Their electric charge waned. They both started yawning. Jean said, “Not right now, okay? I’m too bushed to be much use to either one of us.”
Elmer said, “Okay.”
The rain accelerated. Thunder boomed them up to Hollywood and Beachwood Canyon. Elmer parked outside Jean’s place. They huddled up and ran inside. Jean’s fox throw got soaked.
They kissed some. Elmer went dizzy. Joan ran her coil heater. They kicked off their shoes and fell asleep on the couch with their clothes on.
58
(Los Angeles, 10:00 A.M., 2/6/42)
The whiz kid. Fletch Bowron’s shoofly. His swell apartment as fix-it shack.
The Bryson. Wilshire and Rampart. A swell spot with a high-window view. Blocked by workbenches. Crammed with disassembled radios and test tubes.
Wallace Jamie was portly and twenty-four years old. He lived to snoop and snitch. He’d keestered crooked cops in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Fletch hired him to rebuff the Feds and watchdog the PD. The move backfired. Indictments loomed.
They stood by the benches. Jamie issued halitosis and fondled dead tubes.
“This grand jury deal’s a stifferoo. Everybody made suspect phone calls. You can’t indict the whole world.”
Dudley said, “I’m sure you’re right, sir. This is strictly a routine inquiry, and I’ll be out of your way in a very few minutes.”
“I don’t get this. You’re an Army captain and a sergeant on the PD.”
“Yes, and I have questions about a punk criminal named Tommy Glennon, whose dubious endeavors have aroused my interest in both of my professional guises. Your name appeared in his address book, you see.”
Jamie shrugged. “Well, I’d like to help you out, but I don’t know any Tommy Glennon. I’ve got a listed phone number, so maybe this chump got my name and address there.”
Dudley said, “Yes, and you’ve been in the news lately.”
Jamie smirked. “I get fan letters, sometimes. My uncle’s Eliot Ness, and he’s a well-known hotshot. I haven’t gotten letters from any Tommy Glennon, though.”
He evinced no hink whatsoever. He beamed forthcoming youth.
“I had a few technical questions, if you’d be so kind. You’ve convincingly cleared yourself in the matter of Tommy Glennon, and I’d like to move on.”
“Well... sure.”
“Let’s take the hot-box phone outside the L.A. Herald as our exemplar. It’s a bookie-drop phone, which in no way concerns me. What does concern me are the implementations of Los Angeles-to-Baja pay-phone calls of a Fifth Column nature. Coded calls — pay phone to pay phone.”
Jamie went bulb bright. His eyes popped. He almost drooled.
“Okay, this is what you might call intermediate spycraft. You’d have to have a dot-dot substitution code worked out in advance, and agreed upon by both the sending and receiving parties. It would have to be wire-recorded, and the sender would have to hold the device up to the pay-phone receiver. Code calls from regular phones to pay phones wouldn’t work, because of the U.S.-to-Mexico relay systems involved.”
Dudley said, “Please continue.”
Jamie said, “It was canny of you to cite that hot-box phone as your exemplar, so I’ll proceed in that vein. That hot-box phone is internally drilled to accept slugs, and you would need that type of drilling to gain access to the applicable Los Angeles-to-Baja relays, all of which have been rigged to feed into bookie rooms in T.J. and Ensenada. Slug calls to outside Baja pay phones would thus reach their terminus point inside those bookie rooms, if a subsidiary dot code were applied. American hoods developed this system in order to relay split-second information on fixed horse races to bookmakers operating in Mexico. That’s the way it works. Your L.A. spy calls are intentionally made to terminate at the phone banks of bookie operations.”
Such a bright lad. A swift autodidact. Pudgy and erudite.
“SIS has a tap on one specific Ensenada pay phone. That’s how the coded calls have been picked up and decoded. There have been U.S. air-attack pronouncements, which seem fanciful to me.”
Jamie said, “And I’m sure that that specific pay phone has been fruitlessly surveilled. Here’s why that’s the case. The code calls are retrieved from their bookie-room terminus. Your in-country spies work at that particular bookmaker’s front.”
He honey-trapped Lin Chung. Uncle Ace stoutly assisted.
Chung was a surefire traitor. Jim Davis revealed that. Chung bankrolled the first Baja sub deal. Chung deserved a good scare.
Dudley lounged upstairs at Lyman’s. Ace promised Chung cocaine and white girls. He laced chloral hydrate in Chung’s chop suey. Chung passed out in Kwan’s Chinese Pagoda and woke up cuffed to a floor-bolted chair.
He rattled his cuff chain. He wiggled his chair. He grasped his I’m-in-the-shit dilemma.
The storeroom was window-taped and cloaked blackout black. Chung screamed and wet his pants. Dudley caught the telltale piss scent.
Ace phone-booked Chung. Dudley caught the telltale head thumps.
Chung screamed. Dudley said, “Why would your name appear in Tommy Glennon’s address book, Doctor?”
Chung screamed. Ace rethumped him. Chung rescreamed and Chink- babbled. Ace said, “This cocksucker speak English good as me.”
Dudley roared. Chung rebabbled Chink. Dudley said, “As you wish, Doctor. But please allow my Chinese brother to translate before you continue.”
Chung babbled Chink. Short bursts, long bursts, Chink gobbledygook.
Ace said, “This cocksucker say Tommy don’t have his address. Say he only know Tommy from eugenics study group at Four Families clubhouse.”
He was credible. His name had been forged. That fact alone cleared him.
Dudley said, “What do you know about coded pay-phone calls from Los Angeles to Baja?”
Chung babbled polyglot. Dudley caught Spanish and French. The glot devolved to pure Chink.
Ace said, “I miss some of it. Gist is this cocksucker don’t know shit.”
Dudley said, “Two tangentially related events occurred in December, Doctor. A Japanese family was murdered in Highland Park, and a Jap sub came ashore on the coast, south of Ensenada. You were part of a plan to disguise Jap saboteurs as Chinese and hide them in and around Los Angeles. I would like you to admit your complicity, and give me your solemn promise that you will not engage in further sabotage aimed at the United States.”
Chung babbled Chink. Ace said, “He can’t speak no English back. He now in second childhood. We pour water on his brain.”
Dudley laughed. “Please translate the Chinese idiom, my brother.”
Ace said, “This cocksucker admit complicity. He blame crazy cop Bill Parker. Crazy Bill break up cabal and scare white partners away.”
That was true. Jim Davis revealed that detail.
Chung babbled. Ace phone-booked him. He swung the fat main directory. He hurled good head-thwapping shots.
Chung gurgled now. He issued babble, down at a hush.
Ace said, “This cocksucker offer vow of fealty and eternal brotherhood. He say if you got daughter, he perform free nose job.”
Dudley laughed and lit a cigarette. The sealed room sealed in heat. He cranked the wall heater off.
“There was a second sub incursion, early in January. What do you know about that?”
Chung blathered Chink. He slather-talked now. He oozed discombobulation.
Ace said, “This cocksucker say he don’t know shit from shinola. It not his bund, ’cause his bund disband. He say one rumor heard. He say second sub fiasco copycat of first plan.”