Dudley spun his desk chair. He orbited his office and applied the brakes. He brooded up the coontown job. Two options appeared.
Possible ODs. That meant cover-up. Dope-fiend cops just would not do. Possible homicide. That meant showcase. It’s the PD’s first double cop killing. Pull out the stops. Whitewash the victims. Enact justice at all costs.
Sound recent and familiar? It should.
The Watanabe job consumed December. It’s late January now. Two-Gun Davis remains volatile and perhaps talkative. He should choose a propitious moment and inform Jack Horrall.
Dudley spun a reorbit. It cleared his head. Juan Pimentel walked in. He clicked his heels and saluted. He placed a grand object on the desk.
Hideo Ashida’s photo device. A contraption suffused with true dash.
“You’ve succeeded in delighting me, Lieutenant. Dr. Ashida’s invention has served to revolutionize policework in Los Angeles.”
Pimentel reclicked his heels. “Mr. Ray Pinker sold the plans to Captain Vasquez-Cruz, who promptly had the design duplicated. He has already installed three devices at the Tijuana border. We can now photograph license plates as vehicles enter and leave our country.”
Dudley pondered the sale. One conclusion popped. Pinker sold the plans covertly. Hideo would have told him otherwise.
“I’ve had a grand brainstorm, Lieutenant. I would like you to place one of these alongside Kyoho Hanamaka’s carport. Stretch the trip wire across the entire circumference and affix three wide-angle lenses. I’m going up there now. I’ll bring you back a dimensional drawing.”
Pimentel clicked his heels. He clicked elegantly and often. Heel clicks punctuated his dutiful young life.
“A question before you go, Lieutenant.”
“Sir?”
“I would call your dislike and distrust of Captain Vasquez-Cruz plainly apparent. Am I correct here?”
Pimentel clicked. “Sir, you are vastly correct.”
He brought the bayonet. He undressed in the hidey-hole and donned Nazi black. The gold shaft caught lamplight and threw his image back. He rewrote History a tad.
The Blitz. Evil London burns. Irish Republicans light bonfires to guide Luftwaffe bombers. He’s there to watch.
Salvy Abascal joins him. They’re dressed in Sinarquista green. Joan Conville’s their consort. She’s green-clad. She wears her Scottish clan’s tartan sash.
They’ve had one night together. He’s learned a few things. The scientist-empiricist shares his mystical streak. She’s as death-derived as he is. He told her of the Wolf he met on the British moors. She did not doubt the Wolf’s occasional visitations. He touched her clothing while she slept. He became the Wolf chasing her scent.
She’s as man-bound and father-bound as he’s bound to his mother and women. She rages to kill the man who burned her father dead. She’s told him some things. He’s made a few queries. He shares her suspicions of mad inventor Mitchell Kupp.
Burned Londoners run toward them. They resemble Joan’s father felled by scorched trees. Joan wields the gold bayonet. It’s both merciful and brutally just.
She’s his sister-lover now. Her conduit-to-Bill Parker status may or may not play out. He will help her take a man’s life. Salvy Abascal saved his own life. He’s Joan’s half brother and his own full one. He demands respect and commands scrutiny.
Salvy killed Victor Trejo Caiz. It was an act performed with bold premeditation. They spoke briefly after Father Coughlin’s broadcast. Their touchstone is shared ideology. Salvy wants something from him. This seductive dimension will soon be revealed. There’s a Sinarquista rally in Ensenada tonight.
Lover-sisters/brothers/daughters/sons—
Beth is due for a visit. He’ll pair her off with Joan Klein and commend them to mischief. Young Joan pilfers from stores. She’s pilfered bland SIS memos and cabled them to her “Comrades” in New York. She asked him to teach her how to shoot a gun. They had a father-daughter jaunt on the beach.
Young Joan blasted driftwood with his .45. A sidearm vanished from the armory the next day.
Young Joan to Young Juan. The snappy heel clicker and pay phone — tap whiz. The tireless surveiller of this selfsame hideaway.
He read Juan Pimentel’s personnel file. He noted Class A fitness reports and a pithy biographical aside.
Pimentel resigned a war college posting. He defamed President Cárdenas’ anti-Church policies. Lieutenant Juan is devoutly Catholic and pro-Sinarquista.
Salvy will address a large crowd tonight. El Flaco Explosivo will surely explode.
Dudley swung the gold bayonet.
Where’s Kyoho Hanamaka?
A nice heart attack would rectify the Two-Gun Davis glitch.
Joan must miss him. He’ll send the Wolf by to sleep at the foot of her bed.
Young Joan showed off her pin map. The Russian campaign wowed her. Her people hailed from that neck of the woods.
They sat on Dudley’s terrace. Claire was off at afternoon Mass. Young Joan had nicked an atlas and tore out the Russian spread. She nicked the pins from the SIS squadroom.
Little swastikas for the Nazis. Hammer and sickles for the martyred USSR.
A grand child. Perhaps psychopathic. Only time would tell.
She said, “The green swastikas represent armored battalions. The blue ones represent troop movements, and the penciled-in Xs represent the Germans’ retreat from Moscow. The red pins show the Home Guard dug in.”
“You get your war news from the radio, do you?”
“XERB. I know some Spanish now, but I base my troop movements on the English-language broadcasts.”
Dudley lit a cigarette. Young Joan nicked one just to nick one. She didn’t smoke.
“No more stealing memorandums to impress your chums back home. Keep the gun you stole, but don’t steal any others. Since you know damn well how softhearted I am, I’m offering you a job as a consolation prize.”
Young Joan said, “That sounds intriguing.”
She mimicked Claire’s inflections. She invaded Claire’s closets and tried on her clothes. He’d caught her at it.
“Your Aunt Claire finds Captain Vasquez-Cruz suspicious, and I must say I agree. I’ve requisitioned a great many police files, and I don’t have time to go through them. I’d like you to. Study them and look for pictures and notations pertaining to the captain. I’ll pay you, of course.”
Young Joan said, “You’re a pal, Uncle Dud.”
They shook hands on the deal. She pinned a green swastika to his necktie. Dudley roared.
Avenida Ruiz was blocked off and torch-lit. Blackshirt Staties and Greenshirt Sinarquistas mingled. The crowd numbered some six hundred. Dudley stood at the back.
He wore his Class A uniform. He retained the swastika tiepin for giggles and grins. He stood near men with coiled-snake armbands and women in green twill frocks.
He caught a nap at the hotel. A dream placed him in the Maestro Manse, among gargoyles. Beethoven and Wagner busts sprang to life.
A long-distance call roused him. Mike Breuning reports:
The darktown crib remains chaotic. It’s still undetermined — homicide or terp ODs. Mike braced Thad Brown on Elmer Jackson. Thad said, “He worked the Alien Squad with Kapek and Rice. I want him in on this.”
The call disconnected. Something vague tweaked him. He’d heard of the death crib. He can’t recall where or when.
Cheers went up. Salvy Abascal took the stage. It was built from tin cans and lashed-up orange crates.
El Flaco held a microphone. It was hooked up to a ’32 Ford. A Statie sergeant ran the engine and sparked the battery. Flaco let loose.