommisar Kay.

“You’ve been among the missing, lad. I’ve gotten secondhand reports, from Al Wilhite, but I haven’t heard from you.”

Ashida cleared his throat. “I wanted to conclude my interviews before I reported. I’m sorry if it inconvenienced you.”

“Hanamaka’s dead, lad. Lieutenant Wilhite just called me. You won’t be seeing our fair Kyoho again.”

Man Camera. Let’s frame this moment. There’s the dark room. There’s his window view. It’s all snow and prison-camp searchlights.

“He gave up nothing of note. He was incoherent most of the time, and he gave up nothing we hadn’t already learned.”

Dudley sighed. “The gold? The cabal’s chain of command?”

Ashida said, “No. The decadent behavior at the klubhaus amused him, and he provided me with a great many anecdotes. We spoke at length three times. It was very frustrating.”

Dudley sighed. “Soldier on, lad. Study the files I sent you. Put that grand brain of yours to the task.”

Ashida said, “I’m sorry, Dudley.”

Dudley said, “I know you are. I hear it in your voice.”

The line went dead. Ashida stifled a sob. Kommisar Kay had it right. There’s no alternative. It’s everything or nothing.