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scent. She’s as man-bound and father-bound as he’s bound to his mother and women. She rages to kill the man who burned her father dead. She’s told him some things. He’s
Lover-sisters/brothers/daughters/sons— Beth is due for a visit. He’ll pair her off with Joan Klein and commend them to mischief. Young Joan pilfers from stores. She’s pilfered bland SIS memos and cabled them to her “Comrades” in New York. She asked him to teach her how to shoot a gun. They had a father-daughter jaunt on the beach.
Young Joan to Young Juan. The snappy heel clicker and pay phone–tap whiz. The tireless surveiller of this selfsame hideaway. He read Juan Pimentel’s personnel file.
He noted Class A fitness reports and a pithy biographical aside. Pimentel resigned a war college posting. He defamed President Cárdenas’ anti-Church policies. Lieutenant Juan is devoutly Catholic and pro-Sinarquista. Salvy will address a large crowd tonight. El Flaco Explosivo
Little swastikas for the Nazis. Hammer and sickles for the martyred USSR. A grand child. Perhaps psychopathic. Only time would tell. She said,
invaded Claire’s closets and tried on her clothes. He’d caught her at it. “Your Aunt Claire finds Captain Vasquez-Cruz suspicious, and I must say I agree. I’ve requisitioned a great many police files, and I don’t have time to go through them. I’d like you to. Study them and look for pictures and notations pertaining to the captain. I’ll pay you, of course.” Young Joan
Breuning reports: The darktown crib remains chaotic. It’s still undetermined—homicide or terp ODs. Mike braced Thad Brown on Elmer Jackson. Thad said, “He worked the Alien Squad with Kapek and Rice. I want him in on this.” The call
(LOS ANGELES, 9:00 P.M., 1/29/42) They stood nine hours in. Thad Brown
Squad–adjunct. Hideo Ashida ran the lab slot. Joan backed him up. Newton blues roped off 46th Street. They
Ashida trembled then. She acted then. She typed a note to the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s. She forged Ray Pinker’s signature and demanded this: “Photostat the gold-heist file. Do it now. Priority expedite.” Then, this callout. Then, all this grief. They’d
“Last but not least, we’ve got Sergeant Turner Meeks, detached from Robbery. All you Western-movie fans know Buzz. He’s played
(LOS ANGELES, 10:30 P.M., 1/29/42) Dr. Nort shooed the cops out. They
Jackson plain vanished. Ashida walked back inside and cased the dead men. He’d
forehead. “We’re not here to strictly determine cause of death, unless something jumps up and bites us. I’ll do the formal autopsies at the morgue. This is a triple the likes of which I’ve never seen. I’d like to examine them within the context of this equally unique place we have here.” Joan
Joan said, “They would have flailed then, Doctor. There’s a certain symmetry in the way they’re posed on the couch.” Ashida tugged the Mexican’s left biceps. He got no flex and no give. “The approximate time of death, sir?” Dr. Nort said, “I took rectal temperatures the moment I got here. I’m calling it 2:00 to 4:00 a.m.” Ashida
The Mexican wore slit-bottom khakis and black leather oxfords with crepe soles. Plus a white undershirt and striped zoot coat. Crepe-sole oxfords were burglars’ shoes. Rice
No wedding ring on Rice’s left-ring finger. An indentation where wedding rings normally sit. Rice was married. Rice removed his ring to hide the fact. Rice was a tomcat. Kapek wore a green cardigan and navy dungarees. His footwear seemed anomalous. He wore patent-leather pumps. Ashida extrapolated. The Man Camera revealed this: They were dancing shoes. The klubhaus adjoined a jazz strip. Officer George B. Kapek was a jitterbug. Dr. Nort said, “Our Hideo’s worked himself into a trance.” Joan said, “It’s a study technique. I learned it in grad school.” Ashida stepped back and aimed off the
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Joan examined the ashtray. “I’ll extrapolate. The killer wants to remove incriminating evidence, yet retain what I’ll call ‘forensic normalcy’ here in the klubhaus. He removes the three butts and washes the ashtray. Now, I’ll hazard a guess.
