Dr. Nort shrugged. “Maybe the killer had accomplices. Maybe we should concede that all of this is suppositional and may have no bearing on the matter at hand.”
Joan smiled. “Dr. Nort’s being a killjoy, so I’ll add that those dots look like icepick markings I’ve seen in Crim One texts.”
Ashida got bristles and chills. Watch this, colleagues. Brilliant Boy shows off.
He pulled down George Kapek’s shirt collar. Ditto for the Mexican and Wendell Rice. He laid their necks bare. It revealed this:
Single hand-span bruises. All right-handed/all applied from behind. Thumb marks on the left side of their necks. Finger-grab marks on the right.
“I don’t know how they died, but he held them steady with his right hand and held the ice pick with his left. A left-hander would favor that hand for such a task.”
Joan said, “Single-hand strangulations are very rare. It might have been two men applying force from both the front and the back.”
Dr. Nort said, “All right, I concede. Call the Chief, Thad. It’s homicide.”
45
(Los Angeles, 11:00 P.M., 1/29/42)
Local jazzcats made him. They sniffed grief and gave him dat wiiiiiiiiiiiiide berth. He magnetized resentment. He percolated fear and hate.
Elmer walked the strip. He felt underdressed. His squarejohn suit clashed with all the full-drape zoots. Lots of cats and kittens, lots of saucy dash. Coloreds, beaners, whites. The Dark Continent jumps tonite!!!
Peace, my dusky brethren. I’m as hopped up as you are. It started New Year’s Eve — but it be exploding HERE.
The Sinarquista flag at the klubhaus. The Sinarquista stencil in Tommy G.’s room. The Sinarquista tattoo on Eddie Leng. The terp still in the klubhaus. The terp still in Don Matsura’s apartment. Matsura’s jail “suicide.” Matsura’s KA’d up with Eddie Leng and Lin Chung. Two Alien Squad hard-ons. Said hard-ons now muerto. Don’t dis shit read Fifth Column to you?
Elmer loitered at 47th and Central. Kool kats and kittens skunk-eyed him. He caught blare-blasted music. He smelled whorehouse perfume and spattered grease.
Lee Blanchard was due. They had late-nite canvass duty. Elmer loitered and brain-broiled His Big Case.
He blew out of the klubhaus. He went AWOL. He got this wild bug up his ass. Let’s detonate this whole fucker. He drove to his place and got to work.
He called the Vice clerk he braced New Year’s Eve. He told him to keep mum and promised him five yards. He said, “You never ran them phone numbers I troubled you with.” The clerk pledged silencio.
Oooga-booga. Let’s blow this klubhaus job straight to shit.
Elmer studied Tommy G.’s address book. He got Tommy’s block-print style down pat. He spiced up the book. He drew swastikas and Sinarquista snakes. He added right-wing thunderbolts. He skimmed phone books and got some choice numbers. PC Bell shot him unlisteds. He forged and spawned chaos then.
Tommy’s book ran provocative from jump street. It listed St. Vib’s, the Deutsches Haus, Dudster snitch Huey Cressmeyer. You had unknown cooze Jean Staley and homo priest Joe Hayes. You had the hot-box phone by the Herald. You had fourteen Baja pay phones. Now, let’s add this:
Lin Chung. Low-rent plastic surgeon/dope peddler/Fifth Column shitbird.
Orson Welles. Hotshot actor-director/quasi-Red flotsam/finked-out patient of Dr. Saul Lesnick.
Dr. Saul himself. Red tool/Fed snitch/Annie Staples’ fatmouth trick. Headshrink and morph pusher to Claire De Haven.
Wallace N. Jamie. Nosebleed PI/Fletch Bowron confrere/rumored Fed-probe indictee.
He spiced up Huey Cressmeyer’s listing. He drew swastikas and coiled snakes beside it. Huey was Tommy’s bun boy at Preston. He wrote “Big Dick!!!!!” and drew Cupid’s heart and arrow. He printed “T.G. & H.C.” inside it. The whole address-book fantasia was some unholy shit.
He drove back to the klubhaus. The joint was abuzz. Dr. Nort tagged the job Murder One.
He walked upstairs. He planted Tommy’s address book under a carpet strip. He hoofed out to meet Blanchard. He got the I’m-fucking-with-Dudley Smith chills.
Elmer loitered. A floor show unfolded upside him. Kolored kats bopped into a hair-process joint. Eight barbers worked the late shift. The kats slipped into chairs and donned hair-suction gizmos. They sat down kinky and stood up straight.
Blanchard showed. They walked the strip and tossed queries. That backhouse on 46th? Who owns it/who rents it/what’s the secret story here?
They braced street strollers and ducked into nitespots. They got Huh?/Beats me/Say what? They got rebop per Jew landlords raping the black man. They hit jazz joints and rib cribs. They hit liquor stores and pool halls and Minnie Roberts’ Casbah. They got more, more, and more of the same.
They witnessed a shiv show at Port Afrique. Two jigs swapped swipes. A he-she whore watched and shrieked. A jazz trio laid down knife-fight riffs. Elmer dug the sax wails that mimicked screams. Blanchard told the barman to call an ambulance.
They ducked out and ducked into Club Zombie. Note the rhinestone-studded walls. The stones depicted the solar system and rocket ships zooming. They were open-cockpit. Spooks with red lightbulb eyes jockeyed them.
Small tables fronted a bandstand. Mixed-race lovebirds spooned. High-yellow girls served drinks. They wore tiger-striped leotards.
Elmer glimpsed Mud-Shark Bill McPherson. The DA hosted two bronze cuties. He saw Elmer and waved. Elmer waved back. Blanchard pulled him up to the bar.
A tall jig tended it. A jumbo conk put him up at six-ten. A wall sign extolled the Baron Samedi cocktail. “One sip leaves you zombified.”
Elmer and Blanchard grabbed stools. The jig ambled up. He once-over’d Blanchard and smirked.
“I saw you fight Andre McCoover. He punked your white ass, but you got the decision. I hope you ain’t here for information on no one near and dear to me.”
Blanchard grabbed the jig’s conk and jammed his face into the bar. The jig flailed and knocked over ashtrays and drinks. Bar patrons scrammed. Elmer snatched the jig’s left hand and bent his fingers back.
“There’s a shitty little backhouse on 46th, just east of Central. We want to know who owns it, who rents it, and who owns the vacant house in front. You got two choices here. Give us something we can work with, or get zombified.”
The jig squirmed. He blubbered and dug for façade. Blanchard smashed his head on the bartop. Nose bones broke audible. Blood burst and pooled.
Elmer said, “We’re listening.”
The jig screeched. Elmer bent his fingers. The jig coughed blood and coughed up this:
“Jew landlords own most of them cribs...”
“But not that one.”
“This preacher, Martin Luther Mimms...”
“This back-to-Africa con...”
“Congregation of the Congo — 47th, down the strip.”
It’s a storefront church. There’s big plate-glass windows. There’s pews from here to Mozambique. It’s lit bright at 1:30 a.m.
The door’s wide open. Some dink artist muraled the walls.
Pygmies spear-hunting lions. Hunchbacked Jews in skullcaps lugging money sacks. L.A. in flames. White folks roasted alive. Colored folks butt-fucking them with hot pokers. A flotilla of back-to-Africa seacraft. The destroyer USS Negro. The battleship Colored Man’s Triumph. PT 69 — replete with colored folk engaged in that selfsame act.