They discussed Joan’s diary. She started it right after the Maestro’s party. Bill Parker lay insensate in her bedroom. Bill Parker, ubiquitous. La Conville and La Lake — now screwball friends.
Lee Blanchard squawked. He canvassed ninety-one houses and didn’t learn shit. Joan tuned him out. She fretted her gold cuff links and rehashed the Santa Barbara file.
Ashida got to it first. He’d thumbed it. She saw that. She’d dog-eared random pages. He undid them. She set a trap for him. He fell into it.
She left the file out for him. He hadn’t mentioned it. He was starting to omit and dissemble again. She simply knew it.
She’d included some liquor-store 211 reports. She’d skimmed that paperwork first. There’s “Jackson, Wayne Frank” on a detain-and-release slip.
Ashida had thumbed that file. Ashida did not mention the Wayne Frank Jackson lead.
It was Bingo #1. Bingo #2 surpassed it.
Martin Luther Mimms sprung Leander Frechette. That was 5/31. Now jump to 1/42. Martin Luther Mimms owns the klubhaus. Elmer Jackson and Lee Blanchard turned up the lead.
Mimms: purportedly tight with high PD brass. Mimms: southside slumlord and bilk-the-poor preacher. Mimms: there for the gold-heist aftermath.
The room trapped cigarette smoke. Ashida fanned it away and made faces. Elmer and Buzz winked at Joan. Joan smiled and winked at Bill Parker. Lover #1 blushed.
Thad Brown said, “Breuning and Carlisle. Check DB files and see if you turn any paper submitted by Kapek and Rice. Blanchard, you recanvass the same radius, whether you like it or not. Jackson and Meeks, shake the names in Tommy Glennon’s address book, and put your snouts down for Tommy himself.”
Get it? We’re finished here. Go to work. This fucking job’s going nowhere so far.
Chairs scraped. The room thinned out. Parker shot Joan a look. It meant Tonight? Joan shot a look back. It meant Sweetie, I can’t.
Parker slunk off. A bottleneck hit the door to Lyman’s proper. The room thinned all-the-way out.
The smoke clouds dispersed. Ashida hit the doorway. Joan grabbed his arm and pulled him back in. She slammed the door and leaned against it. Talk to me, you prissy queen.
“You’ve seen all the paperwork, and you haven’t said a word. We need to follow up on Mimms and see what we can get on Wayne Frank Jackson.”
Ashida shook his head. “I’ll be called down to Baja soon. The gold bayonet derives from there. I’ll uncover leads in Mexico. That’s how I can best serve this venture.”
“That’s not an answer. It’s an evasion. And ‘this venture’ does not begin to describe all of this.”
“Yes, and ‘all of this’ means that ‘half of this’ is down in Mexico. I told you about Kyoho Hanamaka and Dudley’s fixation with him, and we’re not going to turn leads on him here in Los Angeles.”
Joan shook her head. “That’s not what you’re saying. You’re leading me and playing me blithe, and you’re withholding the punch line.”
Ashida shook his head. “All right. Here’s your denouement. Dudley’s in Mexico, and we don’t stand a chance without cutting him in. He uncovered the Mexican lead, but I know he hasn’t connected the bayonet to the heist. We can’t work around him, not with leads crossing over to the klubhaus job. He has to be told, and he has to share in whatever gold we take possession of.”
The room spun off-kilter. Joan got ground-floor vertigo. The prim little shit—
“Who tells him?”
“You do. You’re his lover.”
Joan said, “Yes, I am — however much you’d like to be.”
Ashida hurled his coffee cup across the room. It hit a file cabinet and shattered.
52
(Los Angeles, 11:00 A.M., 2/3/42)
He hid from Reckless Girl. The klubhaus as hideout. He worked upstairs. She worked downstairs. The klubhaus as haunted house. He felt her through the floorboards and walls.
Reckless Girl. Brutal Girl. Hausfrau and Harlot. Consort of two brutal cops.
