This storm, this savaging disaster.
Otto tapped the music stand and smiled at me. He said, “When I compose, I must always immerse myself in the mood the music attempts to express. Here, we have the chaos of my brain tumor and the muted light of my recovery, with recapitulative passages depicting the ongoing slog of the war.”
I hit a series of random chords, up and down the keyboard. They were meant to represent the overlapping jabber of the too-rude and too-voluble guests at Otto’s all-too-frequent parties. The chords covertly announced my intention to pump the Maestro for information on Jean Staley.
Otto said, “Tell me what that earsplitting passage represents, and perhaps I shall tell you a compatible tale.”
“Your parties,” I said. “Nesting grounds for parasites, all given to one doctrinaire view. All belligerent and convinced of their own uniqueness.”
Otto laughed and clasped my left hand; he poised it over the keyboard and banged a run of similarly unpleasant chords. I pulled my hand free and laughed with him.
Otto said, “Call it a crude parody of the German tanks approaching Leningrad in Comrade Dimitri’s new symphony, and anoint it the expression of my own loneliness and need to smother it with the company of idiots.”
I laughed and got to the point. “Jean Staley comes to mind there. She seems to have colonized your guesthouse permanently. One might call her ‘the woman who came to dinner.’ ”
Otto found this uproarious. I failed to add “while she’s been dodging a major police inquiry and perpetrating a bewildering mail ruse.”
“Jean has colonized my guesthouse before, and will colonize it again. She is a Communist, you see. She purports to despise private property, even as she appropriates it. She sublets the homes of the rich to suit the whims of the decadent Right, which I find delightfully hilarious.”
I banged right-hand chords up and down the keyboard. “I sense a provocative story, Liebchen.”
“Aaah, Katherine Ann Lake in her vamp mode, and ever the rival of other provocative women.”
“I’m hardly Mata Hari, Liebchen.”
“No, but you are the consort of inquisitive policemen, and I know when I’m being pumped.”
I laughed and covered my mouth. I was once again a conniving schoolgirl in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Otto sipped brandy and lit a cigarette. “I wasn’t there for the party that Jean midwifed, but I had given her my consent to sublet the house, and to do with it as she saw fit. Saul Lesnick had diagnosed my tumor, and I was taking a rest cure prior to my operation. So, I’m afraid my story lacks the level of detail that might give it a corresponding punch.”
Once again, Saul Lesnick. Once again, Meyer Gelb’s cell. Annie Staples called me early this evening; she told me that she had secured wax impressions of Dr. Saul’s office keys.
“I’ve never minded incomplete stories.”
“I know that about you, dear. You’re quite capable of ascribing your own endings.”
“Otto, you’re taunting me—”
“It was early in ’39. Jean sublet my home for a party she described as having a ‘pro-fascist theme.’ I left the sanitarium and returned here. I immediately felt that something evil had happened in my absence, but I was debilitated, and disinclined to confront Jean as to what might have occurred. I was stuporous from headaches and the medicine that was prescribed to alleviate the pain, so I don’t know where I was or who the other person was when the following occurred.”
The Maestro taunted and teased me. I almost blurted “Don’t string this out.”
Otto hit the tanks-approaching chords from the Leningrad Symphony. They were ever dark and foreboding. The Maestro knew how to build suspense.
“The conclusion, dear Katherine. A man approached me and berated me for living in a haunted house. I beat that man to death.”
I shut my eyes. Otto hit the ominous chords again. I barely heard my own voice.
“And then?”
“And then, I told Dr. Lesnick. And Saul told me he knew an FBI man who could make it all go away, for a goodly amount of money.”
“Was the FBI man Ed Satterlee?”
“Yes.”
“Was Jean Staley the conduit for the financial transaction?”
The Maestro said, “Yes, she was.”
This/storm/this/savaging/disaster/the rain/the gold/the fire/it’s all/one story/you see.
I drove home and sat down at my own piano; I picked out those notes and tried to will a single three-case solution. The gold robbery as genesis; the fire as corresponding catastrophe; the Communist cell as point of constellation. Meyer Gelb, Jean Staley, Saul Lesnick. Ed Satterlee as snitch-recruiter. Otto Klemperer kills a man; Lesnick and Satterlee quash public exposure. The Maestro Manse as a current constellation point. Gelb’s current plan to recruit four exiled musicians and turn them as informants.
Lee was off at Hollenbeck Station; he’d told me the East L.A. sweep should run through the night. The house echoed those twenty-odd notes. My thoughts went nowhere constructive. I thought of Joan through it all.
The doorbell rang; I knew who it was; who else perched and pounced this late?
I got up and opened the door. Bill walked straight past me and beelined to the liquor shelf. I allotted him time to guzzle a tumbler of scotch. I knew all his brusque movements and modes of peremptory address.
He’ll turn to face me. He’ll reveal unsettling moments from the East L.A. sweep. He’ll take me in because I’m the woman he loves, and I hit him in the face ten days ago. I’ll notice the coffee stain on his wilted white shirt.
Bill did just that; the stain was off to the side of his necktie. He stood ten feet away from me and made no move to close the gap. He said, “Thad and I braced a dink named Miguel Santarolo. He said Rice and Kapek sold the Greenshirts a large quantity of Jap guns. He laid out some planned 211s and snitched off Salvy Abascal’s Irish-cop hermano. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that Dudley has been murdering priest-killers down in Baja, or that he’s now a slavering fascist convert.”
I sat down on the couch; Bill sat down beside me. I took off his hat and sailed it across the room. It hit the piano and landed on the adjoining carpet. Bill shut his eyes. I put my hand on his chest and felt his heart race.
“Annie made those wax impressions. We’ve got access to Lesnick’s office now.”
“Have Ashida toss it. He’s primed to betray Dudley. There’s a glimmer of decency in him that we can exploit.”
I unbuttoned his shirt and ran my hand over his chest. Bill said, “Oh Jesus, Kay.” He fumbled at my legs and snapped one garter strap. I went dizzy. He kept his hand there and kept his eyes shut.
It was who kisses who now. I pulled off Bill’s shoes and unclipped his holster. He clamped his hand on my hand and held it to his heart. I threw my free hand back and hit the light switch by the couch. It was who kisses who in the dark now.
Bill surprised me there. He pulled me close and touched me under my sweater. We bumped noses and scraped teeth as we kissed in the dark.
97
(Los Angeles, 8:00 A.M., 3/11/42)
Mondo “El Tigre” Díaz. He defines intractable. Sweatbox #4’s his new habitat. Ashida played good guy. Blanchard played bad guy. They were ten hours in. They eschewed rough stuff. They fed El Tigre doughnuts and coffee. They plied him with booze and contraband weed.