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THE THUNDERBOLT BROADCAST/FATHER CHARLES COUGHLIN/XERB RADIO, LOS ANGELES. BOOTLEG TRANSMITTER: TIJUANA, MEXICO. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1941 Good evening
as one mealymouthed muchacho. This brings us to the Cristeros—the ripsnorting, righteous, CATHOLIC resistance. The Goldshirts—not the Redshirts of the Calles/Cárdenas/Communist ilk. The armed home guard that fought fire with fire, killed Redshirts, lynched Communist commissars and apoplectic apparatchiks, and burned more than a few Red reptiles alive. The Cristeros
were forced into hiding under Cárdenas. In ’37 they majestically metamorphosed into the Unión Nacional Sinarquista. Synarchism means
Item: Presidente Camacho closed the German consulate in August ’41 but has let a great many pro-Axis Krauts and Japs linger down May-hee-co way. Enter Baja California.
Baja’s that lurid lick of Mexican land south of our own San Diego. It’s a hellish hotbed of fascist-comunista intrigue. There’s a great many resident Japs. The Mex State Police suspect the presence of a great many Jap submarine berths along Baja’s Pacific coastline. There’s talk of secret Jap air bases being readied for raids on U.S. naval installations and defense plants near Los Angeles. Enter Sinarquista boss man Salvador Abascal.
Item: punk patriarch Camacho has granted them land for an encampment at Magdalena Bay in Southern Baja. Is he isolating the Sinarquistas or readying them for some task? U.S. Army Intelligence officers are mobilizing
Nazis. Will the Mexican peso and the U.S. dollar plummet and will a new gold standard arise? What about those ripe rumors—Nazis
(LOS ANGELES, 9:30 P.M., 12/31/41) Stakeout. It’s a sit-and-wait job. Some hot-prowl
The Chief and Dudley Smith conferred. They called it. Per always: perv shit on women mandates DEATH. Elmer gargled
Some unknown geek shivved him three days ago. Elmer yawned. Elmer futzed
Kay
Breuning and Carlisle gassed. They hashed out the Fed’s phone-tap probe. The PD was knee-deep in shit. It’s a nail-biter. City
Wisharts was Klan Kountry. Geography is destiny. Klan life fucked up his daddy and big brother, Wayne Frank. That hate-the-jigs diet stuck in young Elmer’s craw. He hit eighteen in ’30. He joined the Marine Corps. Semper Fi: Parris Island, Camp Lejeune, Nicaragua.
Man-o-Man Managua. The Marine detachment backstops puppet Führer Somoza. Jarheads snuff his political rivals and stand embassy guard. They’re bellhops and part-time assassins. El Jefe loves Lance Corporal E. V. Jackson. Hence a plum job: run Jefe’s favorite whorehouse. He learned the biz that way. It spawned his notion of call-service-to-your-door girls. Jefe shot him Plum Job #2. He watchdogged the L.A. police chief. James Edgar “Two-Gun” Davis. One vivid lunatic.
Background
mates. They boozed and whored together. Davis loved Lance Corporal E. V. Jackson. Here’s why: A leftist zealot charged Davis with a machete. Lance Corporal Jackson shot and killed him. Davis shot Lance Corporal Jackson a police department appointment. Goodbye, Marine Corps. Hello, Los Angeles. Elmer liked police work. Davis set him
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up with a cooze pusher named Brenda Allen. Elmer and Brenda clicked. They concocted their phone-exchange biz and saw it flourish. The L.A. grand jury sacked Two-Gun Davis. He poked one Jailbait Jill too many and took it up the dirt road. Call-Me-Jack’s in now. He’s got 7% of the call biz. Sergeant E. V. Jackson is twenty-nine. He’s
Elmer ran back out the door. There’s that black sky and sluice rain, there’s half a glimpse. There’s Human Fly Tommy, running northbound— He’s two front yards up. He’s cutting toward
He gained ground. His wind faltered. Something dropped from Tommy’s pants pocket. He stopped and aimed tight. He had him, he had him, something said DON’T. He squeezed three shots wide on purpose. Tommy cut north. He’s a Human Fly. He’s a fleet-foot rape-o. Watch him vamoose. Elmer heard Mike and Dick, way back there.
Elmer stopped and caught some breath. He walked east and checked the sidewalk. Tommy dropped something. Elmer saw it and picked it up. Well, now. Tommy dropped a red leather address book.
Tommy G. lived at the Gordon Hotel. Breuning and Carlisle were too lazy to go toss it. The Gordon was straight up Melrose. Let’s prowl Tommy’s room. Let’s sniff leads.