Joan nodded. She turned out the Mexican’s front pants pockets. They were empty. She turned out George Kapek’s front pants pockets. She pulled out a cigarette-paper deck. Dr. Nort
Joan said, “We confiscated a still from that man Don Matsura’s apartment. Remember, Dr. Ashida? He committed suicide at the Lincoln Heights Jail.” Dr. Nort
headband light. He close-up lit the mouth cavities. He stepped back and stretched. “Precancerous lesions. All three men. Similar levels of inflammation, of a type common to habitual terp smokers.” Thad Brown
Meeks clumped upstairs. Brown poked around. He had well-known eagle eyes. He scoped a pile of hate tracts and the Hitler wall pix. He touched the sax and trombone on the chair. He went through phonograph records. He ran his hands under the couch and pulled out a matchbook. Ashida
stepped close. Ditto Dr. Nort. Brown said, “Southpaw. It’s something
it’s nothing, but it’s not a bad elimination lead.” Ashida aimed his Man Camera. He framed the dead men. He close-up shot their hands. He caught your standard size discrepancy. “They were all right-handed. Their right hands are larger and more muscularly developed.” Dr. Nort said, “Kapek and Rice wore their belt guns on the left. That connotes a right-hander’s cross-draw.” Brown checked out the matchbook. Club Zamboanga/yellow-and-black type/a snarling panther
Ashida pointed to the ashtray. “I’m positing a fourth man. I understand that it’s precipitous, but please indulge me. I’m thinking that he fashioned hand-rolled cigarettes but did not partake.” Dr. Nort
Ashida leaned in. Dr. Nort and Thad Brown watched. Joan pointed to this: A blood dot below George Kapek’s left ear. Ashida look-see’d. It was less than a puncture/more than a pinprick. Joan slid man to man. Showy Girl struts and poses. She pointed below Wendell Rice’s left ear. The Mexican, likewise. She nailed identical dots. They were less than punctures/more than pinpricks. Thad Brown
all.” Ashida pointed three across. “It could be a coerced ingestion of a lethal substance. The killer persuaded them by the means of a sharp instrument at their necks.” Brown
them back on and peered extra close. “Here’s a guess. They were partially debilitated already. That’s the only way I can see one man taking out three. And there’s no dust on that matchbook, smack in the middle of this shitty little dust hole. That means it was shoved under the chair recently.” Dr. Nort shrugged.
Joan smiled. “Dr. Nort’s being a killjoy, so I’ll add that those dots look like icepick markings I’ve seen in Crim One texts.” Ashida got bristles and chills. Watch this, colleagues. Brilliant Boy shows off. He pulled down George Kapek’s shirt collar. Ditto for the Mexican and Wendell Rice. He laid their necks bare. It revealed this: Single hand-span bruises.
Finger-grab marks on the right. “I don’t know how they died, but he held them steady with his right hand and held the ice pick with his left. A left-hander would favor that hand for such a task.” Joan
(LOS ANGELES, 11:00 P.M., 1/29/42)
it be exploding HERE. The Sinarquista flag at the klubhaus.
The Sinarquista stencil in Tommy G.’s room. The Sinarquista tattoo on Eddie Leng. The terp still in the klubhaus. The terp still in Don Matsura’s apartment. Matsura’s jail “suicide.” Matsura’s KA’d up with Eddie Leng and Lin Chung. Two Alien Squad hard-ons. Said hard-ons now muerto. Don’t dis shit read Fifth Column to you?
