Ergo:
Wayne Frank did not die in the Griffith Park fire. Ergo: somebody else did. Ergo: somebody snatched Wayne Frank’s dental chart from the office of his cut-rate dentist. Ergo: somebody planted the real dead man’s chart under Wayne Frank’s name. Ergo: those efforts confirmed Wayne Frank’s death. Ergo: Wayne Frank’s perceived death was deemed essential — but to who and to what criminal end?
Ashida surmised. Ashida tossed conclusions. Ashida linked three-case players, flesh-to-flesh. Eckelkamp-Gelb to Jean Staley to Leander Frechette. Leander to Martin Luther Mimms. Toss in the late Ralph D. Barr. Toss in Ed Satterlee. He suborned Jean Staley. He ordered her to fink out fresh-cut Meyer’s cell.
Saul Lesnick’s in that cell. Satterlee makes him his snitch. Kay Lake has duplicate keys to Lesnick’s office.
Ashida caressed the file stacks. He’d dripped sweat all over them.
It’s all one story. I will not be denied the full truth of it.
Kazio Hiroki. The same initials. It must be him. Al Wilhite has implied it. Who else could he be?
A waiting room adjoined the burn ward. Ashida sat alone. Wilhite drove him from Manzanar to Lone Pine. The interview had been prearranged. The subject requested Dr. Ashida. Dr. Ashida was his preferred interlocutor.
Hiroki was bilingual. They could chat in English or Japanese. Wilhite issued strict orders. “You will take no notes. You will write nothing down. You will report to Major Smith, verbally.”
Wilhite sat downstairs. He’d worked off Dudley’s APB. Hiroki hid in plain sight. His cover was interned Jap, vouched by forged papers. He’d journeyed north-northeast. Baja to L.A. L.A. to Manzanar. He had a cot in “C” row, bachelor barracks 3.
Hiroki was clearly insane. He torched his barracks and scorched himself, severely. A doctor noted preexisting burn scars. The doctor told Hiroki that some Army cops wanted to brace him. Hiroki said, “Dr. Ashida, one hopes.”
A nurse walked in. Ashida stood up. The nurse walked him to the ward proper. It was three rooms off a hallway crammed with drip gizmos. Ashida smelled medicinal salve and charred flesh.
The nurse opened the door and about-faced. The room was small. There was a crank-up bed and guest chair. Air vents diffused salve and burn stink.
Hiroki was bandage-mummified and cranked up to face guests. An intravenous bag fed him pain juice. His face was uncovered. It was him. It’s all one story, you—
Ashida pulled the chair up. He said, “芦田先生.”
Hanamaka said, “花丸司令官.”
His voice was firm. His neck was unbandaged. His vocal chords were most surely intact.
Hanamaka shut his eyes. Ashida unscrewed the fluid bag. He pulled out an envelope and poured in three crumbled Benzedrine. Get your man perked up and loose-lipped. Dudley taught him the trick.
They traded pleasantries. Hanamaka alternated English and Japanese. So happy to meet you and あなたの最近の人生に興味を持ってきました. 渡辺事件. 警察 署の仕事. Juan Pimentel and のメールドロップニュース.
Ashida quick-translated. I’ve followed your recent life with interest. The Watanabe case. Your police department work. Mail-drop news from Juan Pimentel.
“I would say that I’m notorious, more than justifiably famous.”
Hanamaka switched to English. “I’m sure that you and Major Smith know a great deal about my endeavors, going back some years.”
Ashida sat down. “Yes, but I’m sure you can fill in a few gaps.”
The stimulant took hold. Hanamaka’s carotid vein pulsed. His hands twitched. He spoke more rapidly.
“I should tell you that I love fire, and that the small barracks blaze was merely an experiment. I wanted to see if I could eradicate the burn scars the Griffith Park fire inflicted, along with the print-eradication scars that Meyer Gelb and I so foolishly marked ourselves with.”
Ashida said, “Meyer Gelb is really Fritz Eckelkamp. Terry Lux and Lin Chung cut him a new face shortly after his escape from the gold train.”
Hanamaka smiled. “The American Jew is the German Gentile, and quite the covert anti-Semite. The leftist firebrand is really an armed robber.”
“That statement tells me a great deal about this politically diffuse cabal of yours.”
Hanamaka said, “I’ll quote Meyer here. ‘This storm, this savaging disaster.’ The disaster is History, and the cabal was formed as a means to survive it.”
Ashida smiled. “I’ll quote the Book of Proverbs. ‘Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.’ ”
Hanamaka sipped water. Benzedrine spawned dehydration. He held a small canteen. He sipped through a glass straw.
“Bible to Bible, Dr. Ashida. I read the Los Angeles papers on New Year’s Day. A rainstorm of biblical proportions had unearthed a man’s body in a wooden box. I knew that a reckoning of biblical proportions was about to occur.”
Ashida tingled. “Yes?”
“Yes, and I had been thinking about Karl Tullock for some time already. Two months earlier, I had read a locally distributed golf magazine, published in San Diego. An article described a driving range, soon to be built on the exact spot where Tullock reposed. I’m sure you’ve heard the complaint ‘It’s hard to find good help these days.’ That complaint proved itself especially true in the world of the domestic Fifth Column. I dispatched Wendell Rice and George Kapek to find the box and dispose of it before the excavation crews began work. Rice and Kapek bungled the job, because a reckoning was preordained.”
Ashida coughed. The burn stink stifled him.
“Who set the Griffith Park fire?”
Hanamaka said, “Ralph Barr, on Red Meyer’s orders. Meyer wanted to create an apocalypse that would take the lives of many oppressed workingmen, which would be a Marxist-fascist ruse to rival the temerity of the Reichstag fire. Meyer also knew that Karl Tullock had found a spot on the CCC crew, and was closing in on Wayne Frank Jackson as a gold-robbery suspect. Meyer wanted Tullock dead and Wayne Frank believed to be dead. When weather reports predicted one-hundred-degree heat and strong winds that day, he put Ralph to work creating a very subtle accelerant.”
Ashida inched his chair back. Hanamaka oozed contagion. The Mummy escapes his crypt. His wrapping suppurates.
“Wayne Frank was suspected of a string of liquor-store heists in the summer of ’33. It was shortly before the fire, and liquor-store jobs were Fritz Eckelkamp’s well-established pattern. Was Eckelkamp-Gelb Wayne Frank’s partner on those jobs? The gold heist occurred two years and three months previously, so I would assume that Wayne Frank met Gelb before May of ’31, or am I mistaken here? Were those robberies a means of Wayne Frank’s introduction to Gelb and your cabal et al.?”
Hanamaka shook his head yes. Hanamaka shook his head no. He was fully Benzedrined. His eyeballs glowed.
“You must realize that the Comintern and their kindred fascist counterparts are criminals first and foremost, over and above whatever ideologies they might express. You should not be surprised to see armed robbery as a recurring motif in this account of political misdeeds. On that note, yes. Gelb was Wayne Frank’s partner in those robberies. Yes, Karl Tullock suspected Wayne Frank of complicity in the gold heist. Tullock had, in fact, been shadowing Wayne Frank — but Wayne Frank’s presence on the CCC work crew was at first largely coincidental. Wayne Frank had been scouting potential targets for Meyer’s ‘workingman’s apocalypse,’ and the work crew seemed like a good candidate. But then he saw Tullock’s name on a hire sheet, and told Meyer. That was when Meyer truly conceived his notion of workingmen burned alive.”