“It’s me, for sure. I’m at Kwan’s, and Ace told me you wanted to gab.”
Kay said, “Lee called me from Chinatown. He told me about Mondo Díaz and what he said about Jim Davis and the ‘Kameraden.’ Díaz said they were running shakedowns, and Annie Staples told me some things that got me thinking.”
Elmer yukked. “Well, shit, then. When you think, I listen.”
“All right. Annie told me that Jean Staley wasn’t really a Red, and that she and Meyer Gelb planned to extort a group of Jewish refugees that Otto Klemperer has befriended. Otto shares a minor history with your friend Jean, and she’s been staying in his guesthouse while she’s been sending you postcards from her automobile trip.”
Elmer went woooo. “I can tell you found out some things that I didn’t tell you.”
Kay said, “I’ve got that knack — which is why you love me so much.”
Elmer said, “Hold that thought. A notion just smacked me, and I’ll let you know if it pans out.”
Brentwood was swank. Lots of leafy streets and big Spanish houses. Brentwood north of Sunset was woodsy swank. You had deep-set yards and cribs more like estates.
Elmer surveilled the Maestro Manse. He hunkered low in his sled. Dusk came and went. He settled in for a loooooong eyeball stint.
He parked behind Jean Staley’s ’35 Ford. He got her DMV stats and ID’d her car. He went by Central Station, en route to here. He burgled Hideo Ashida’s locker and stole a priceless something. He laid said something on the front seat of Jolting Jean’s car.
The Maestro Manse was done up modernistic. Elmer perched across the street and got the looooooong eyeball view. He pissed in a cardboard coffee cup and smoked cigars. He scratched his balls and brain-strained Jean Clarice Staley.
Jean, the carhop. Jean, the ex-starlet. Jean, the faux Red and Fed fink. Jean, the ritzy-house subletter. Jean’s jungled up with Meyer Gelb. Red Meyer extorted movie stars and Commos. That was back in the ’30s. Meyer and Jean got current blackmail plans. There’s these hebe exiles swapped out of Krautland. Meyer’s got designs on them.
Jean, baby — say it ain’t so.
Tommy G. tattled her good. Jean went back with Fritz Eckelkamp. That cinched her to the gold heist. Jean was hitched to an arson dog named Ralph D. Barr. That cinched her to the fire. Tommy G. revealed all this. Tommy G. dubbed Jim Davis his spy conduit. Mondo Díaz tapped Chief Jim, likewise.
Elmer lit a fresh cigar. Elmer pissed in his piss cup and tossed the piss out the window. Elmer scoped the Maestro Manse and heard a door slam.
Then a cough. Then high-heel taps. Then Jean herself. She made for her car. Moonglow lit her up. She wore a tight skirt and a camel-hair coat. She wore nifty tortoiseshell glasses.
Elmer hunkered extra low. Jean crossed the street and went for her sled. She opened the driver’s door. The roof light flashed. She saw you know what and fucking SHRIEKED.
Elmer jumped out and swooped down on her. Jean dumbstruck’d the gold. She was bug-eyed and all trancelike. She sensed nothing else on planet Earth.
She touched the bar. She traced the mint marks. She caressed the bar and all but drooled. She fondled the contours. It’s the Fatted Calf. Come, let us adore—
Elmer swooped and clamped her mouth shut. Elmer said, “You can keep it, if you tell me some things.”
Santa Monica was close. They car-o-vanned to the Goody Goody Drive-in. They sat in Elmer’s car. Elmer ordered coffee and spiked it with 151.
It was cold and clear. The beach was close. Cars whirred by on Wilshire. Jean snuggled close to him.
Elmer nudged her back. Ixnay, sister. Don’t you vamp me tonight.
“Tommy Glennon’s my source on most of this. Some police-file dirt fills out the rest.”
Jean said, “How is Tommy? I haven’t seen him in a coon’s age.”
“Tommy’s off for parts unknown. Sort of like you, with that fake-postcard shuck you were running on me.”
The gold bar sat on the floorboard. Jean kicked off her shoes and foot-fondled it. Her nylon stockings went screee.
“You’re telling me you sussed out the drop at Bev’s Switchboard, and you know what’s going on there.”
Elmer sipped spiked coffee. “Let’s start with Tommy. He was making what he called ‘gibberish calls’ to some sort of relay phone down in Baja. He got his so-called scripts for the calls at Bev’s. All of this here shit is specifically spy shit, and you’ve got to have some sort of knowledge of it, because everybody knows everybody in this tight little world of yours, and all this shit is rolled up in a tight little ball.”
Jean lit a cigarette. “You’ve got to be more specific than that. I don’t know anything about Tommy making ‘gibberish calls,’ and I don’t know anything about spies in Baja or elsewhere. I was in the CP back in the ’30s, back when it was the thing to do. I met some questionable folks, but I’m not part of any spy ring run by the Comintern or the domestic CP, or anybody else. Get it? I renounced Communism, and you know what I am in my heart?”
Elmer smiled. “You’re a shakedown girl.”
Jean smiled. “Give Sergeant E. V. Jackson a gold star, because he hit it right on the head.”
Elmer respiked their coffee. “Let’s get back to Tommy for a second. All that code-call stuff got decoded and sent to a brother and sister in La Paz, way south in Baja. There’s some hotshot left-wing/right-wing cabal looking to make hay with whoever wins this here war. Does any of this make sense to you?”
Jean said, “No. But I’ve been around CP guys and their pals for a long time, so I can tell you that the far Left and the far Right share a lot of spit, because what they really hate is the square white man’s U.S.”
Elmer sipped coffee. The 151 subverted the bennies and had him seeing wisps.
“There’s a klubhaus off of 46th and Central. Two cops named Wendell Rice and George Kapek got snuffed there. They had a Mex pal named Archie Archuleta. He got snuffed, too.”
Jean shrugged. “If you’re asking me if I know anything about all this, the answer is no.”
“Frankie Carbajal, Miguel Santarolo, Mondo Díaz, and Salvador Abascal.”
“No. It sounds like a cavalcade of cholos to me, and I don’t play the Latin-lover field.”
Elmer smirked. “What about Two-Gun Davis? He’s the ex — L.A. police chief.”
Jean tossed her cigarette. “Strictly from hunger. He’s a fellow traveler all over the spectrum, but he sways distinctly right. We talked about Meyer Gelb that first time we met, and Meyer and Jim Davis go back a ways. Jim’s also tight with Saul Lesnick, for what that’s worth.”
Elmer teethed on it. Elmer flashed the klubhaus smut pix. Jean squinted at them and went nein.
“If you’re asking me who the two skirts are, I’ve got no idea.”
“Sex shows at the klubhaus? Queer stuff at the klubhaus? A nutty Jap who licks blood off swords, and his homo companion?”
“Elmer, I know nothing about that clubhouse, so why would I know something about the strange-o types who congregate there?”
Elmer teethed Jean overall. “Tommy said you knew Fritz Eckelkamp. That takes you back to ’31, Eckelkamp’s escape, and the gold robbery later that same day. You’re tight with Meyer Gelb, so that takes you back to ’33 and the fire that killed my brother. Them first two events are all hooked together, and don’t tell me they’re not. They’re both a ways back, and now we got the klubhaus job tethered in, and the same names keep popping up. There’s some kind of story here, and you’re the only one I got to tell it to me.”