then. Tommy’s book ran provocative from jump street. It listed St. Vib’s, the Deutsches Haus, Dudster snitch Huey Cressmeyer. You had unknown cooze Jean Staley and homo priest Joe Hayes. You had the hot-box phone by the Herald. You had fourteen Baja pay phones. Now, let’s add this: Lin Chung. Low-rent plastic
surgeon/dope peddler/Fifth Column shitbird. Orson Welles. Hotshot actor-director/quasi-Red flotsam/finked-out patient of Dr. Saul Lesnick. Dr. Saul himself. Red tool/Fed snitch/Annie Staples’ fatmouth trick. Headshrink and morph pusher to Claire De Haven. Wallace N. Jamie. Nosebleed PI/Fletch Bowron confrere/rumored Fed-probe indictee. He spiced up Huey Cressmeyer’s listing. He drew swastikas and coiled snakes beside it. Huey
They braced street strollers and ducked into nitespots. They got Huh?/Beats me/Say what? They got rebop per Jew landlords raping the black man. They hit jazz joints
The jig coughed blood and coughed up this: “Jew landlords own most of them cribs….” “But not that one.” “This preacher, Martin Luther Mimms…” “This back-to-Africa con…” “Congregation of the Congo—47th, down the strip.”
gold?
They bopped in and bopped up to the altar. A colored man and white man counted collection-plate cash. The colored man was heavyset and cleaved close to fifty. The white man was twenty-three,
The colored man said, “I’m Martin Luther Mimms. You can call me ‘Reverend’ or ‘Rev.’ ” The white boy said, “Link Rockwell.” Mimms
Mimms took the cue. “Link thinks I’ll reinstate the Dred Scott decision over on African soil. Colored folk as chattel, to do with as I wish. I’ll have them excavating gold from secret mines in Zimbabwe. I’ll be putting the boots to the best-looking yellows and putting the horns on their men.”
pygmy-goddess statuettes. Mimms said, “My people will be knee-deep in zebra shit by this time next year. The USS Negro will be sailing about then. We’ve got to be watchful, though. Hitler’s U-boats pervade the Atlantic, and are ever alert to torpedo Allied shipping. Let me state for the police record that I’ve got no beef with the Führer, and that I admire his subjugation of the Jews, the colored man’s traditional foe.” Blanchard
Elmer orbed the wall pix. Oh, yeah. They explicate some shit. There’s the young Mimms. He’s standing with the young Jack Horrall. They’re doughboys. Jack’s a major. Mimms wears captain’s bars.
Bingo
“I own fourteen houses in these parts, and half of them have backhouses that have come to be utilized as playpens by unruly elements. Over the years, the backhouses have been taken over by my acolytes, all of whom live squeaky-clean. The only exception is my backhouse on East 46th.
“You had best check with the fearsome Gestapo and the illustrious SS about that. And, once again, let me state that I bear no grudge against the Nazis—but the Reds and the Klan bear the full brunt of my enmity.” Elmer blew smoke rings. “What about the Sinarquistas?” Mimms
(ENSENADA, 10:00 A.M., 1/30/42)
They’re couched in unstinting rapport. Victor Trejo Caiz planned to kill him. How did Salvy know? Salvy understands him. How much does Salvy know and where did he learn it? The
kit. He’d swing the gold bayonet. The Teletype clacked and popped a page into his tray. Dudley snatched it and skimmed it. Fourth Interceptor blared cautionary drift.
L.A. defense plants targeted/Red Alert imposed. Secret air bases in San Berdoo County/Red Alert imposed. Jap sub berthings in Baja/Red Alert imposed. L.A. pay-phone communiqués decoded. Jap air attack on L.A. predicted. Red Alert: hold for late February. Dudley
He called the Ventura County Sheriff. He offered him bribe cash and proposed a sub-rosa deal. House Baja Japs on county work farms. Bunk them in horse stalls. Rent them out as stoop labor. We’ll split the money.
Slant-eyed intruders. They haunt his dreams. The Wolf stalks them across the Baja plains. Where’s Kyoho Hanamaka? No one has visited his mountain hideaway. Juan Pimentel surveills it. Hideo Ashida’s photo device has snapped no license plates. Lieutenant Juan tortures Japs. Where’s Kyoho Hanamaka? None of the Japs knows shit. Japs, Japs,
