“That green shit dissolved the clothes off the body.”
Forbes said, “Who killed you, dead man?”
Goossen said, “It’s a missing-person job. That stuff puts me to sleep. Give me a nigger homicide any day.”
Brown said, “You’re out of luck there. Get the box and the stiff to Doc Layman at the morgue.”
Forbes and Goossen sulked. Elmer chewed his cigar. He recollected Wayne Frank. He felt all razzle-dazzle.
“Here’s what gets me. Some of the box is burned, but some ain’t. I don’t see no special flame pattern on the wood.”
Forbes said, “Elmer’s brother died in that fire. He’s got fires on the noggin.”
Goossen said, “I remember that day. Fire trucks were backed up all the way down Los Feliz.”
Forbes said, “It was the Reds. They never proved arson, but some Red cell was supposed to be good for it.”
Ashida studied the box. Genius at work. All eyes on Ashida now.
He said, “Elmer could be right. I think the box was burned concurrent with an aboveground fire. 1933 might be a good guess.”
The rain let up. Black clouds hovered. Thad B. drove Elmer and Ashida back downtown. L.A. was hungover. Shops closed, nil traffic, local yokels sleeping it off.
Ashida hopped out at the Biltmore. Elmer snagged his civilian sled at City Hall. That Vice clerk delivered. He’d stuck the phone-call list under the wiper blades.
Elmer had a bachelor flop at 1st and Saint Andrews. He drove by and fed his tropical fish. Brenda had a house up Laurel Canyon. He part-time shacked there. Brenda might be home. She might toss him some New Year’s woof-woof.
He drove over and let himself in. The place was done up Spanish Hacienda. Brenda scrounged used sets from The Sword of Zorro. Some homo art director went nuts.
Elmer built a highball and buzzed the call-service switchboard. The dispatch girl delivered the dish. She knew Elmer was het up and voyeurizized.
Dig tonight’s roster:
Fletch Bowron booked a threesky. DA Bill McPherson booked a colored cooze. Sheriff Gene Biscailuz booked a tall blonde.
The service featured house calls, plus three fuck flops. Apartment-building tryst spots. Replete with hidden wall peeks and cameras. Folks paid to peep bedroom action. The camera shit doubled as potential shakedown gear.
The Chapman Park flop was booked tonight. Cary Grant, Butch Stanwyck, and Ruth Mildred Cressmeyer were tricking with “Ten-Inch” Tony Mangano.
Tony tricked switcheroosky. He turned Ruth Mildred straight in one-night allotments. Ruthie was a disbarred physician and scrape doc. Ruthie was tight with Dudley Smith. Ruthie recruited lez girls for Brenda.
Fourteen peepers had booked seats for the show. The peepers peeped anonymous. They paid fifty scoots a head. Butch and Tony commanded top dollar.
Also, on tonight’s roster:
Mickey Rooney booked a girl. Likewise John “Cricket Dick” Huston. Eight girls for a USC frat bash. Six boys for a Brentwood hen party.
Elmer signed off the call. The phone rang and startled him. He snagged the new call.
“Talk to me.”
“It’s Kay, Elmer.”
“Well, then. Some weather, huh? It’s like the flood in the Bible. You think it’ll ever stop?”
Kay laughed. “I didn’t call to discuss the weather.”
Elmer laughed. “Well, it sure ain’t the war, because we hashed all that out the last time we talked.”
“Don’t be a C.T. You know what I’m angling for.”
“Oh, yeah? And what’s that, pray tell?”
Kay stage-sighed. “Come on, Elmer. Give.”
Elmer stage-sighed. “The party? The big redhead with Bill Parker? That catch your eye?”
“Now, he gets to it.”
“Hard not to notice, huh?”
Kay laughed. “I’ve known William Henry Parker the Third for twenty-seven days, and during that time he has repeatedly cast his eyes about for tall, red-haired, naval-officer women.”