No Tommy. No nobody. Just this flop. Just this twelve-by-twelve den of despair. No bathroom. One closet. A milk-bottle pissoir by the bed. No chairs. One closet, one chest of drawers. Elmer locked himself in. Thunder shook the whole building. Geeks yelled “Happy New Year!” out on Melrose. He checked
Elmer tossed the drawers. He caught some provocative shit. A teach-yourself-Spanish book. A smut-photo book. Spicy donkey-show pix, à la Tijuana. Note the porkpie hat on El Burro. Nazi armbands. Jap flags. One tattoo stencil. Note the excised parts: Outlines for swastikas. Outlines for an “SQ” circumscribed by coiled snakes.
Elmer thumbed Tommy’s address book. More odd shit accrued. Look—there’s no addresses and no full names. Look—a “J.S.” and a Hollywood exchange. “St. Vib’s” and a downtown exchange. It’s probably St. Vibiana’s catholic church. Look—RE-8761.
Look—MA-4993. That number’s familiar. He scoured his brain and snagged it. Eddie Leng’s Kowloon. A Chinatown slop chute. It’s open-all-nite. It features tasty shark-fin soup. Eddie Leng was a Four Families tong geek. Tommy G. was a known tong associate. Plus: three more no name/no initial numbers. Elmer grabbed the wall phone and roused the switchboard geek. Get me MA-6884, pronto.
“I got it here someplace.” Elmer said, “HO-4612. The subscriber’s got the initials J.S.” “Okay, I got—” “The number for St. Vibiana’s Church, and the subscriber name for RE-8761.” The clerk perked up. “I know that last number. It’s a hot-box pay phone, and them farkakte phone-probe Feds been looking at it. A lot of hinky City Hall guys make their hinky calls from there.” Elmer said, “Don’t stop now.” “Who’s stopping? I was just pausing.” “Come on. Don’t string this—” “It used to be a bookie’s hot-box, and the drift is it still is. It’s over on 11th and Broadway, by the Herald. That farkakte
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(LOS ANGELES, 11:30 P.M., 12/31/41) Surging brass. Soaring reeds.
blood. Dudley adjusted his sling. His left arm had sustained multiple shiv wounds. A pesky Chink, surely. Tong intrigue, most likely. He was allied with Uncle Ace Kwan and Hop Sing. Said alliance might have spawned rival-tong enmity. Said shiv man would soon be sternly rebuked. Claire shared
He hatched war-profit schemes. Ace Kwan assisted him. They all went blooey. He chased a heroin stash in Baja. Mike Breuning, Dick Carlisle, and Hideo Ashida assisted. That went blooey. It was Captain Carlos Madrano’s stash. Madrano and the Mex Staties interdicted the Smith cartel. A Jap sub fiasco played in. He planted nitro in Madrano’s car and blew up El Capitán. It was small recompense. Father Coughlin knew Madrano’s replacement. José Vasquez-Cruz was anti-Red and anti-Jew, but less overtly Fascista. Baja bodes again now. Police Sergeant Smith as Army Captain Smith. He’ll meet Vasquez-Cruz
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jawing with a high-yellow songstress. There’s ex-Chief Davis, spiking the punchbowl. There’s Captain Bill Parker and Kay Lake. They comprise a dashed romance. There’s a full room between them. They shoot sparks across it, nonetheless. Parker’s a persistent burr in his tail. Miss Lake’s comely, if fatuous. Parker’s in
Parker surely does. He himself does not. She’s a dilettante and a round-heeled police buff. She’s nonconjugally shacked with surly Officer Lee Blanchard. Parker is pious and dangerous. He may ascend to Chief one day. Bill Parker.
sprint. He vowed vengeance. Mike and Dick
were meeting him later. They recruited some Alien Squad muscle. A grand tong sweep loomed. The
Quo vadis, Tommy Glennon? Tommy self-decreed his extinction. A three-count indictment levied charges. Count One: Tommy raped women and thus annulled the civil contract. Count Two: Tommy was Sergeant D. L. Smith’s ex-snitch and pal of current-snitch Huey Cressmeyer. Count Three: Tommy ran wetbacks for ex–Baja kingpin Carlos Madrano. Count Three, subordinate clause: He visited Tommy at Quentin, mid-November. Tommy pumped him per Madrano and his own Mexican plans. He has grand Mexican plans. He will exploit his Army SIS status to implement them. He will push heroin and run wetbacks. He will sell
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(SAN DIEGO, 12:15 A.M., 1/1/42) Should auld acquaintance
Her red hair. Her green eyes. Her bold six-foot sway. Her trim winter uniform. Gold buttons and braid. Lieutenant Junior Grade J. W. Conville, USNR.
up more speed. Barrel through. It’s the Conville family code. It was Earle Everett Conville’s code. It’s his elder daughter’s now. It’s not the kid sister’s. She married a papist and smeared Big Earle’s legacy. That clear stretch telescoped. It formed one black hole, here to always. Joan floored the gas. Her low beams hit rain smashing down. Wind slashed it horizontal. Just like Tomah, Wisconsin. The wind played tricks. Snow flew horizontal. Uprooted trees flew likewise.
