Ellen dished good dish. It confirmed prior dish. It cinched up Staley/Gelb/Barr/Lux/Chink-o Chung et al.
“Sergeant Elmer’s in a trance. Don’t tell me this is ‘strictly routine.’ You’ve got your jaws locked on something.”
Elmer yukked. “All right. We’ve got all these strange-o types. What about other friends and known associates?”
Ellen crushed her cigarette. “There was this tall southern guy. He impressed me as a grifter, and he had a drawl sort of like yours.”
Cinch knots unraveled. Elmer pulled out his wallet and fanned the photo sleeves. He flashed his Wayne Frank picture. Ellen orbed in on it.
“Yeah, that’s the guy. And I hate to say it, but that Klan sheet looks pretty good on him.”
Surprise didn’t cut it. Shock missed the point. Spiritus Mundi said it best.
Kay’s shtick. We share one soul and one fate. Our shit’s all interlocked. We’re as one and fucked-up by life’s follies. We swirl as our foolish fate plays itself out.
Annie was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She looked 1:00 a.m. in-her-robe goooood. She scoped his dizzy demeanor and fixed him a quadruple scotch. He guzzled it.
The couch dipped. He saw the six-eyed beasts in the Book of Revelation. Wayne Frank grew six eyes and burned a Klan cross. Tommy Glennon levitated. Gold dust rained down on L.A. Joan Conville resurrected. Revelations ripped his way.
Mondo Díaz. Frankie Carbajal. The Dresden boys. Joan said it’s all one story. Kay said she’d marry him if he sussed it all out.
Annie said, “Penny for your thoughts.”
Elmer opened his eyes. The couch resettled. The Revelation gang waved good-bye.
“Ed Satterlee. You’ve spent time in the sack with him. Tell me something I don’t know.”
Annie furrowed up. “I think he’s a secret Red, but nobody knows it. He’s always saying we’ll win the war with Germany but lose the war with Russia, which wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He says we should be prepared for that, because the Reds are the wave of the future.”
Ruth said, “Have you ever killed anyone, Elmer? You have heard my own horrible story, and I must insist that you respond in kind and answer me candidly.”
The bed sagged. They’d sweated up the sheets. The bedroom was cold. A sea breeze ruffled the curtains and induced goose bumps.
“I clipped a political fanatic in Nicaragua. He was trying to kill the police chief we had here in L.A. then. Jim Davis was grateful, and that’s how I got on the PD.”
Ruth finger-walked up his rib cage. She did deliberate things like that. Her panther eyes gleamed.
“You are a bloodthirsty type. I would have thought you would have more scalps on your belt.”
Book of Revelation. Six-eyed beasts. Tommy Glennon and Catbox Cal Lunceford. Additional scalps on his belt.
“That’s as far as it goes. I’ve never had the misfortune of passing through Nazi Germany, and I’ve never come up against the likes of Meyer Gelb.”
“You say Comrade Gelb’s name casually, as if you know this man in a personal way.”
“I’m working an investigation. His name keeps coming up.”
Ruth shrugged. “There is not much one can say about Comrade Gelb. He is a Communist, so he is both enlightened and deluded. He is also an extortionist, which has earned him my enmity. I owe my American passage to Herr Comrade, but many good people died as a result. My friends and I will not be impressed into informant duty, and we ardently applaud your coercive efforts with Miss Staley. Maestro Otto has passed along rumors as to Comrade Gelb and his left-right bund, but they impress me as nebulous poppycock.”
Elmer shrugged. “That’s all you’ve got on Meyer the G., huh?”
Ruth grabbed his hair and pulled their heads close. She did abrupt things like that.
“I formally met Gelb only once. It was in Munich, in ’36 or ’37. We met at a reception for Wilhelm Furtwängler. We were two Jews, and we briefly discussed our prospects for leaving Germany alive. Gelb bore an odd resemblance to a Sparticist hoodlum I knew in Berlin in the ’20s. His name was Fritz Eckelkamp, and he was quite the mad boy. I mentioned this to Herr Gelb, and noted that my rather bland comment disturbed him.”
Revelation. Spiritus Mundi. Six-eyed somethings. Ellen Drew’s dish. Jean Staley’s drift.
Ellen’s dish enticed. Terry Lux and a Chink plastic man grafted up Gelb’s hands. Jean’s drift gored and perplexed.
The train escape and gold heist. Jean finagles Fritz Eckelkamp through southbound roadblocks. The roadblocks stop north of Malibu. “Near this ritzy nuthouse.” It’s the Terry Lux clinic, for sure.
“Elmer, where are you? You are certainly not listening to me.”
Elmer fought off chills. His goose bumps grew goose bumps.
“I’m sorry. What were you saying?”
“I was commenting on Comrade Gelb, and I was saying that when the four of us were flown to La Paz, the airplane stopped in Juarez to refuel. An FBI man boarded the plane and queried us on Comrade Gelb. He wanted to know about Herr Gelb’s plans to relocate refugees, but it occurred to me that he already knew the answers, and that perhaps he and Herr Gelb were in league. He added that we should mind our p’s and q’s, or risk expulsion from America.”
Elmer tingled. “Was the FBI man’s name Ed Satterlee?”
Ruth said, “Yes, it was.”
107
(Tijuana, 9:00 A.M., 3/26/42)
The T.J. Express. Two trucks and two buses. Perched at the border. Japs and wets set to roll.
To internment camps. To PD road gangs. To San Joaquin Valley farms. Arriba, Japos y braceros. You’re plain old slaves now.
Salvy was late. Dudley briefed the Statie drivers and gun guards. They resented him. Juan Pimentel was their immediate boss and sub-Führer. El Dudley mollycoddled his killer. El Puto Ashida got a soft stateside berth. It pissed the slave crew off.
Salvy was late. It pissed him off. Salvy was set to ride north with the slaves. He was charged to glad-hand farm and road-gang jefes and dispense bonus cash. Salvy excelled at such tasks. Salvy possessed the gift of gab and the PR-man touch.
Salvy was late. Dudley was double-pissed. Al Wilhite called him last night. He reported Hideo Ashida’s first day in camp.
Hideo praised his accommodations. Youthful thugs beat him up. That was most regrettable. Hideo had pressing tasks. He had file work to assess and a french-fried Jap to debrief.
Kazio Hiroki. Note the suspect initials. Wilhite snagged him off the Hanamaka APB. Hiroki is bilingual. Hideo will brace him in English and Japanese.
Salvy was late. Dudley fumed and performed roll-out tasks. He head-counted slaves. He stashed heroin in engine compartments. He teethed on Constanza, nonstop.
He saw her naked. He saw her clothed. He dressed her in fascist garb. She wore brown jackboots and carried a riding crop. She surveyed Waffen-SS troops and found them unkempt. She lashed them and drew blood.
Salvy was late. Dudley teethed on Constanza. He loved her. He did not fully trust her. He’d run intermittent stakeouts on the La Paz post office. Hideo snatched and mailed Elmer J.’s microdot letter. Constanza must have received it.