Elmer said, “You’re counting the days since you’ve met him. What’s that tell you about yourself?”
Kay said, “You’re deliberately tweaking me.”
Elmer said, “I don’t know no more than you do, except how much you love that man.”
Kay blew him a kiss and hung up. The ten-second phone call was her standard MO.
Elmer yawned and kicked his shoes off. He got out the Vice clerk’s list. He studied Tommy G.’s address book and put shit together.
St. Vibiana’s Church. He decoded that one already. It’s the home of papal poobah J. J. Cantwell. He’s the Dudster’s old pal.
The Deutsches Haus. 15th and Union. Pro-Nazi hot spot. Kraut regalia for sale.
Let’s backtrack. We’re in Tommy’s hotel room. There’s that tattoo stencil. It features swastikas and an “SQ” circled by snakes. The “SQ” snake job was embroidered on the late Eddie Leng.
More names, more phone numbers. Huey Cressmeyer. A Hollywood phone exchange. That’s no surprise. He’s Ruth Mildred’s perv-o son and a Dudster informant. C-town tattle: Huey and Tommy were reform-school chums.
Monsignor Joseph Hayes. A West L.A. exchange. More C-town drift: Tommy and “some priest” travel the Hershey Highway.
Jean Clarice Staley. A Hollywood exchange. That rates a Huh? She’s a woman — but Tommy runs Greek. He rapes women — he don’t call them.
That hot-box pay phone. It’s right upside the Herald. It’s drilled for slug calls. Plus this head-scratcher. It rates a big Huh?
Fourteen pay phones. All down in Baja. All in Ensenada. All eighty miles south of T.J.
Let’s backtrack. Tommy ran wetbacks for Carlos Madrano. That Spanish-language book in Tommy’s room.
Head-scratchers. Brain-broilers. Code 3 Alert. Look out, son. You’re brushing upside Dudley Smith.
Rain kicked up hard. Elmer walked to the front window and looked out. He saw fresh mud slides. He saw storm crews on Crescent Heights.
Let’s backtrack. The Griffith Park slide, the old-new DOA. Let’s backtrack. The 1933 fire.
It’s October 3. It’s 103 degrees in L.A. Santa Ana winds change course. CCC workers are out cutting brush. Wayne Frank’s among them.
Thirty-four men die. It gets ambiguous here. There’s sloppy rosters and files and fly-by-night work crews. Who died and who didn’t? There’s un-ID’d bodies. There’s Wayne Frank — ID’d off old dental charts.
Arson or not? It gets ambiguous here. It’s the Depression. There’s Red revolt in the vox populi. Garment workers agitating. Labor marches. Kreepy Kremlin prophecies. Fires, tidal waves, storms.
Elmer dug out his scrapbook. Wayne Frank pix consumed four pages. Wayne Frank in a boxer’s pose, 1924. Wayne Frank in a Klan sheet, 1926. Elmer V. in Marine green, 1930. Wayne Frank giving him the horns.
Wayne Frank was taller and handsomer. Wayne Frank was smarter and meaner. Elmer V. was slow to rile. He could kick big brother’s hate-dog ass all day long.
What made Wayne Frank tick? Nobody knew. Wayne Frank was whimsical. Wayne Frank imagined impossible shit and convinced himself that it was true. Wayne Frank developed this big gold-heist fixation.
May ’31. A mint-train job. A Frisco-to-L.A. gold-transfer run. Gold bars. A small number. Triple-locked in a cage. Shackled passengers under guard. San Quentin convicts bound for retrials in L.A.
Chaos attends a track switch in Monterey County. All eight cons escape. Seven men are hunted down. They’re shot on sight faaaaast. One man remains at large still.
More grief. A downed-track snafu two hours south. Chaos atop chaos. Guards and crew succumb to frayed nerves. The heist occurs then. The heister or heisters are smart. Just one box’s worth of bars leaves the train.