He threw her dress up and pulled down her stockings and underwear. Constanza drew back and hooked her legs over the width of the chair. He caught her scent. She grabbed his hair and pulled him into it.
He wanted that. He knew she knew it. He stretched her legs. He found the wet and the fit and the place. Constanza fell into Spanish. She went Sí, sí, sí, sí, sí.
She made different sounds. He learned her tones and her tastes all together. Her breath raced. She pushed up. She pitched and buckled off one drawn-out Sí. She held him there with her legs then. He’d hoped that she would.
It rained all night. They made love all night. They talked in between. It reprised his first night with Joan.
Pious you. You kill people and sense God as an innocent. You see the abrogation of all moral law in my relationship with my brother.
Yes. I disapprove and am concurrently titillated.
I disapprove of La Comunista. She is strident and indecorous. You must confirm or refute that you killed her Red lover. My brother believes that you did. He believes that my occasional lover Salvy may have assisted you.
I’ll confirm or refute when I know you better. Forgive my circumspection until then.
I have never been circumspect. I despise your Red whore. She is La Comunista Estúpida. I find your young charges compelling, however. They are both of you, regardless of their blood. Young Joan possesses your ferocity, and young Beth possesses your hunger.
Your perceptions honor me, darling.
You are tall and urbane. One rarely sees that in Mexican men. My brother is urbane, but he is a shrimp.
Your brother is urbane, but not quite as perceptive as you. I rather enjoyed his perceptions of Meyer Gelb, though.
Meyer Gelb is a puto, a parasite, and an extortionist. He is an evil Stalinist, and he hates Trotskyites more than he hates fascists such as you and me. He will extort the very life’s blood from our Jewish exile friends.
Betray me not, mi corazon. It would surely devastate me.
Do not tell me that. It will assure my betrayal.
Caustic you. So determined to take my measure in the course of a first-night’s encounter.
One takes a lover’s measure immediately or not at all. You need women to record your triumphs. You need to capitulate to women in a manner that many would find unseemly.
I commune with a wolf I met on the British moors, in 1921. He will sleep with us tonight, and he is very astute about women. He has told me that your designs are entirely felicitous, and has recently informed me that I underestimate a reckless young woman in Los Angeles. He’s close to convincing me that the silly girl intends me great harm.
88
Kay Lake’s Diary
(Los Angeles, 7:00 A.M., 3/7/42)
I was still woozy from Otto’s party, three nights ago. It wasn’t a liquor hangover or a case of party-behavior regret. I barely touched booze; I abstained from flirtatiousness and cutup antics. I felt the undertow of Otto’s provocative guest list. It was a nexus of criminal-case suspects, present and past.
Meyer Gelb. Jean Staley and her postcard ruse, geared to deceive my pal Elmer. Gelb’s tenuous connection to the four exiled musicians. Gelb, Staley, the Lesnicks. Communist comrades in ’33; party guests nine years on. Jorge Villareal-Caiz did not attend the party. Dudley Smith allegedly killed him. Claire De Haven told me that. She told me that with my hand on her breast.
I’m seated at a folding table in my backyard now; I’m ten feet from the incinerator that I use to burn rubbish. I put the incinerator to hasty use late last December; I burned the clothes I wore during my impetuous attempt to take Dudley Smith’s life. Canny Claire made me for this crime. Elmer picked that nugget up during a hot-sheet surveillance. A call girl named Annie Staples was servicing Saul Lesnick.
The Claire-Dudley liaison is imploding. Claire went to Mexico with a murderous madman and now pays the price. Claire told me this herself. She told me with my hand on her breast.
Bill called me an hour ago; he bluntly stated that he and Thad Brown are now colluding. They are pushing Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle off the klubhaus case, while they retain my Lee Blanchard, partnered up with Hideo Ashida. Bill has characterized Hideo as a young man who perpetually “falls from shit to clover.” Hideo is surely the luckiest Japanese in these parts. He has whizzed through the internment push and has secured a U.S. Army commission. Bill told me that he will soon be doubly credentialed. Double-Trouble Hideo will also serve as a war-hire policeman. He is down in Baja now, but will soon be returning. He will cut his teeth in an upcoming “pachuco sweep.”
Bill Parker, fired with holy purpose and fixed upon task. Joan Conville’s diary chastened and dismayed him. I’m glad I hit him in the mouth. It served to wake him up.
Bill told me that he will abet my pledge to expose false solutions to the klubhaus case and will publicly excoriate the slaying of any and all bogus suspects. This is a direct contravention of his pledges to Dudley Smith. I have concluded that Hideo has not revealed the existence of Joan’s diary or the fact that I hold possession. Hideo pines for a clean klubhaus solve. He was robbed of a clean solve on the Watanabe case and harbors guilt for his part in the frame-up of Werewolf Shudo. I know this. Hideo’s desire for a clean solve supersedes his lust for the gold and his kid crush on Dudley Smith. I know this. Hideo’s desire for a clean solve transcends his bond with Dudley and Joan Conville, and cuts through all their criminal and romantic circumlocutions. I know this.
I pondered romantic triangles within a triangulated case structure. I pondered triangles in general. I thought of Brenda Allen, Elmer Jackson, and Annie Staples. A brainstorm hit. I ran inside to the phone.
Brenda’s preferred meeting spot was Dave’s Blue Room. She and Elmer owned a sizable percentage. Brenda’s preferred pose was midmorning gin fizzes; her preferred conversational style was the full-speed monologue. One buckled in for these.
Our back booth assured privacy. The waiter brought a full pitcher of fizzes and left us alone. Brenda revved up on the war, FDR’s tax bill, and her monthly bribe cut to Sheriff’s Vice. She laid on the prelude and arrived at her preferred topic: her call-biz partner and part-time lover, Sergeant E. V. Jackson.
“...and I’m thinking of calling the Missing Persons Squad about this boy, Citizen. I don’t care that he’s got Ellen Drew on the side, or whatever else he’s got going — but we’re running thirty-four girls, and it’s an around-the-clock enterprise that he’s been neglecting while he’s been working that klubhaus job down in darktown, him all partnered up with Buzz Meeks, who I know for a fact has gunned down numerous colored and Mexican gents under dubious circumstances.”
So far, so good. I arranged the klatch to get a bead on Elmer’s recent actions. I sipped midmorning gin and egg whites and formulated a question. Brenda relaunched her monologue and cut straight to Jack Horrall.
“As you well know, I’ve got my weekly date with Call-Me-Jack, which involves perfunctory woof-woof in the missionary manner, and always on the floor, and I’ve got the long-standing rug burns to attest to this long-standing arrangement. Well, Jack don’t take very long, and he always segues to his long-standing spiel about the woes of the big-city police chief, and this morning it’s all about how your chum Whiskey Bill Parker showed up at his office last night and summarily announced that he would oppose and expose any bogus solving of the klubhaus job, despite Jack and the Dudster’s wishes, and it left Jack in a veritable tizzy, because Citizen Jack is now under Federal indictment, and vulnerable in about six trillion ways.”