Joan said, “You’ll never be ignored, Orson.”
“Are you kidding? In this town?”
Claire said, “Orson’s set to tour Latin America. Our faux-left president has him eating out of the palm of his hand. It’s a cultural mission. Orson’s been told to brownnose fascist despots to shore up the Allied cause.”
Welles mock-whispered, “This from the lady shacked with a cop who gets his kicks beating up Negroes.”
Claire caressed Welles. He moaned and bit his lips. Claire full-on grabbed him. She eyed Joan throughout.
Joan stood up and put her robe on. Welles said, “So long, Red. See you in church.”
Claire said, “Are you a police informant, Joan? Did Kay Lake recruit you when I got wise to her?”
Joan stepped outside. She went light-headed and hugged the wall. She stepped into the dressing room and dressed in two seconds flat.
Her pulse dipped crazy high and low. She walked downstairs and got lost. She caught Lohengrin blare and cut down a side hallway. She ran straight into Kay Lake.
Kay said, “Isn’t this party the most?”
They two-car’d back to the Strip. Kay trailed Joan this time. Dave’s Blue Room stayed open late. They rendezvoused there. They noshed steak sandwiches and quaffed gin fizzes.
Joan kept mum per Dudley and Claire. Meyer Gelb, likewise. They wolfed their food. They juiced. Andrea Lesnick had nicked Joan’s cigarettes. She smoked out of Kay’s pack.
A barman whipped up refills. Brenda A. and Elmer J. owned a house percentage. Kay dined and boozed gratis. They dished the dish and unfurled the hot ticker tape.
Kay said, “I’m wondering what you know that I don’t.”
Joan said, “I credit everything I hear — because I’m the new girl in town, and I haven’t developed a knack for discernment.”
“Run one by me. I’ll confirm or refute.”
“The Fed probe’s a shuck. J. Edgar Hoover’s a secret fairy. He goes for beefcake types like Ed Satterlee, and they both get their real jollies entrapping Reds.”
Kay lit a cigarette. “Don’t stop there.”
Joan played kamikaze. Her drift featured Dudley and Hideo Ashida.
“The Watanabe job’s a frame. The Werewolf looked convenient, so they nailed him. I’ll quote your chum Lee Blanchard. ‘The PD was running a fever on Pearl Harbor and the internment, so Jack Horrall told the boys to come up with a Jap-kills-Japs solve.’ ”
Kay whistled and went woo-woo. She said, “Here’s one you don’t know, because Jack H. can hold his mud, and it concerns you. Are you listening?”
Joan said, “Give.”
Kay said, “Jack dates Brenda once a week, at her place. It goes back to when Brenda was a line girl. She’s his confidante, and he tells her everything. The dish is he goes for you, and he wants you to run the lab and the whole Scientific Division. Ray Pinker’s taking a teaching post at Cal Tech in ’44. Mind your p’s and q’s, and the job’s yours. You’ll be the highest-ranking woman on the PD, and you’ll be sworn in as a full-boat police officer. Are you ready? You’ll attend the Academy and come out a captain.”
The room rolled cockeyed. Joan went breathless. Obscure psalms passed through—
Kay pushed her water glass over. Joan took big gulps.
“He likes my legs. I know that.”
“He told Brenda they go on forever.”
“I’m better qualified than that.”
“Jack’s soft on odd people. It’s an endearing trait for a crooked police chief.”
“I saw that with Hideo Ashida.”
Kay said, “Hideo’s a twisted little pansy. He framed the Werewolf to get next to Dudley Smith. They put Bill Parker in the middle, and devastated him.”
Joan said, “He was devastated, and he did nothing. Bill put his career and the PD’s reputation before an innocent man’s life, and what will it do to his soul when Shudo goes to the gas chamber?”
Kay crossed herself. She formed the protty cross. She’s a prairie Lutheran.
“I know. Es la verdad, muchacha.”
Joan squeezed Kay’s hands. “So, who tells him? Who holds him when he’s terrified and the world veers away from him? Who tells him that certain principles supersede his idiotic ambition?”
Kay laced up their fingers. “You’re saying, ‘Who gets him?’ ”
“Yes, I am.”
“There’s something that Lee used to tell his opponents, before the first-round bell.”
“Which was?”
“ ‘Luck, short of winning.’ ”
Joan drove home. She kept saying it. Captain J. W. Conville, Los Angeles PD.
She kept seeing it. The blue uniform. The silver bars. The rank parity with Dudley and Bill.
Two years from now. 1944. The war might well be over. America would win. She’d be twenty-nine then.
Joan pulled up to her courtyard. A prowl car was parked right in front of her. The driver’s window was down.
She walked over and looked in. Bill Parker was passed out in the front seat. A photograph was taped to the dashboard. It was sun-yellowed and bleached.
Winter, ’38. Bowler, Wisconsin. Big Earle Conville, shutterbug.
She’s sitting on a split-rail fence. She’s wearing a plaid shirt, jodhpurs, and lace-up boots. Her shotgun’s there in the frame.
Joan looked at Parker. She squared up his glasses and kissed the top of his head. He can’t weigh much. He’s not tall. He’s cumbersome at worst.
She pulled him out of the car and slung him over one shoulder. His gun belt bumped her. She tottered on her stupid high heels.
She lugged him inside her bungalow and laid him down on the bed. She unhooked his gun belt and took off his shoes.
A fresh rainstorm hit. She closed windows and kicked off her shoes. She sat at her desk and crossed herself like Kay did. She opened her lab notebook and wrote this:
“For better or worse, I am as one with this man.”
40
(Los Angeles, 6:00 A.M., 1/29/42)
He came in early. He locked the door. He had the lab free and clear.
He developed photo prints. He enhanced his snapshots of Dudley’s bayonet. He close-up shot his gold bar and microphotographed them both. Eureka. The mint marks matched.
Ashida clamped two photo slides and prepped his two-lens microscope. He’d prepared for this. He read gold textbooks and monographs. He gained metallurgical knowledge. He studied forge componentry and learned how gold spun and knit.
The L.A. Times supplied facts. Gold-heist sidebars laid out mining data. The stolen bars were forged from one Alaskan lode. He bet on knit bonds identically fused.
Dudley knew nothing of the gold heist and subsequent fire. He determined that at his swearing-in bash. The bayonet was stashed in Kyoho Hanamaka’s stash hole. It was the fetishistic apex of his Red/fascist cache.
Ashida dialed the two lenses. They maximum-magnified. He studied knit lines and melt marks and noted flaw patterns. He sifted them through his new knowledge. He concluded this:
His bar and Dudley’s bayonet. Separate-source items. They comprise a perfect match. They’re both gold-heist contraband.
Perfect symmetry. Dudley Smith. All roads intersect.
Ashida heard key-in-lock sounds. Ray Pinker opened the door. He said, “Hello, Lieutenant.” He shuffled his feet. He looked mortified.
Ashida said, “Is something wrong, sir?”
Pinker said, “I’m what’s wrong. I’m short on lawyer money, so I back-doored you. The Feds have got me cornholed, so I sold the plans for your photo device to the Mexican Staties. A Baja officer named Juan Pimentel brokered the sale.”