That’s true. Luck and fate intertwine and spawn opportunity. And opportunity carries a price. Consider this nightmare.
New Year’s Eve through a booze veil. Blinding rain and the crash. The jail cell wake-up and policeman standing there. He’s an opportunist, as well.
That dream bearably repeats. Repetition renders it banal. The dream sound track retains its verve. She hears young voices and pounding fists. They emanate from some enclosed space. The sound track horrifies.
Fate, thus defined. Cop life beckons her. She joins her fellow opportunists — wartime irregulars all.
Bill Parker and Dudley Smith. Hideo Ashida and Kay Lake. Thad Brown, Nort Layman, Call-Me-Jack Horrall. Elmer Jackson, Lee Blanchard, Buzz Meeks.
All task-assigned. All duty-driven. There for the body-in-the-box and the dead-cops caper. It’s all one story, you see.
The story coheres in her diary. The supporting players recede and make room for the stars. She’s as one with Dudley and Hideo. They all want the gold — and that’s all that counts.
Fate. Opportunity. Misalliance. Fool’s errand. Sacred quest. The gold heist and the fire. It’s all one story, you—
She stands poised. Her forensic skills verge on genius. Hideo supersedes her in all things scientific. Dudley’s fierce will supersedes all forensic application. It’s their one story. It will culminate if and when they solve their intertwined cases. It will end if and when they get the gold.
It’s Fate, prophesied. It’s Opportunity, writ large. It’s Luck, in the form of a boozed-up policeman and his college-girl crush.
I can help you, Lieutenant. Of course you can. I’ve always had my way with men. And you won’t be the only man who finds me.
Her Bill. Her Dudley. A troika yet to resolve. She shared lust and gold fever with Dudley. She shared hurt and dashed faith with Bill. She holds her own with both of her lovers. She shares their stalemates. She shares their secrets. She knows things that no woman of her station should know.
Two-Gun Davis killed the four Watanabes. Werewolf Shudo was framed. Dudley did it. Bill plucked Shudo from death row. He did it to impress her and to wow God. He performed a penitential act to negate his adultery.
You do not cut deals with God. Protestants know this. Catholics do not. Bill snitched to the Fed grand jury. He did it with self-seeking aplomb. Dudley told her that he and Jack Horrall are scheming countermeasures. They will address Bill’s grand-jury play and the ghastly klubhaus case itself. Her lovers blur within their machinations. She’s aswirl with their secrets. She’s powerfully indebted to their conflict. The realization stuns her.
Dudley has pledged to solve her father’s murder. It was not an idle boast. He added the caveat: “If a solution is there to be had.” She told him about the air-warfare tract, mailed to the haus.
Mitch Kupp authored the tract. It was sent to Wendell Rice. That fact stunned Dudley. He held forth on fate and lunar tides. Dudley puts faith in talking animals and spirit worlds aligned. Bill cuts deals with God and weeps in shame. He comes to her nakedly revealed and blinded with desire. She will not give up either man.
Kay Lake mediates both men. She’s the Bill-loves-Joan deus ex machina and piquantly critiques their affair. Schoolgirl intrigue is at play here. Kay is waiting out Bill’s fatuous crush on the big redhead. Kay mediates Dudley Smith with bald malice.
She despises Dudley. She purports to see through to his cold, evil heart. She may or may not know that Dudley and Big Red share the sheets. Kay eavesdrops at Lyman’s. She gleefully catalogues and passes on gossip. She should know the story. She’s never said, “Are you or aren’t you?” That seems odd in itself.
Kay collects rumors, Kay reveals rumors, Kay constellates rumors herself. One pithy rumor surfaces on occasion. Kay Lake shivved Dudley Smith late last year.
It was ridiculous. She didn’t believe it. It exposed the fault lines of the Lyman’s rumor mill. Cop work was inherently outré and given to extravagant expression. All provocative rumors have legs. The Kay-Dudley dish was pure fantasia.
Kay was triangle-happy. She observed troikas, and slid in and out of them. There’s Joan/Dudley/Bill. There’s Joan/Bill/Kay. There’s Joan/Dudley/Claire De Haven. Can she credit the war, or is it all just luck and lust, defined?
She’s visited Otto Klemperer’s spread on three more jazzy occasions. Kay and the Maestro play the piano together. The Maestro enjoys flirting with young women. He’s hinted that his house holds a dark secret. Kay plays improvised piano chords. They’re dark and secretly descriptive. There’s an open secret swirling at chez Klemperer. Kay and the Maestro lead a cabal of New York leftists and their “Mexican friend.” They’re smuggling Shostakovich’s new symphony out of Russia. The Maestro intends to conduct a preemptive performance. All proceeds will go to European war relief.
It’s a benign secret. It dovetails with malign cop-world secrets. Kay told her that Dudley smokes opium. Kay said, “Don’t tell anyone — it’s a secret.”
She hoards secrets as well as Kay does. She keeps a secret diary and performs secret deeds. She met Meyer Gelb at her first Maestro bash. He was Griffith Park fire — adjunct and thus adjunct to Karl Tullock and Wayne Frank Jackson. She checked statewide DMV records. There were no Meyer Gelbs listed. She ran nationwide records checks, with identical results. She attended her second Maestro bash. She prowled the Maestro’s office and went through his Rolodex. There was no Meyer Gelb listed. She performed this secret deed sans compunction.
Jean Staley attended her maiden Maestro bash. She once belonged to Comrade Gelb’s Commie cell. Miss Staley was listed in the ’38 L.A. White Pages. She lived in Beachwood Canyon. It mandated a covert approach.
Burglars’ tools. Easily accessible. The crime lab kept an exemplar set.
She surveilled Jean Staley’s bungalow. Miss Staley’s car was missing. Miss Staley appeared to be missing herself. She let herself in to the bungalow. It was musty. The gas had been turned off. The walls bore print-eradication marks. The place had been deftly wiped.
Secret indications. Secrets, not yet revealed.
Claire De Haven attends the Maestro’s parties. Kay calls her the “doomed poetess.” Claire’s morphine habit is a poorly kept secret. Guests see her coming and mime her deft touch with a spike. Claire remains a most stately dope fiend. She observed Claire and Orson Welles talking. Welles refused to go in the steam room with her. He saw both of Dudley Smith’s women naked. Dudley issued commensurate warnings and a brutal rebuke. He probably possessed a secondary motive. She had no idea what. It was Dudley’s secret — and she’s not one to pry.
Terry Lux recut Orson’s face. Orson recuperated in secret. Terry Lux is American First. Bill Parker spilled Terry’s big secret. Terry was privy to the Watanabe snuffs.
Secrets.
Her secrets. The gold cabal’s secrets. Cop secrets, above all else.
Navy blue to police blue. Fate, luck, and opportunity conjoined. Jack Horrall likes her legs and knows grit and brains when he sees them. She joins the ranks October 4. She’ll be Captain J. W. Conville and the highest-ranking woman on the PD. Her precipitous commission will spawn cop resentment. She will rebuff it with imperious ease. Her serendipity mirrors that of Lieutenant Hideo Ashida. Fate, luck, opportunity. Cop noblesse oblige. Dudley Smith’s largesse.
They both love him. They both know what he is. It’s their dark secret, shared.
They talk, long-distance. Their mutual enmity has waned. They speak as fellow scientists and gold questers. She accepts his prissy deviance. He accepts her bedroom bond with the man he loves. They talk for hours. The U.S. Army pays for the calls. They discuss crossover leads in their three complex cases. They dissect every single lead and clue and possible connection. They do not covet the gold from an aggrieved perspective. They’ve both played this war for all it’s worth and come out ahead.