That felt spot-on. Vasquez-Cruz was a chameleon. He tee-heed to his Army pals. He low-growled to provocative women.
Dudley flexed his bad arm. He made a fist and squeezed it tight. He tore through the pain — and laughed.
Statie HQ:
Three dank buildings inland and south. Slave labor built them. Jail, trooper barracks, administration. They were plopped down beside an arroyo. Lettuce fields stood close by.
Shackled inmates toiled there. Stoop labor. Lift that barge, tote that bale. The jail featured sweat rooms and torture dens. Scorpions nested there. They ate bugs and stung recalcitrant spics.
Admin featured file vaults and cramped office suites. Dudley called ahead. He talked to a lieutenant named Juan Pimentel. They gabbed at length. Lieutenant Juan reported this:
He braced their in-custody Japs. They possessed nada knowledge of the beached sub and dead sailors. He developed Hideo Ashida’s film. He cross-checked it against mug-shot files and resident-alien sheets. He got more nada there. He got no fingerprint matches. Sixteen dead Jap sailors? Es mucho mierda.
Juan Pimentel was muy bueno. He jumped on all the small shit.
He head-counted jail Japs. He got 44 in custody/182 still loose. He prepped admin suite 214. He stacked the custody files and made a pot of coffee.
Dudley drove over and parked outside. Prowl cars hemmed him in. Statie bossmen custom-fitted them. Note the hood-mounted flamethrowers. Note the hand-painted saints and giant rodents emitting death rays.
Dudley entered the building and found 214. Lieutenant Juan delivered. He had the homey touch.
The desk, the chair, the coffee. The ashtray and ceiling fan. The worm-in-the-jug mescal. Forty-four files laid out.
Dudley read through them. He chain-smoked. He read from this spark point:
Kyoho Hanamaka. He’s a naval attaché. Hideo skimmed his file and nailed a big inconsistency.
There were very few KAs. There were no naval KAs. It startled Hideo. Hanamaka was still on the loose. That fact troubled him.
Dudley reread the file and studied the clipped photograph. Hanamaka looked psychopathic.
Born in Kyoto, 1898. Career Navy man. Intel background. Toured Europe, ’35-’36. Toured Russia, likewise. Brilliant student at the German Naval Warfare School.
There were three male KAs listed. They were all fishermen. That was enticing. Jap Navy man, the Baja coast, beached submarines.
Three KAs. Hiroshi Takai, Hector Obregon-Hodaka, Akira Minamura. All coastal fishermen.
Dudley thumbed custody files. He checked name tabs and hit Obregon-Hodaka.
He read the file. The man was a Jap-Mex half-breed. He spoke English. His moniker was “Big Tuna.” He had a valid U.S. travel visa.
Dudley snatched the desk phone and dialed double ought. A jail noncom picked up. Dudley said, “Inmate Obregon-Hodaka. Room 214, please.”
“I know I’m headed for the shithouse, boss. What I’m angling for is a nice internment berth up near L.A. The Chino work farm, maybe. Dexter Gordon’s there. He blows tenor. You’ve got to gas on his chord changes for ‘Ol’ Man River.’ ”
Hector the hepcat. More Mex than Jap. He knew the type. They bred like rats in L.A.
“Quite the jazzman, are you?”
“You ain’t lyin’, daddy. I know L.A. niggertown like I know the coast here. All the coons on Central Avenue call me ‘El Tojo,’ ’cause of my mixed bloodline. I’m the Big Tuna here, and El Tojo in L.A.”
They sipped mescal. Dudley got a glow on. 160-proof. Satanic worms afloat in the jug. No drink for nancy boys.
“Do you possess strong political convictions, sir?”
“Well, I’m not Fifth Column, if that’s what you’re getting at. I’m a live-and-let-live, hold-for-the-downbeat sort of cat. I’m looking to get interned at some amenable spot, sit out the war and go home.”
Dudley smiled. “I wish you well in that regard, sir.”
Hector sipped mescal. His eyes buzzed. He looked halfway blitzed.
“I’ve got a colored girlfriend in L.A. She’s a waitress at the Club Alabam. They’ll let me out once Uncle Sambo wraps this war up. I’ll marry her and have some whelps with her, even though she’s got four pups with Coleman Hawkins already.”
Dudley bowed. “You have convinced me of your political solvency and your allegiance to the Allied cause, sir. Now, please describe your relationship with the Japanese naval attaché, Kyoho Hanamaka.”
Hector made the jack-off sign. “That cocksucker owes me money.”
“Sir?”
“I’d been supplying him with prime tuna for over a year — and by that I mean boatloads. He skipped town owing me mucho dinero.”
“So, your relationship with Hanamaka was entirely professional?”
Hector plucked a worm from his glass and ate it. Hector evinced great style.
“We’d bat the breeze sometimes. I knew he was pals with the governor, Juan Lazaro-Schmidt, who’s a Nazi sympathizer and a big Jew-hater. So what? World conflicts breed strange bedfellows. I could live with that, but not with him stiffing me for three big boatloads of fish.”
Dudley said, “Did the quantities that he purchased in any way arouse your suspicions?”
“Yeah, they did. After Pearl Harbor, I started thinking, What’s he want all that fish for? You follow me, boss? Fish, submarine crews, sailors with hearty appetites?”
Dudley lit a cigarette. “We are having parallel thoughts, sir.”
“Okay, so I’ll wrap it up, then. I was having these suspicious thoughts, and Hanamaka owed me money. He lives up in the Baja hills, so I drove up there to collect. It was December 18 — I remember because it’s my birthday. I drove up there, but the house had been cleaned out.”
Dudley said, “Take me there. We’ll leave now.”
Hector said, “This jungle juice has got me hopped up. I might try to escape.”
Dudley said, “I’m prone to whim, sir. I’ll either shoot you dead or bid you sayonara.”
They cut inland. They hit half-paved roads and breezed through lettuce fields and scrub hills. Bugs bombed the windshield. Dudley tapped his wipers and scraped them to pulp.
They hit low mountain ranges. Low clouds blurred the view. Hector was blitzed. He blathered out his hopes and dreams and extolled jigtown L.A.
He’d get a soft internment berth. He’d deflower Jap virgins and learn to play the bass sax. He’d teach the virgins to play skin flute. He’d rent his boat out to full-blood cholos while he was inside.
Central Avenue. Está the most. Ivy Anderson’s chicken shack. Minnie Roberts’ Casbah — the best spook gash in the West. Club Alabam, Club Zombie. Stan Kenton, mud shark. He’s got twenty-eight Congo cuties on the string.
Jam sessions. Back-to-Africa mosques. Political clubhouses. Zoot-suit pachucos, zorched on Sinarquismo. These two rogue cops and their craaaaaazy crib on East 46th. Crap games and cooked terpin hydrate. Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes.”
Maybe he’ll learn the bass clarinet. Maybe he’ll open a seafood dive — Hector’s Hacienda. Bring la familia. He’ll import that Cuban guy with the two-foot dick. El Cubano will poke your mujer while you watch and jack off.
Dudley half-heard it. He took rickety bridges across arroyos and climbed more scrub hills. Hector switched gears and jabbered: right there, it’s right there!
Dudley swung a tight left turn. Dudley braked and saw it:
A mock ski chalet. Two stories/pitched frame/big glassed-in view. Front carport and no cars extant.
Dudley pulled into the carport. Hector smiled at him. So, Ichiban? What have we got here?