Background
Big Earle was the Monroe County game warden. He made Joan blast felled trees with a 10-gauge shotgun. Five trees supplied all-winter kindling. Her hometown curriculum. Dead, like her parents. Absent, like her sister and inbred cousins in Bilgewater, Scotland. Usurped by nursing school and grad work at Northwestern. Gone, like her numerous men.
They brought back this L.A. police captain. He all but swooned for her. Northwestern. Spring 1940. This skinny sad sack with glasses.
Bill
The seminar ended. The captain vanished. Here’s the weird epilogue. She saw him in L.A., three nights back. Hollywood
brought back Big Earle—a forest fire casualty. Big Earle, firefighter. Big Earle, shitkicker and drunk. Big Earle, friend and foe of migrant Indians hooked on bathtub juice.
He hired them to fight forest fires. They blew their pay on hooch and started more fires for more wampum. A big blaze hits—April 9, ’38. Maybe it’s the Indians. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s premeditated arson. E. E. Conville, dead at forty-nine. Her father, burned alive. The U.S. Forest Service investigates. Their call: “No evidence of arson extant.” Joan disagreed. She switched grad-school majors. She dropped premed for biology. She studied forensic biology. She haunted the blaze site. She studied soil and tree-wood samples. She interviewed Indians and compiled a suspect list. A soused Indian
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the molecular content and the fuel’s brand name. She traced the fuel to a charter-airplane service in Duluth, Minnesota. The service pointed her to Mitchell A. Kupp. Kupp called himself an inventor. He lived off of family money. He was pals with Charles Lindbergh. Kupp chartered a small aircraft on 4/9/38 and flew it over Monroe County. She learned all that. Her case fizzled, then. Her fuel-spill evidence was erratically collected and logged. She could not attribute motive. She could not connect E. E. Conville to Mitchell A. Kupp in any discernible way. Barrel through. It’s what Convilles do.
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got a lab job and applied to the doctorate program at Cal Tech. Joan barreled through. It’s what Convilles do. She’ll return to Wisconsin and avenge Big Earle’s death. Vengeance is thine. Banzai. Pearl Harbor preempts her. S...
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light-headed. It’s that booze-catching-up feel— Lights hit the windshield. Big full-on headlights. They violated blackout reg— Joan went glare-blind. She rubbed her eyes and lost the wheel. She smashed the lights and this great big something.
(LOS ANGELES, 2:30 A.M., 1/1/42) The Werewolf sleeps. He’s
He stood un-jailed. His family stood free. The roundups would resume, tomorrow. Dudley Smith’s patronage vouched his freedom. He lived in a Biltmore Hotel suite. His mother and brother had their own rooms. Dudley’s patronage carried a price. Call the Werewolf frame part and parcel.
“Captain Parker called, Ashida. He needs you in Venice. It’s a vehicular homicide. There’s four dead wetbacks and some Navy woman in custody.” — Pole-mounted
Ashida walked up to the stretchers. Wind tugged at his hat. Rain stung his eyes. All four sheets were blood-soaked. Ashida pulled them halfway down. Four clicks clicked. Let’s extrapolate. Four male Mexicans. All dead. Two men in the front seat, two men in the back. Head-on impact. The frontseat men sustain massive chest wounds. Their hearts
from his lap. It clattered and rolled. Ashida looked away. He heard a muffled shriek. He tracked it. He walked up to the jalopy. He flashed his Man Camera, in tight. The trunk lid’s ajar. Something’s in there. He jammed up the lid. He saw a little boy. The boy was crushed dead under a spare tire. A little girl murmured and coughed blood. She tried to say something. Ashida picked her up and held her close. She clawed at his face and died in his arms.
(LOS ANGELES, 3:15 A.M., 1/1/42) Kwan’s Chinese Pagoda.
All eyes on Dudley. Elmer’s the most. This mick fuck sends him out to kill a man. That don’t sit right. The Dudster
