Herr Hanamaka and Herr Rice. Gold political artifacts and the Nazi-Soviet meet. He’s got zilch thus far. He logs sullen looks and spit globs. He now carries two handkerchiefs.
He’s a traitor and a war profiteer. His fellow Japs sense that.
They’re right. He’s a gold bug. He wants to touch THE specific gold cache. It’s alchemized gold. It’s been molded into artifacts. It consecrates monstrous ideologies. It’s his world war/I was there/I did my part souvenir.
He wants to earn the enhanced esteem of the monstrous Dudley Smith. He wants to pave a gold pathway through this war. He will see his racial countrymen slaughtered. He will see his native countrymen imprisoned in horse stalls. He wants to pave a gold pathway to a three-case solve. He wants to alchemize the riddles of that shithole backhouse on East 46th Street. He wants Dudley Smith to love him — because he’s fought and endured.
He’s heard Harold John Miciak’s wire-recorded statement. It vividly explicates the cut-loose male id. The staggering range of misconduct. The mixed-race escapades at a fascist meeting spot. The booze- and dope-fueled obliviousness.
The klubhaus commemorates nihilistic bonhomie. It’s avant-garde in that way. The klubhaus feels Fifth Column — tangential. The murders have begun to feel incidental. They are thus coincident to the ’31 gold heist and the ’33 Griffith Park fire. The crossover leads to those earlier cases are simply address-book and police-file names. The Hanamaka-to-Rice leads are all present-day. There’s Rice’s gold bayonet. There’s Hanamaka’s print in Tommy G.’s address book.
The klubhaus caper. It feels like a sexual crime. It reads as coincident to Fifth Columnism and all preceding cases. Two women left pubic-hair exemplars upstairs. Said women play as prostitutes or jazz-club pickups and thus as non sequiturs. The klubhaus job feels like a homosexual crime. It may possess roots within the wide range of klubhaus misbehavior.
The bedroom sheet. Stained with feces and K-Y jelly. It’s the sole forensic indicator. It complements his overarching instincts. The upstairs wall indentations. Low indentations. Surely made by a woman’s right shoe. That indicates a two-person/three-victim crime. He postulates a homosexual man with a female accomplice.
Sexual crimes are lust and jealousy crimes. They are impetuously performed and irrational in nature. Sexual crimes are personal-animus crimes. They are directed at one victim only — even when two killers kill.
Wendell Rice.
George Kapek.
Archie Archuleta.
One man was the sole intended victim. He knows this. He knows this because he’s a homosexual. He must solve this gaudy murder case and justify the admission.
69
(Los Angeles, 2/12–2/25/42)
Oooga-booga. Hear dem tom-toms? Dat hellhound’s still on his trail.
He’s jungled-up and fucked-up with Buzz Meeks now. Their T.J. swoop was hopped-up and shook-up and altogether nuts. The Huey Cressmeyer snatch was jacked-up and jumped-up and ill-advised. Buzz wants to kiss up and suck up to El Dudster or conversely slay him dead. Buzz wants to clip Tommy Glennon. Maybe Dud will make up with him then.
Maybe. Maybe not. Buzz is scared. He’s scared. What if Huey blabs? It’s katy-bar-the-door then.
They work the Big Case. It’s Crash-Squad Apocalypse and Crash-Squad Abyss. They’ve canvassed from 46th Street to the planet Mars. Jack H. constrains them. He’s sealed pertinent records. He’s nixed further chats with Preacher Mimms. He’s nixed a Newton Station approach. Rice and Kapek bought off the night-watch blues and the fucking Vice Squad en masse. There’s no occurrence sheets extant. There’s no loud-noise reports and D&D lists. Thad Brown’s three lineups dry-humped the whole universe.
Harold John Miciak. That fat-mouthed bugfucker. He monkey-wrenched the whole case. He ran his mouth and glued his mouth shut. Get it? He named no names. He ratted out the looted guns and Wendell Rice with some gold bayonet. He dick-teased the Crash Squad and the whole PD and zipped his trap shut.
Miciak’s pitch could tank the PD. Jack H. and Dud know it. They’ve got to be brainstorming.
Figure this. They’ve formulated kill lists. Kill, kill, kill. Kill some right-wing spics. Kill some jazzhound jigs. Kill some white Nazi shits. Plant some evidence on them and coonvene a new grand jury. Nail postmortem indictments.
It sounds goooooood. It might relieve overall tension. It might remove him and Buzz from the Dudster’s gun sights. It floodlights his own mixed motives. He’d loooooove to file a clean solve. He’d looooove to end all this shuddering shit.
He’d love to gun-sight Jean Staley. Tough luck there. She flew the coop. She’s off for Des Moines. She’s driving sloooooow and sending him postcards. It’s hinky. It gores his gonads. It dings his dick. It torques his tail raw. It’s got him thinking.
Jean was ex-CP. That was back in ’33. The Griffith Park fire occurs. Wayne Frank dies. Jean’s cell catches heat. Call it coincidence. It was the Depression. The Red Beast got plain folks het up. Yeah, there’s that. Then, there’s this:
Wayne Frank was his brother. It could have been arson. He’s supposed to be a detective. Jolting Jean jumped loose of their should-have-been love.
He B and E’d her crib and tossed it. Too much stuff was gone. The walls were all print-wiped. She left behind some lingerie. He sniffed it and went euphoric.
Jean weighs on him. He might call up some Arson Squad paper. Why’d she hink and boogaloo? It was just getting gooooood.
Dud weighs on him. He’s the hellhound. Elmer J. gave the hellhound a hotfoot for kicks and suffered comeuppance. He’s not the hotfoot type. That’s strictly Bill Parker’s MO.
Dud won’t fuck with Whiskey Bill. Parker’s too far up the PD’s ass to mess with. Joan Conville laid some lowdown on Kay Lake. La Kay relaid it to him. Dig: Parker sold the PD out to the Fed grand jury.
He could do something similar. He had the grit to survive and thrive. He could shadowbox Dud the Impaler and Jack H. himself. Elmer V. was no Whiskey Bill. He lacked Parker’s stature and juice. He had some backwoods skills, nonetheless.
He should do the PD a big favor. It would buy him love from Dudley and Jack. It would offset the chance that Dud would clip him and Buzz. The favor should pertain to the klubhaus job or Parker’s Fed-probe play.
He gave it one shot so far. Thad Brown refused to raid the Deutsches Haus. The December raid went bust. So Sergeant E. V. Jackson donned disguise and worked his way back in.
He bought some two-tone loafer jackets and Tyrolean porkpies. He laced venom into his Carolina drawl and played Klansman adrift. He tossed barbs at the Jews and ballyhooed the L.A. Reich. He drank German beer. He jumped three fat fräuleins. He pulled this out of his hat:
He’s Herr Doktor Vengeance. His brother fried in the Griffith Park fire. He’s out to vaporize the Commie cell that started the blaze. Herr Doktor Vengeance knows some names.
Meyer Gelb. Jean Staley. Dr. Saul Lesnick. Andrea Lesnick. Jorge Villareal-Caiz. Who’s got the scarified skinny? Herr Doktor Vengeance pays cold cash for hot drift.
Die Krautniks went Vass? They were ditzy dilettantes. They were juvenile jerkoffs hooked on hate and the “Horst-Wessel-Lied.” Herr Doktor Vengeance dropped more names.