Dudley kicked him. The books scattered. Dudley kicked his face and split his nose. Dudley sliced a new harelip. Juan bit his coat sleeve and muzzled shrieks.
“I read a dot letter that Constanza received. It convinced me that I should issue a stern warning. There will be no sabotage on U.S. soil. Your cabal or clique or junta may not kill Americans.”
Juan whimpered. Dudley kicked his balls and kicked his legs. He pulled his Arkansas toad-stabber. It brought back ’28. He shot a 459 man and took a souvenir.
Juan whimpered. Dudley leaned over him. He grabbed his hair and carved a Jew star on his forehead.
Juan screamed. Constanza crossed her legs and blew smoke rings.
The Wolf watched them sniff cocaine and make love. They steamed up Constanza’s bedroom. Dudley held a hand out. The Wolf licked white powder off his fingertips.
They lay three abed. The Wolf purred and dozed. Constanza stroked him.
“The scar will never heal. You’ve marked him for life. He’ll look in the mirror and know that I’ve told you everything. He’ll recall that he raped me on my tenth birthday, and he’ll never touch me or tell me who to sleep with again.”
Dudley burrowed into her. He felt schizy. His heart raced. He fought chills. He saw three of everything. Constanza, the Wolf, the bed.
Constanza stroked the Wolf. Constanza stroked him. His pulse ratcheted down some. She gave him her breasts.
“We can use him, my darling. We can use him as he has used me. We can find the gold by ourselves, and keep all of it. These rumored comrades would not dare to trifle with a fearsome man such as you.”
The Wolf warmed him. Constanza warmed him. She threw a leg over them both.
“You must know something, my love. I consider it definitive. I will never be able to fully give myself to a man as long as my brother draws breath.”
He caught a midnight flight back. He still felt schizy. His pulse still raced. He ran too hot or too cold.
He smelled Constanza all over him. He held his hands out and shared her scent with the Wolf. He cabbed home to the del Norte. He unlocked the door and turned on the lights.
The Wolf hopped on his favorite chair and dozed off. Dudley smelled something familiar. Perfumed stationery. The envelope on the floor. He knew that—
The L.A. postmark, her handwriting, her now-banal scent.
He opened the letter. It ran six full pages. Claire cut loose on him.
His Irish pomp and bonhomie. People laugh behind his back. Her dope cure and how it purges his fowl touch and stink. His infantile brag. His groveling need for women. His puerile rule over weak men. His shanty mick cultivation of all things high-class. His jejune grandiosity. His vile regard for God’s law. The precise moments that Beth Short and Joan Klein saw through him. His rage cloaked in pitiful terror. His shallowness. His abject neediness. His idiot criminal schemes that all run aground. His sheer fraudulence. His effete eye for callow young men. His remorseless cruelty. His repugnant selfishness. His trifling life passed unmourned and casually unremembered.
He dropped the letter and weaved into the bedroom. His heart raced. He saw three of everything. He saw three nightstands on Claire’s side of the bed. He pulled open the top drawer. He saw three syringes and dope spikes and vials of morphine sulfate.
He grew three arms. He ripped off his coat and fashioned a sleeve tourniquet. His three hands shook. He saw three syringes, three spikes, three vials. He rigged the kit and punctured the stopper. It took three tries. His third try hit the vein. He went slack and fell back on the bed.
108
Kay Lake’s Diary (Los Angeles, 8:00 P.M., 3/27/42)
The PD kept a suite at the Ambassador Hotel. It was used to stash important witnesses and entertain politicos that Jack Horrall sought to impress. The Cocoanut Grove was three floors below; the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra was headlining tonight. “Song of India” drifted upstairs. It made me want to jump out of bed, grab Bill, and dance.
But we were naked, Bill wasn’t the dancing type, and he was occupied with my typed draft of Claire’s handwritten letter to Dudley. We were both anxious and apprehensive. Dudley should have received the letter by now.
Bill said, “You’re presuming a small kernel of self-knowledge in the man. One that he won’t be able to shake.”
“Yes, but not conscience,” I said. “I expressed Claire’s sentiments in my own words, and inferred that a great number of people see through him. He’s immune to remorse, and he has no germ of probity to appeal to. He has to be made to question his hold over those he commands and seeks to intimidate.”
Bill smiled and cleaned his glasses on a pillowcase. We sat with our backs on the headboard and sipped room-service bourbon. We were lovers and hotel cohabiters now; Bill’s marriage cohabited his conscience more than mine. Lee Blanchard didn’t care what I did with men. We were cohabiters in name only. Bill understood the arrangement more than I first thought he would.
He said, “I’ve got your script memorized, and I’ll be seeing Monsignor Hayes soon. I’ll lay out your version of Dudley and the klubhaus job, and make the monsignor fear for his own safety.”
“Claire’s recuperating. She’ll go to confession a few days after you. She’ll spear Dudley from oblique angles.”
Bill kissed me and pulled the sheet below my breasts. Seeing me nude always underlined exactly what this was and that I wasn’t his wife. I knew he’d say something dispiriting next.
“We cannot maneuver Dudley into criminal indictment without bringing down the PD. We cannot strategically circumvent him to any sure advantage. He’s simply too well situated, and too many powerful men owe him and need him.”
“He’s inviolate as long as he’s perceived as sane,” I said. “And the best way to unnerve him is through his women.”
Bill said, “He has to lose his shot at the gold. A three-case solve has to explode in his face. We have to hope that Hideo Ashida values a clean solve more than he values his loyalty to that shitheel.”
109
(Manzanar, 9:00 A.M., 3/28/42)
The file stacks. Newly compiled and exhaustively comprehensive. A full three-case brief.
He’d lost his Ensenada set. Post-Pimentel chaos had engulfed him. Dudley had supplied this replacement. It contained all-new paperwork.
Newspaper clips. Custody files and visitors’ logs. Bertillon charts. Detailed background briefs and summary reports.
Ashida worked at his desk. His beating-injury pain had subsided. He’d self-treated his wounds. He’d rested. He’d applied alcohol rubs and ice packs. He felt better now.
He’d scrambler-phoned Elmer and Kay this morning. He’d bug-checked the phone and tagged it pristine. Elmer and Kay updated him. They laid out the faux Claire letter. Faux daughter letters would follow. Plus, faux Claire and Bill Parker confessions to Joe Hayes. They laid out the Jamie and Ness family ownership of Bev’s Switchboard. Plus, the Hayes family-money cut. Plus, the L.A. Sheriff’s protection clause. Plus, Jean Staley as Ed Satterlee’s snitch. Jean drives Fritz Eckelkamp southbound, post — gold heist. Wayne Frank Jackson as Meyer Gelb’s KA.
Terry Lux and Lin Chung. They plastic-cut Meyer’s hands. Ruth Szigeti. She knew Eckelkamp in Berlin, circa ’20s. Circles constrict and overlap, circles remain in ellipses.
He updated Elmer and Kay. He laid out the microdot revelations. He pitched the left-right cabal, then to now. He stressed the Dresden Poly convergence. He told them everything Dudley had told him. Elmer and Kay stood up-to-date. They’d repitch Parker and Thad Brown. He stood up-to-date. He was set to push forward, now.