Jean sipped spiked coffee. She took little sips. 151 was hoodoo hooch.
“I’ll tell you what I know. I’ll start at the start, and you can fill in whatever blanks you can.”
“That’s what I need to hear.”
“You haven’t issued any kind of threats yet. I haven’t heard you say ‘Give me this’ and ‘Roll over on this guy, or I’ll run you in.’ ”
Elmer shook his head. “I don’t know where I can go with any of this, without it causing a big upscut and getting shot down, because it’s all too damn embarrassing for everybody concerned, and the smart thing to do is make it all vanish. I’d like to find out the whole story on my brother and get a clean klubhaus solve, and running you in wouldn’t help me any there.”
Jean said, “Okay, then. I’m fifteen years old and crapping out in a Jesuit college dorm in San Francisco. I meet Fritzie Eckelkamp, who likes his stuff underage, and one thing leads to another. It’s ’27 now, and Fritzie goes down behind his robbery string in Alameda. He’s up in Quentin now, and we correspond and keep in touch. Fritzie wangles a retrial in L.A. and gets on that train that’s all loaded up with gold. Before you ask, I don’t know if Fritzie got hipped on the gold before or after he escaped from the train, or if he had anything to do with the heist. All I know is that he sure got hipped on it in good time, and this gold bar you promised me didn’t come from nowhere.”
Elmer sipped spiked coffee. Jean sipped spiked coffee. She scooched her legs and surefire vamped him.
“Don’t stop there, now.”
Jean caught some breath. “Fritzie told me there might be a crash-out, and he said to wait by the phone. I did, and I sure as hell got the call. I was twenty-two then, and I dressed all high school girl. I stole a car in Sacramento and picked Fritzie up in San Luis Obispo. There were roadblocks all the way southbound on the 101, but the cops bought my schoolgirl act and neglected to check the trunk. The roadblocks were lifted, north of Malibu and this swanky nuthouse. I got Fritzie into L.A. and dropped him at a fleabag hotel in Echo Park. That’s when I met Meyer Gelb, and that’s when Fritzie stopped being the so-called man in my life, and Meyer took over the job.”
She’d played kosher so far. The last part felt rehearsed. Her Fritzie-Meyer spiel played too pat.
“Keep going. You’re doing good in my book.”
Jean said, “Some time passed. I’d been selling maryjane in Sacramento and moving it through Tulare County, into Nevada. That made it a Federal bounce. A Fed named Edmund J. Satterlee popped me, and I gave up Meyer as a Commo to buy my way out. Ed fed me a diet of Communist tracts, and I faked a conversion and joined Meyer’s CP cell in L.A. Ed got me a screen test at Paramount, because he was chums with the studio cops, and that’s when I entered my silly-starlet phase. The deal was, Ed learned that Meyer recruited for the Party at Paramount, and that he ran a handbook there, and he wanted me to keep tabs on him. That’s how I became a so-called movie actress.”
Elmer tossed a tweaker. “What’s Fritzie doing while all this is going on?”
Jean rebuffed it. “I told you. Fritzie walked out, Meyer walked in.”
It still played hinky. It still played too pat.
Elmer said, “Keep going. You’ve got me tantalizized.”
Jean removed her glasses and buffed them on her skirt. She was buck-toothed and half cross-eyed. She was still a hot dish.
“So, I met a prop man at Paramount and married him. Ralph D. Barr. I lied the first time we talked. I was afraid you’d roust me if you knew I was hitched up with this big arsonist and Griffith Park fire suspect. Of course, Meyer and Ralphie were two peas in a pod, and they both loved fires, floods, cataclysms, and storms. Ralphie was an active firebug, but Meyer was just a fire talker and a gasbag. He was preaching apocalypse before the big fire, working up the rubes at garment workers’ marches and the like. Then the fire occurred, and Meyer and me and the other fools in the cell got leaned on, and it all went away until you knocked on my door.”
Elmer sighed. “So that’s it, then?”
Jean sighed. “That’s it.”
“Wayne Frank Jackson, Karl Frederick Tullock, Kyoho Hanamaka. Ring any bells for you?”
“Well, Wayne Frank’s your brother, who I didn’t know from Adam — and you still haven’t told me why you thought he was murdered and not just burned up by accident. I don’t know the second guy, and Kyoho was pals with Meyer, but I hardly knew him. Meyer said he swung right and left, and that he was some big-deal spy for the Jap Navy.”
Elmer brain-drained it. “Gelb and Hanamaka have got these allegedly burn-scarred fingers. I’m wondering if they got them in the Griffith Park fire.”
Jean shook her head. “Meyer was with me the day of the fire. Him and Kyoho were strange-o types of the first order, and they burned their fingers doing print-eradication dips, if you can feature that kind of action.”
Elmer beagle-eyed Jean Clarice Staley. She read 96.6 % kosher overall.
“Let’s get back to Gelb, Tommy the G., and that spy shit we discussed.”
Jean squirmed. She was hot to grab the gold and scram.
“Like I said, I’m strictly from shakedown. I pulled jobs with Tommy, mostly on political types, but I just sent incriminating photos and wire recordings through intermediaries, so I never knew who the marks were. I’m really just a courier and an informant. I finked Saul Lesnick to Ed Satterlee, years before Ed exploited his daughter’s vehicular-manslaughter beef and turned Saul as his own snitch. All I’ve done spywise is forward mail for Meyer through Bev’s Switchboard, which is the Grand Central Station of spy mail, because it’s 1942, and everybody and his spotted dog is Fifth Column and thinks this new world war is the gateway to untold riches. Also, Bev’s is in L.A., and L.A.’s close to Mexico. Meyer says the alleged el jefe of this alleged right-left conspiracy is a Mex, but I think it’s all fantasia, because I think Mexico’s a repository for all of Meyer’s nutty get-rich-quick schemes and political notions. Bev’s is Sheriff’s-protected, and—”
Elmer cut in. “Why’d you send me them postcards? Why’d you pretend to be traveling?”
Jean turned on her baby browns. Jean laid on the oooh, baby and soft-soaped him.
“You’re a cop, Elmer. I sure go for you, but that’s what you are. I told Meyer you were nosing around, and he told me to scram for a while. I had a bunch of microdot postcards I was supposed to forward, so I decided to send them through you, because I knew you’d save them, and then I could retrieve them. Also, Bev Shoftel was starting to think that Sheriff Biscailuz was souring on their protection deal, so sending the cards to you seemed safer, because then I could resend them through Bev, if her biz was still protected.”
Jean, baby. Say it ain’t so. You exploited my redneck ass and ran me in circles.
“Ed Satterlee requested a search warrant for Bev’s. How does that snatch you?”
“It doesn’t snatch me at all. Ed’s business is Ed’s business, and thanks for the tip.”
“Where’s Meyer live? Nobody can pin an address on him.”
“Nobody knows where Meyer lives. He’s just that secretive. We communicate through Bev’s.”
“What’s Fritzie doing now?”
“I told you. Fritzie walked out, Meyer walked in. Fritzie’s out in the vapors.”
“You arranged a party at Otto Klemperer’s place in the winter of ’39. Tell me about that.”
Jean foot-stroked the gold bar. Her nylon stockings went screee.