Ashida stacked the files. He worked chronologically. He jumped back to ’27. He read the Eckelkamp arrest reports and background sheets.
Alameda. A small East Bay burg. It’s couched between Oakland and Berkeley. Alameda’s the county seat. Their rinky-dink Sheriff’s force roams countywide. Fritz Eckelkamp pulls countywide 211s. County bulls pop him at his eleventh heist. He admits his prior robberies. It’s tacitly confirmed. His confession was coerced.
It’s old news, so far. The background brief’s got more snap.
Eckelkamp riffs on Weimar Berlin. The street skirmishes. The Nazi-thug-versus-Marxist-thug riots. Nazi thugs and Marxist thugs allied in blackmail schemes. A Nazi-Sparticist kidnapping ring.
Deutschland, ’26. Evidence of right-left alliance. Ensenada, ’40. The formal alliance meets. It pervades three case lines: ’31, ’33, ’42.
More background facts. Fritz Eckelkamp is born Protestant. He’s orphaned early. He’s raised by a Jewish family. He’s Yiddish-fluent.
Ashida cut back to Alameda. Fritzie is tried, convicted, slammed for twenty-five years. He’s sent to San Quentin. He studies law texts and petitions for a retrial. It’s now 2/31. His application is granted. The trial is scheduled for Los Angeles District Court.
Three newspaper stories were clipped to the file. They were perfunctory. Clip #1 announced eight convict retrials. Judicial errors had been determined. The retrials would take place in L.A. They would begin in mid-May, ’31. Clip #2 announced the gold-train run. It was set for May 18. There it is — San Francisco to L.A. Clip #3 announced a rail workers’ strike. It would cripple but not halt operations. The San Francisco train yards have endured labor strife. The strike would hit 4/25. That meant this:
Certain train runs would be combined.
U.S. government runs. California state runs. That meant the run. Ashida surmised this:
The convict-retrial run and gold-train run were secretly combined. Fritz Eckelkamp learned this. He had leftist contacts at the Frisco train yards. He planned the mass escape. He escaped for good. The other convicts were gunned down. Fritzie worked solo. He cut his fellow convicts loose, impromptu. He planned the derailed-track snafu. The escape went down. Chaos reigned. It suited Fritzie’s designs. Marxist realpolitik. Expendable convicts are killed. Only his freedom counts.
Ashida backtracked. He pulled the Alameda custody file and skimmed it. He caught a hot file note.
Fritzie met Leander Frechette in ’27. They were county-jail inmates then. Frechette. He’s these three things. He’s Negro/mentally dim/big and inhumanely strong. He’s the chief gold-heist suspect. He’s the bête noire of the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s and Deputy Karl Tullock. Frechette was a trainman and rail-yard worker. He’d been jailed for Assault One. He took part in a Frisco labor brawl. An obscure file note sizzled. A guard boss caught the odd friendship. Here’s this Kraut armed robber and dim colored youth.
Ashida surmised:
Frechette is not dim. He feigns insolvency. It complements his labor-thug pose. He conspires with Fritz Eckelkamp. He tells Fritz that he works gold-run jobs on occasion. The heist is theoretically planned. It’s a jailhouse-bullshit concoction. It’s conceived in advance of Fritzie’s San Quentin jolt. It’s all shuck and jive at that stage.
Ashida backtracked. He pulled Fritzie’s jail visitors’ log and skimmed it. He caught a hot file note.
Martin Luther Mimms visited Fritzie. There’s Mimms, in Alameda County. He’s a corrupt preacher/slumlord/race racketeer. He owned the 46th Street klubhaus. He’s tight with ranking L.A. cops. Jump — ’27 to ’31. Mimms springs Leander Frechette from the Santa Barbara jail. Mimms halts the beatings of Deputy Karl Tullock.
Mimms. He’s L.A.-based. He’s tight with high-up L.A. cops. Who’s the boss L.A. cop in 1931? It’s James Edgar “Two-Gun” Davis.
Names. Dates. Guesses. Extrapolation. Surmise.
Frechette creates the initial train-track diversion. He employs his fearsome strength and bare hands. The escape occurs. The train journeys south. There’s a second track snafu. It’s Frechette’s work, as well. Frechette off-loads the gold bars on his person. He hands them off to—
?????
Jean Staley facilitates Fritzie’s escape. She’s Fritzie’s lover. They haul southbound. They dodge roadblocks. Jim Davis aids the escape. He clues Fritzie and Jean in to roadblock deployment. Said roadblocks are pulled on U.S. 101 south. Right before this ritzy nut farm. It’s Terry Lux’s nut farm. This is all informed guesswork.
Elmer Jackson chats up Ruth Szigeti. She cites Eckelkamp’s resemblance to Meyer Gelb. Her statement startles Elmer. He almost blurts his big guess on the scrambler-phone call.
Ashida surmised. Let’s confirm or refute. This investigation is all about that.
Meyer Gelb has burn-seared fingers. They’re covered by graft marks. Meyer Gelb was hauled in and braced per the Griffith Park fire. His scarred fingers tweaked the Arson Squad cops. That has to be true. Gelb’s fingerprint ID has been compromised. What’s their next step? What would the Arson cops do?
They’d order up a Bertillon measurement chart. They’d establish a certified Meyer Gelb ID. That raises this question:
Was Fritz Eckelkamp Bertillon-charted? Did Alameda County or the San Quentin lab chart his measurements?
Ashida prowled file paper. He jumped ’27 to ’28 and Fritzie’s Quentin jolt. There it is. The Quentin lab charted him, 1/12/29. That’s one comparison point.
It takes two to make this work. Ashida jumped — Eckelkamp to Gelb. He jumped ’29 to ’33 and the Griffith Park fire. He thumbed Arson Squad and Red Squad reports. Comrade Gelb’s cell is hotly scrutinized. Comrade Gelb is hard-nosed. What’s with your fingers, Jewboy? Let’s Bertillon-chart this kike.
There it is. 10/18/33. The PD crime lab charts Meyer Gelb. Ray Pinker measures him.
Ashida studied the two charts. Ashida dripped sweat on the pages. He compared the height and limb-length numbers. He compared the finger spans. He compared twenty-three separate phrenological marks. Every single mark matched identically. This is no extrapolation. Fritz Eckelkamp is Meyer Gelb.
Now, we extrapolate.
Jean Staley lied to Elmer Jackson. She omitted a key fact. The roadblocks are pulled just north of Terry Lux’s clinic. Jean takes Fritzie there. Dr. Terry and Lin Chung perform plastic surgery. They make Eckelkamp Gelb. Jean Staley knows this, full well. Fresh-cut Gelb joins the CP and forms his own cell. Jean S., the Lesnicks, and Jorge Villareal-Caiz join up. Sieg Heil — they raise the Red flag.
Cut to summer ’33. It’s two months before the Griffith Park blaze. A rash of liquor store 211s plague the L.A. cops. Liquor-store jobs are Fritz Eckelkamp’s meat. Eyewits ID a man who resembles Wayne Frank Jackson. Let’s posit a two-man heist squad. Strange bedfellows. Faux Jew/face-cut Meyer Gelb and Klan klown Wayne Frank Jackson. Let’s posit that prefire Gelb/Wayne Frank bond.
Ellen Drew has already confirmed it. She has not confirmed a Gelb/Wayne Frank chronological point of convergence. Ellen Drew was a mid-’30s Paramount starlet. She met Gelb-who’s-really-Eckelkamp then. She met Wayne Frank Jackson then. Wayne Frank was alive then. She ID’d Elmer’s wallet pic. That cinched her identification.