I want Hideo to seize on Joan’s reluctance to describe and analyze the gold quest. I want Hideo to feel safe here. I’m banking on the threads of reluctant decency that Joan and I have both glimpsed in him. What will you do now, Hideo? Which way will your tortured conscience lead you? Will you tell Dudley that I’ve seen the diary or will you omit?
Bill Parker’s tortured conscience rivals Hideo’s. Joan watched him falter and ascend in near-direct proportion. Bill keeps mum on Two-Gun Davis and the Watanabe frame; Bill diverts the Werewolf’s gas-chamber trek. Bill cosigns an expedient solution to the klubhaus job and boldly sells the PD out to the Federal grand jury. Bill falters and ascends; Bill pratfalls, dusts himself off, and stumbles toward his next moral encounter. He caroms between God and Old Crow bonded bourbon in the hope that the former will obviate the need for the latter. He fears the loss of Dudley Smith more than he fears Dudley Smith himself, and clings to the bereft notion that Dudley Smith’s brutal élan facilitates the fortunes of his beloved police department. He stops short of condemning Dudley Smith as monstrous — because to do so would reduce him to the role of most meek collaborator.
I had to bank on Hideo Ashida’s few decent instincts. I had to hope that Bill Parker would pray or drink himself through to the truth of Dudley Smith’s malevolence.
Joan excelled at portraiture. She nailed William H. Parker and went on to nail the Dudley — Claire De Haven misalliance. Dudley and Claire exemplify a barely contained madness. Dudley hoards Nazi regalia and hints at a fascist conversion. Claire defends the Moscow show trials and waves the Red flag with aplomb. Dudley dallies with opium and Benzedrine. Claire boots morphine. A U.S. Army posting buttresses Dudley’s Baja racket schemes. They adopt a fifteen-year-old red diaper baby. Dudley brutally beats Orson Welles and suborns him as an informant. Claire fellates Welles in Otto Klemperer’s steam room.
Claire is a man-trap woman. She holds sway over men in the manner that Dudley holds sway over women. Claire is horrified at the power she’s granted him and aghast at the erosion of her so-precious self. Claire fears that Dudley killed her lover, José Vasquez-Cruz. Vasquez-Cruz was really Jorge Villareal-Caiz. Villareal-Caiz stood foursquare in Meyer Gelb’s Red cell. As Joan Conville said, “It’s all one story, you see.”
And it’s my story now. I’m a bit-player-in-waiting. Claire suspects that a “South Dakota slattern” shanked Dudley last December. Dudley pooh-poohed the assertion and passed it along to Joan. Claire added this: “Maybe I’ll confront the slattern at one of Otto Klemperer’s parties. She’s like the bad penny, always showing up at them.”
Claire, I’d love to gab. I know we’d have things to discuss.
Those looming storm clouds burst; I gathered up my diary pages and carried them inside. I placed Joan’s diary pages in a good-sized cardboard box and addressed it to William H. Parker. It was 11:25 now. The postman always arrives around noon.
81
(Los Angeles, 11:30 A.M., 3/2/42)
He lied to Dudley. He omitted and withheld. It was split-second instinctive.
Ashida drove through Bunker Hill. He replayed the phone call. The Biltmore switchboard had patched him through to La Paz. Dudley issued klubhaus directives. His chance to rat Kay fizzled out.
They met at Dave’s Blue Room, yesterday. Kay described the contents of Joan Conville’s diary. Joan willed her the pages. Joan candidly described her post — New Year’s life and spilled leads on their intertwined cases. Joan laid out her liaisons with Dudley and Bill Parker. Kay talked for two hours straight.
He braced himself for The Bomb. The Bomb did not exist — or Kay declined to drop it.
Joan detailed the gold heist and its current reemergence. Joan omitted the subsequent gold quest altogether.
Or Kay abridged her account. She played editor and expurgated at will. She excised Joan’s pages and recounted only what she wanted him to know.
Rain clouds unzipped. Ashida ran his wiper blades. He crossed Loma and looked north to Belmont High. He replayed Kay’s key remarks.
“Here’s something you should know, Hideo. Jim Davis killed the Watanabes. He initially confessed to Bill Parker, and to Dudley more recently. From the look on your face, I can tell that Dudley failed to inform you.”
Kay provoked him. Kay taunted him and scolded him. “You should have told Elmer everything. His brother died in that fire.” Kay provokes, Kay scolds, Kay taunts and dares.
“I know everything that I’ve told you. I will leave you guessing as to what I might have withheld. You will tell Dudley whatever you decide to tell him. I will seek to expose any and all false solutions to the klubhaus case.”
Kay closed with that. The moment felt telepathic. Kay wanted a clean solve. He wanted a clean solve. Joan might have expressed his desire. Kay might have read him just right.
Telepathy begets telepathy. He talked to Dudley a second time this morning. Dudley said, “Our late friend Joan kept a diary, lad. She’d mentioned it to me several times. Will you go by her bungalow and do a toss and forensic? She may have tattled a few of our secrets that we don’t want commonly known.”
Ashida cut west on 1st Street and north on Carondelet. Central Property kicked loose the door key. The idea came to him then.
He parked beside the courtyard and walked back. He lugged his evidence kit. Nobody saw him or stopped him. Nobody slack-jawed the Army-togged Jap.
He unlocked the door and locked himself back in. He turned on all the room lights. Joan’s bungalow remained unrented and appeared to be intact. It was a suicide scene. The PD and morgue men had come and gone last week.
Ashida checked the kitchen. He looked under the sink and saw a wastebasket. It contained booze empties and coffee grounds. They were piled halfway up. He checked the sink drain and ran some cold water. The drain trap worked well. That was good. It enhanced forensic detail.
He tossed the bungalow.
He went through the closets, the one dresser, the front-room shelves. He went through Joan’s desk drawers. There was no typewriter. That was good. He found pens and writing paper in the bottom-left drawer.
A soft blotter covered the desktop. Ashida popped his evidence kit and filled an atomizer. He utilized deionized water and liquid dioxide. He sprayed the blotter and watched pen indentations rise.
Joan had block-printed and applied hard strokes. “Dudley” and “Bill” crisscrossed the blotter. He saw “despite his best intentions” and “confiscated gun lists.”
The “Dudley” and “Bill” impressions were instructive. They sparked a secondary notion. It would tweak Dudley’s vanity and densify this construction.
He took a hundred sheets of writing paper and dumped them in the kitchen sink. He spritzed them with diluted kerosene and dropped a match. The pages burned. He counted off ten seconds. He doused the flames with tap water and created a wet mess.
He turned off the water and cleaned up the mess. He dumped the bulk of the wet paper in a grocery bag. He placed the bag in his evidence kit and performed his obfuscation tasks.
They were extra precautionary. Dudley trusted him. He relied on that fact.
Ashida unscrewed the sink drain. He smeared sodden paper to the inside walls of the pipe. He tweezed paper fragments and affixed them to the drain holes. He screwed the drain trap back on.