“Well, the swastikas sound like Dudley. He’s gaga for fascist knickknacks. Don’t get me going on that.”
“I thought he might have told you about the bayonet.”
“Well, all I know is that there was supposed to have been a secret Nazi and Russian meeting here, sometime in ’40. All these alleged counteropposites got cozy. They discussed melting some gold cache into political artifacts, to save their keesters regardless of who wins the war. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t. Dudley’s bayonet story sounds rather like that. The nice thing about gossip is that it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s true.”
SIS was Sunday dead. Ashida worked the squadroom, solo. The Klein girl studied surveillance files and kept to herself. Dudley gave her a kid task. It kept her busy and supplied pocket change.
The gold cache. Melted artifacts. The Red-Nazi confab. La Juan’s gossip reverberates.
Ashida pushed it aside. He developed the bookie-drop snapshots. It took three hours. He pulled SIS sedition sheets. Mug-shot strips were attached.
It was drudge work. Cull the bookie-drop shots. Cull the mug shots and compare faces. Confirm or refute bookie-drop/Fifth Column malfeasance.
Ashida worked photo-to-photo. The Klein girl kept to herself. Ashida eyeball-hopped. Bookie shots, mug shots, repeat the process.
It was drudge work. He viewed right-wing and left-wing fiends and traveled sedition-sheet byways.
With Redshirts and Goldshirts. With priest killers and priest avengers. With Stalinists, Trotskyites, and Sparticists. With the full idiot spectrum.
Ashida flipped photographs. The mug-shot stack dwindled. He yawned. He scratched. He chugged coffee. He rubbed his eyes and—
Hit Santa Cruz, Luis Ramon. Born 4/19/11, Ensenada.
Santa Cruz killed two puto comunistas. He beat them with a nail-studded plank and cut their dicks off. All misdemeanor charges were dropped.
Luis Santa Cruz:
Snapped outside the bookie front. Exalted Cyclops of the White Dog Bund.
Dudley decreed a raid. He said, “Go in with shotguns, lad. You and our chum Juan. The Wolf will walk point and provide for your safety.”
It was a test. Ashida knew that. He must not disappoint.
They parked by the White Dog Klub. They’d discussed the play. They carried 12-gauge pumps. Dudley decreed lethal loads. Oooh — double-aught buckshot, rat poison — laced.
Lieutenant Juan ticked off numbers. On three, now. Uno, dos, tres—
They ran across the street. Pedestrians wigged out and scattered. They charged the basement door. It refused to give. Lieutenant Juan racked his shotgun and blew off the lock and jamb.
Ashida kicked the door in. The bookie room was right there. Bookie dinks saw them and raised a raid ruckus. An alarm siren blew.
Fifty-some desks. Fifty-some men. Blaring telephones and stacks of flash paper. Wall-to-wall chalkboards, chalked with horse-race odds.
The dinks lit the flash paper. Bet slips ignited. Ashida saw a relay transmitter at the front of the room.
Lieutenant Juan triggered a spread. A chalkboard blew up. Men yelled en español. Smoke covered the room. Ashida triggered a spread and blew up a chalkboard. The recoil knocked him flat.
He hit the floor and crawled forward. Scrambling legs hit him. He crawled toward the transmitter. A man stopped to kick him. Ashida took four head shots. He jammed his shotgun up against the man’s belly and blew his guts out.
His own scream outscreamed fifty-some screams. Blood spattered wide. Ashida crawled under the smoke line. He saw Luis Santa Cruz by the transmitter. Luis Santa Cruz flipped a switch.
The transmitter exploded. Santa Cruz vaporized. Legs ran over Ashida. Men fell on top of him. Flames shot up and out.
Ashida crawled and fired his shotgun. He hit legs and severed legs and brought down fleeing men. He killed them and crawled over them. He screamed in English and Japanese. He coughed out black smoke and crawled for the door.
61
(Tijuana, 8:00 P.M., 2/8/42)
The boys are back—
Said boys crossed the border. Elmer wheeled his spiff ’40 Buick. It featured wide whites and an 8-ball shifter. Buzz badged the turnstile goons. They salaamed to los jefes. Buzz dispensed dollar bills and contraband smut pix.
The goons cheered. They wore Nazified threads and went Willkommen. Buzz Sieg Heil’d them back. Elmer haw-hawed.
He peeled rubber southbound. We’re here now. We’re sanctioned. Let’s find Huey C.
Elmer yodeled Old Crow. “We’ve got to bypass the Staties. It’ll get back to Dud, rápidamente.”
Buzz snatched the jug. “I’ve been thinking about that hump, and I’ve come to some ripe conclusions.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, he’s a sissy. Such as, he’s pussy-whipped. He’s got his put-upon Irish wife and his bitch-in-heat Claire what’s-her-name, and his umpteen daughters and that bastard girl Beth Short — and without them goo-goo talking him, he ain’t shit. In my view, he ain’t nothing but a charming lunatic who’s got the world bamboozled. Moreover, he ain’t as smart as Bill Parker — which just about kills him.”
Elmer snatched the jug. “They’ve got each other dialed, that’s for sure.”
“You want the drumroll here? They’re both poking the big redhead, which means they’ve got some juice that we don’t.”
Elmer brain-broiled the spiel. It got him torqued. He chronologized his own Dudster drift.
He don’t gun down Tommy G. He finds char-broiled Eddie Leng. Eddie’s Fifth Column, boocoo. He’s Tommy’s KA. Dud wants Tommy muerto. Sergeant E. V. Jackson’s bored. He goes rogue behind feisty ennui.
Buzz gargled Old Crow. “We got to wrangle Huey someplace secluded and put the spurs to him. All these Fifth Column geeks are jungled up. Huey’s got some answers that’ll take us back to Kapek and Rice.”
“Jack Horrall wants a clean solve on this one. Clean by his standards, I mean.”
Buzz said, “Ditto yours truly. A clean solve puts it to Dud, not that I give a shimmering shit about those whipdick cops and how bad the PD looks.”
They hit T.J. proper. Elmer slow-trawled Revolución. Buzz checked their backseat stash.
Brass knucks. Beavertail saps. Two sawed-off shotguns. Leg restraints. Come-along chains. Thumb screws. Friction tape. Wadded-up socks. This cattle-prod gizmo.
Elmer slow-trawled. Buzz orbed multitudinous street whores. Elmer daydreamed.
He daydreamed Jean Staley. Their hot date reverberated. He called Jean mucho times and got no answer. She didn’t call him. He sent her flowers. No sweet thank-you call ensued.
He daydreamed Jean and Wayne Frank. Jean’s Red cell ran adjunct to the Griffith Park fire. He sleep-dreamed Wayne Frank scorched alive and living flush on some island. Brown girls engulf him. He’s melting gold bars into greenbacks.
They passed a farmacia. Buzz went Whoa now and jabbed him. Elmer idled the sled curbside. Buzz jumped out and ran in.
Kid beggars swarmed the car. Mangy muchachos all. They hawked religious medals and nudie pix of their mamas. They jabbered, “Joo want pussy?”
Elmer dispensed chump change and illustrated hate tracts. FDR with fangs and Jew beanie. Frau Eleanor blowing Joe Stalin. The kids whoop-whooped. Buzz hopped back in the sled. He waved a brown paper bag.
The kids waved adios. Elmer peeled out. Buzz dumped the bag in his lap. It contained this: