He drove back to Ensenada. Joe Hayes called. He was in town with Charlie Coughlin and the Archbishop. They came to fish and drink. “And, you owe us dinner, Dud.”
He made good. They dined at the Hotel del Norte. He steered talk to the Sinarquistas. His pals praised Salvador Abascal. Es un hombre magnifico.
Father Charles brought up Tommy Glennon. You know Tommy, don’t you, Joe? Monsignor Hayes blushed and blanched.
Tommy tops the still-missing list. Elmer Jackson seems to have curtailed his rogue antics. The Baja Jap roundups proceed. Two more L.A.-to-Baja pay-phone calls have hit.
They were decoded. Sub berths were abstractly discussed. No exact locations or coordinates were mentioned. It was just abstract chat.
Human voices spieled code words. Said voices were muffled and barely audible. They might have been prerecorded. Pay-phone stakeouts were the logical next step.
He discussed it with José Vasquez-Cruz. El Fascisto was bored. They discussed their racket plans. That perked him up.
Running wetbacks. Running heroin. Moving wets and “H.” Their Utopian vision, shared.
It’s all grand, but—
Jim Davis and Bill Parker still trouble him. Jim’s blabbed twice already. Parker might blab.
Beth Short will visit Baja soon. She’ll be eighteen this summer. She’s his favorite bastard spawn. She wants to quit school and roam. He’ll play stern dad and dissuade her.
It’s all grand, but—
He’s due in L.A. The county grand jury has summoned him. He’s set to testify. He’ll be resolute. Werewolf Shudo killed the four Watanabes. He’ll concede that he may be insane.
It’s all grand, but—
Jim Davis and Bill Parker remain meddlesome.
A recent snapshot blinded him. The bulb glare slowly cleared. He saw lovely Joan Conville at Lyman’s.
She stirs and mutters in her sleep. Her skirt’s hiked. She’s red-haired and rangy. She’s got midwestern je ne sais quoi.
She woke up. They spoke briefly. Now she’s back and blinding him. Dear girl, what took you so long?
Part Two
Terpinhydrate
(January 24–February 25, 1942)
31
(Los Angeles, 9:00 A.M., 1/24/42)
Collusion.
City Hall. Room 546. Today’s Monster Matinee. Werewolf Shudo versus the L.A. County grand jury.
The jurors perched at desks. They faced the room. Eight old men and eight old ladies. They were rich-stiff pedigreed. They radiated high-end Pasadena and Hancock Park.
A witness box stood adjacent. Counsel tables faced the perch. DA Bill McPherson repped the county. Note the Werewolf’s seedy lawyer. Check the racing form in his hip pocket.
The Werewolf dozed in his seat. He wore a straitjacket and jail denims. PD men sat behind the DA. Officer Lee Blanchard and police chemist Hideo Ashida.
Dudley Smith sat with the DA. He wore his Army dress uniform. Note the flap-holstered sidearm.
Handsome devil.
Two chair rows faced the show. Joan sat there. Bill Parker got her in. He’d said, “Consider what you know now. You don’t get a deal like this every day.”
Parker supplied drift. The DA liked colored girls. Shudo’s lawyer was ex-PD. He had a night-school diploma and serviced a Negro pimp clientele. He procured for the DA.
Joan doodled up a scratch pad. She’d done research. She knew gold-per-ounce prices in ’31 and today. She teethed on the upswing.
$20.67 then. $35.50 now.
Mint bars weighed 33.3 pounds. She calculated then-to-now prices. $8,268 a bar then. $14,200 now. The heist men clouted thirty-odd bars. Take it from there.
Lee Blanchard testified. It felt pro forma. Joan suppressed yawns.
It’s December 6. There’s a loud-party squawk. Him and Sergeant D. L. Smith check it out and find the stiffs. He called the Watanabes “Japs” and went Oops. The jurors laughed.
Blanchard concluded. Hideo Ashida took the stand. The DA lobbed softballs. The Werewolf dozed. His lawyer skimmed the racing form.
Ashida breezed through the forensics. He described various documents and their evidential value. He forged those documents. Bill Parker told her that.
Persuasive Ashida. Submissive dog Ashida. Fetch, running dog.
Ashida concluded. He walked to the door and passed right by Joan. She looked at him. He stared straight ahead.
Dudley Smith took the stand. The lady jurors swooned. Joan read their minds. Now, that’s a witness.
The Dublin brogue. The idiomatic flair. The wild charm and sheer language.
He ran down the case. He glowed warm and lied with blithe assurance. He noticed Joan. He gave her a bolt-from-the-blue look.
Their eyes snagged and held. Dudley smiled. Joan tried not to smile back. Dudley glitched his testimony and glanced away. It might have been seductively feigned/it might have been real.
Joan observed Dudley. She believed each lie and caught herself duped within seconds. He threw nods and smiles. She nodded and smiled back and caught herself duped again.
Her face burned. She looked away/shit, I’m mortified/she looked back again.
Dudley concluded. He left the witness box and walked to the door. He winked at Joan en route.
The Werewolf jury adjourned. The Fed-probe jury convened. Joan kept her seat.
New jurors heard evidence. More rich stiffs perched. A U.S. attorney replaced “Mud-Shark” Bill McPherson.
Joan fidgeted. She fretted her gold cuff links. She wanted a cigarette, she wanted two highballs, she wanted a steak sandwich.
Jack Horrall testified. He was disingenuous. Phone taps and bugged squadrooms? That’s the first I’ve heard of it.
Mayor Fletch testified. He grandstanded and burnished his crimebuster credentials. He failed to understand all this hoo-ha. He was a lawyer himself. “Frankly, I know whereof I speak.”
Wallace N. Jamie testified. He extolled his noted uncle. Eliot Ness was a T-man and certified hotshot. He bragged up his electronics know-how. He laid out his dirty-cops probe in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Fletch B. hired him. Mayor Fletch wants the truth. Mayor Fletch don’t know bupkes per wall bugs. “The truth will out here.”
Joan yawned and stretched. A shadow hit her. She split-second knew.
“It’s what we call the ‘rubber-stamp’ grand jury. True-bill indictments are ever assured.”
Joan smoothed her skirt. She shot her blouse cuffs and displayed her gold cuff links.
“You framed that man Shudo. It’s as much an open secret as the phone taps.”
Dudley sat beside her. They brushed arms. He kept his voice low.
“I’ll concede the possibility. But I could hardly have accomplished it without the brilliant assistance of your Dr. Ashida.”
Her face burned. Shit, there’s the blush.
Joan blinked. She suppressed a full primp. She thought fast and dredged up a punch line.
Shit — one split-second blink, and he’s gone.
She got her highballs and steak sandwich. Lyman’s was Saturday-packed. She bridged the lunch crowd and the early bar crowd. The grand jury crowd bled in.
Wallace Jamie schmoozed Eliot Ness. Uncle Eliot cruised the bar and glad-handed Fletch Bowron. Big Earle Conville hated Ness. Big Earle had a beef. Ness raped the Monroe County Forest Service on extraditions. Big Earle called Ness “that preening cocksucker.”
Kay Lake walked in. She saw Joan and waved her little snoot wave. Joan snoot-waved her back.