Elmer jumped up and held him back. Elmer bear-hugged him and ran Whoa now’s. Buzz went limp and dropped his hands. Elmer hug-walked him out of the sweatbox and dumped him in the hall.
He slammed the door and threw the lock. Frankie gurgled blood and quaked abject. Elmer pulled off his suit coat and squatted beside him. He wadded the coat and passed it to Frankie. The little hump blotted his face.
Elmer hit the wall switch. The sweatbox went all dark. He got up close to Frankie. He touched him soft and whispered this:
You’ve got to talk/you’ve got to talk/you’ve got to talk. I won’t let that Okie hurt you, if you talk to me.
Frankie gurgled and spit blood. His breath went asthmatic. Elmer baby-talked him. The sweatbox went eerie dark. Frankie caught some asthma breath and snitched this:
The Greenshirts fingered a sub attack. It was last month. The Japs lobbed the Ellsworth Oil Refinery. The shells went adios and pfft. Rice and Kapek were muy Fifth Column. Catbox Cal, just as much. They sold Jap guns to the Greenshirts. The shirts got plans to commit 211s. La Causa needs the gelt. Catholic dinero fuels los Sinarquistas. They’ve got this initiation rite. You got to kill three priest-killers.
Salvy Abascal’s El Führer. He’s got kill lists of priest-killers and Reds. El Führer’s got this Irish fool eating out of his hand. The fool’s an Army major and an L.A. cop. They’re smuggling “H” and wets. They’re selling Baja Japs as slaves. The Irish guy’s got his head up his ass. He don’t know shit from shinola. Salvy’s put Greenshirt plants in with the wets. Them fake wets are set to escape and pull sabotage.
It came out in stutters and gasps. The sweatbox was blackout dark and reeked of slobber and blood. Elmer cleaved close to Frankie. The little hump bled on him. The little hump gasped for breath and gasped this:
Archie the A. Call him “El Pimpo.” He brought girls to the haus. There was this queer boy. He went to all the jazz clubs. He orchestrated the pervo shit at the haus. He had this Jap friend. The Perv of All Pervs. He sold curios. He ate raw chicken flesh. He sucked blood off samurai swords.
95
(Los Angeles, 11:00 P.M., 3/10/42)
Salvy said, “You seem fretful, Comrade.”
Dudley lit a cigarette. He’d chained the whole pack in nothing flat.
“I could say the same about you, lad.”
“Yes, but I am more high-strung to begin with. I have never possessed your most serene composure.”
They slouched in Dudley’s prowl sled. They’d parked up from Hollenbeck Station. They had a clear front-door view.
The sweep stood complete. They’d observed the haul-ins. Nine fish were now jailed. Salvy tagged three Sinarquistas. Miguel Santarolo, Frankie Carbajal, Mondo Díaz. Hard boys all. Salvy said they’d never roll and bleat.
Dudley chain-smoked. His throat felt raw. His nerves ran raw, besides. Hideo called him, pre-sweep. Hideo tattled an odd chat with Elmer Jackson.
Elmer tumbled to the three-case convergence. He wouldn’t say how. He knew about the gold and fixated on the fire. A three-case principal must have killed his brother. Elmer believed it. Elmer vowed revenge.
It was unsettling. Hideo’s punch line troubled him.
Elmer and Buzz Meeks killed Tommy Glennon. The act redeemed Elmer’s New Year’s Eve fuckup. The act proclaimed a vow of fealty to one D. L. Smith. Hideo foisted his gold bar on Elmer. Hideo urged him to confess to Father D. L. Smith. The gold gift seems justified. How Elmer tumbled remains perplexing.
Salvy lit a cigarette. “You needn’t concern yourself as to what my boys might reveal about our plans. They know very little, and I’ll secure them a lawyer and post bail in the morning. This klubhaus mess will subside and resolve at some point, and I’ll keep my boys sequestered until then.”
Elmer Jackson showed. He walked out of the station. He lit a cigar and stretched loose some kinks. He looked disheveled. He was coatless and sported a badly stained white shirt.
Dudley beeped the horn and flashed his high beams. Elmer looked over. Dudley got out and stood on the sidewalk. Elmer ambled on up.
He leaned against a streetlamp. It backlit him nicely. The stains were wet blood.
Elmer said, “Forgive my appearance, Dud. A suspect got between me and Buzz.”
“Turner Meeks is a vivid interlocutor. He’s been known to lose patience with rowdy Mexicans. Might you tell me the suspect’s name?”
“Frankie Carbajal.”
“I’m assuming that he rolled in the end.”
“Such as it was, boss. He said the Sinarquistas are planning some 211s, and they plan to use some guns that Rice and Kapek sold them. Archie Archuleta brought girls to the haus, which don’t surprise me at all. Frankie was hipped on some queer jazz-club geek and some Jap with a sword fetish.”
Bland revelations. Ho-hum. Nothing catastrophic there.
Elmer pointed to the car. “Who’s the cholo?”
Dudley smiled. “He hardly concerns you.”
Elmer smiled. “Tommy Glennon concerns both of us. Buzz and me clipped him, in case you didn’t get that from Hideo already. I don’t expect an attaboy on it, but I’d sure like you to acknowledge the favor we did.”
Dudley said, “Muted bravos, Elmer.”
“Don’t you want to know what he spilled?”
“I was getting to that, yes.”
Elmer blew smoke rings. “He laid out some old news. You and Carlos Madrano ran wets, and Joe Hayes was his bun boy. He tried to squeeze you when you saw him up at Quentin last year, but he didn’t say what with.”
Dudley lit a cigarette. It was a gaffe. His hand trembled. Elmer caught it.
“I had quite the chat with Hideo. He told me that you’ve put some things together since the last time we spoke. I’m wondering how you came upon what you learned.”
Elmer stretched and rubbed his back against the streetlamp. He was milking this. You overreaching bumpkin, I will kill—
“I was over at Joan Conville’s place about a week before she died. I was putting some moves on her, but it wasn’t going my way. Joanie was terped, and she was mumbling about the gold heist and the fire. She kept fading in and out, and she talked up a diary before she passed out for real. I tossed the place, found it, and read it. It was mostly woo-woo about you and Bill Parker, but she wrote up her forensic shit with Hideo pretty good. I put some threads together, and figured the three of you were out for the gold. I put the diary back where I found it, kissed Joanie good night, and scrammed.”
Vivid verismo. Elmer Jackson in quintessence. Woman-crazed and self-seeking. Less than half smart.
“Sally forth, lad. Keep the gold bar. Kill your brother’s killer with my most fond regards.”
96
Kay Lake’s Diary
(Los Angeles, 11:30 P.M., 3/10/42)
I watched the Maestro compose. We sat at his piano; Otto picked out low-register chords and jotted notes on a scratch pad. He was working on the nightmare tone poem we had discussed several times. Otto encouraged me to improvise at the moments his imagination faltered. I filled in with passages from the three Bartók concerti; I was undermining Otto’s more foreboding motifs. My mission was therapeutic more than anything else. I was seeking to derail the Maestro’s darkly foreboding moods and loosen the hold of his formal therapist: the darkly corrupt Saul Lesnick.
Otto hit chords as I smoked and sipped brandy. Once again, I studied the piece of paper secured by the sheet-music stand. Words by Meyer Gelb and W. H. Auden. Once again, I came up against Comrade Gelb’s old Communist cell.