Ashida rephotographed the upstairs bedroom. He wanted to re-create the full-scale haus and run forensic reconstructions. He cracked the front window. Full-scale chatter chattered up.
Patrol cops and press. They crowded the yard and spritzed rumors. “It’s a coon caper” persisted. “It’s a jealous-wife job” ran second. “Nazis and Sinarquista humps” ran third.
Gossip persisted. Sid Hudgens said he got a tip. There’s a big powwow brewing. It’s a face-off. Whiskey Bill versus Dudley Smith.
It pertains to Rice-Kapek. It pertains to Watanabe. My lips are sealed past that. It’s all very hush-hush.
Jack Webb bird-dogged Sid. Jack was a Belmont alum. He bird-dogged Ashida and Bucky Bleichert in high school. He bird-dogged cops now. He was the PD’s favored stooge-mascot.
A hot dog vendor worked the front yard. Cops and reporters swarmed him. Ashida shut the window and rephotographed.
He deployed a Man Camera variant. It merged Man Camera and Camera Camera and created a merged tableau. His goal was full depiction. Capture the klubhaus-deathhaus full on.
Ashida shot baseboards and closet corners. He worked with and without flashbulbs and lights. He got the walls. He got stacks of Thunderbolt and Stormtrooper Magazine. He should print-dust them. They hadn’t been dusted. There was no powder residue.
He shot every page. Thunderbolt featured hate diatribes and cheesecake pix. Ashida saw Wendell Rice’s wife in fishnet stockings. He recognized a contributor’s name. George Lincoln Rockwell penned a back-to-Africa screed. He praised “Ebony Führer” M. L. Mimms at great length. Elmer Jackson and Lee Blanchard braced Mimms and Rockwell. They’d posted their report.
Rockwell, Navy pilot. Mimms, gold-heist periphery.
Ashida shot wall cracks and warped floorboards. He saw shoe scuffs on both sides of the bed. The bed engaged heavy traffic. He knew that.
The floor creaked behind him. The bedroom door creaked.
“I brought you some lunch, Hideo. Worker bees have to eat sometime.”
Ashida wheeled. Jack Webb tossed him a hot dog. Ashida tossed his camera on the bed and snagged it.
Jack said, “I’d call you the world’s hardest-working white man, except you’re not white.”
Ashida laughed and unwrapped the hot dog. Jack lounged in the doorway.
“I’m chasing leads for Sid’s private dish sheet. Like, ‘Call-Me-Jack’s dragging his heels on cutting old Hideo loose for the Army.’ Like, ‘Jack wants to build a new crime lab before he retires, and Bill Parker or Thad Brown ascends to the throne.’ Like, ‘Jack’s got it bad for the Conville cooze, and he’s sending her to the Academy and swearing her in as a captain.’ She’ll command the division, and you’ll jump to civilian chief chemist. How do them apples sound?”
Ashida ate half the hot dog and wiped his hands. Jack smirked. He was Mr. Insider’s scent dog. He sniffed out the dirt.
“Tell me about the Reverend Mimms. He owns this property, and he impresses me as someone you and Sid would have the lowdown on.”
Jack chortled. “Hideo Ashida says ‘lowdown.’ Coontown’s getting to him. He’ll be wearing zoot suits and poking colored girls before you know it.”
“Come on, Jack. Mimms. You and Sid must know something.”
Jack ticked points on his fingers. Jack aped the Sidster’s gruff growl.
“Okay, boychik. He’s the white sheep of a prominent Negro family. He bilks his own people with that return-to-our-homeland shuck. He’s got a southside network of snitches reporting to him, and he reports to Jack the H. exclusive, because they’re pals from ‘The War to End All Wars.’ As a snitch himself, he always bypasses the Dudster and goes straight to Jack. He’s got his minions pushing maryjane, in corrosive counterpoint to these Armenian shits who push white horse under Jack’s aegis, with Dud as the middleman. Both these factions service an all-jig clientele, which is the way Jack H. and his unillustrious predecessor, Two-Gun Davis, think narcotics should play out in our town.”