“It lured Monsignor Hayes. He’s coming in, with a lawyer. Bill’s set to interview him.”
Hideo sighed and stomped one foot. He was impatient. Tell me what you expect of me. You’re a woman. I’m bored already.
“Tell me what you want. I’ll say yes or no immediately.”
“I want you to forge a document. Minutes for the Baja conference in ’40.”
“To be sent to whom, and under what cover?”
“Constanza Lazaro-Schmidt,” I said. “It should be crafted to induce greed for the gold, and I want it sent anonymously.”
Hideo drummed the table. “Quid pro quo? There’s two specific concessions I require.”
I said, “Tell me what you want. I’ll say yes or no immediately.”
The riposte sailed right by him. He said, “I want to conduct the interviews with Leander Frechette and Martin Luther Mimms.”
“And, second?”
“I do not want Dudley Smith harmed. You may expose him and seek to contravene his designs. You may not kill him, physically harm him, or seek to imprison him. Tell your vindictive lover Bill Parker that. Tell your volatile friend Elmer Jackson that. Tell the trigger-happy Buzz Meeks that. All four of you must know that I will not permit Dudley Smith to be harmed in those specific fashions.”
Touché. You trumped me. This girl knows when she’s ceded the high ground, and when she’s licked.
“I’ve never seen you this passionate.”
Hideo said, “I love him. He gave me the world, and it was not an insignificant gift.”
121
(Lone Pine, 10:00 A.M., 4/6/42)
You’re a Jap.
The main drag bustled. The spring thaw hit all at once. It engendered foot traffic. Folks stormed the grocery store and the hardware store. Who’s that big goon cuffed to that Jap?
The goon wore civvies. He was an MP PFC. Ashida wore civvies. The cuff chain dangled in plain sight.
You’re a Jap.
Folks saw them. Folks passed comment. It was snide but civilized. Manzanar was close by. It juiced local business. The war had its upside. Why’s this Jap on the loose?
Because he’s Manzanar’s star boarder. Because he’s out shopping. Because he’s buying forgery gear.
The MP mapped the excursion. They hit a stationery store and a bookstore. It created a mild upscut. Biz was biz, though.
Ashida purchased four reams of quality bond paper and four fountain pens. He bought corresponding bottles of ink and German- and Russian-language study texts.
They hit the hardware store. Ashida bought a rubber-stamp kit and three hobbyist’s knives. Ranch locals cruised him. He bought a bottle of gum arabic. A ranch boy sidled close. He pulled his eyes into Jap slits and giggled. The MP moved him along.
His lab was well stocked and equipped. All praise to you know who. The shopping jaunt bypassed Al Wilhite. Subterfuge and spycraft. He slid the MP fifty scoots and made him pledge silence. You know who taught him well.
Ashida skimmed the usage books. He gained German and Russian vocabulary and enhanced his syntactical grasp. He was Spanish-fluent. He possessed one typewriter. It was a ’36 Underwood. Verisimilitude. The concept buttressed his Baja ’40 construction.
The minutes were composed and typed at the conference. The German and Russian factions shared this one machine. It was a late-vintage U.S. import. Verisimilitude. Staff flunkies typed in Ensenada hotel rooms. It was a rush job. Be sure to flub and overscore words.
Ashida composed at his desk. He typed off his hand-scrawled notes. He kept the German text lofty and ambiguous. The Kameraden fear committed words on paper. The Russian comrades are less circumspect.
Man Camera. Time Machine. Spring ’42 as the fall of ’40. Retrospective verisimilitude. You must express ridicule and contempt. It must wound Dudley Smith in the present tense.
Ashida assumed a Russian voice. He’s a high-up apparatchik. He castigates the Dresden Poly boys. Díaz, Jamie, Hayes, Pimentel. They are all rightist refuseniks and deviationists. They cannot comprehend the grand ideal of left-right amity.
Ashida played a hunch. He recalled Joan’s diary. She described a tract sent to the klubhaus. Salvy Abascal wrote it. The tract critiqued the Baja conference and the postwar utopian dream promulgated there. The tract suggested Abascal’s presence at the confab. Call him a right-wing stooge at the prom and no more.
Here’s the hunch. He cruised through Dresden Poly. He knew the boys there. He withheld this from Dudley. He’s a longtime outlier in the left-right cabal.
That’s the hunch. Here’s the fictive reinterpretation.
Abascal is no more than a stooge racketeer. He’s out to grab the gold for himself. The apparatchik has heard rumors. Abascal’s militant Catholic stance is a ruse. He’s a Brit-loving monarchist. The Irish are subhuman pigs.
Salvador has hoodwinked Dudley. That’s confirmed evidence now. It should be retroactively advanced. The apparatchik should express it. Abascal’s goal has always been racket appropriation. He’s been looking for a U.S. sugar daddy. His goal foreshadows this:
He found his sugar daddy. Dudley Smith’s muddleheaded when it comes to wild young men. Exploit the Dudley-Salvador fissure. Render it a chasm. Grant Meyer Gelb retrospective Führer status.
Ashida wrote Russian text. The apparatchik defamed Salvador at great length. Meyer Gelb was conversely lauded. Ashida overscored and flubbed words deliberately. The German and Russian texts stood complete. He forged varying ink signatures.
The textual work took eight hours. He aged his paper next. He boiled a hydroxide solution and laced it with tap water. He filled an atomizer and sprayed his pages. He fan-dried them. It created a frayed yellow effect. He repeated the process four times. Verisimilitude. Quadruple-aged paper. He worked through the night and into the next day.
He built the stamp. He devised one symbol for one cause united. He cut rubber and sawed wood and glued ink pads tight. He worked through that next day. He forgot to eat.
Die Fahne hoch!!! Beastly ideology, one savage beast. He’s half Nazi eagle, half Russian bear. He’s a lumbering creature with wings. His claws drip blood. His contorted beak screams. Crossed hammers offset the swastika. The four points are sharp workers’ scythes.
122
(Los Angeles, 4:00 P.M., 4/7/42)
Papal slugfest. Bill Parker versus Padre Joe Hayes and some dioscean shyster.
They hogged a DB sweatbox. Parker wore civvies. Hayes wore his penguin suit. The lawyer wore a blue blazer with a Loyola crest. Elmer peeped the see-thru. He goosed the hall speaker up high.
Parker and Hayes indulged blah-blah. Elmer tuned it out. He gassed with Kay yesterday. She passed on Hideo’s report. Kyoho Hanamaka was dead now. He supplied good drift, premortem.
It confirmed the Jap sword man and the queer white boy. The white boy had a white girl pal. Archie Archuleta peddled the sword man’s trinkets. Jean Staley masterminded the mail-order biz. Fruit brother Robby helped out.
Padre Hayes told stale jokes. The prelude protracted. Elmer brain-revved. The sword man had to be Johnny Shinura. That Bev’s Switchboard catalogue spelled it out plain. Shinura had no green sheet. Shinura was uninterned and out on the hoof. Shinura peddled his shit out of a J-town loft. The Feds seized the building a month ago. It was government-sealed. Where’s Sword Man Johnny now?
The prelude deprotracted. Joe Hayes lit a cigarette. Shyster McBride lit a cigar. Parker pushed an ashtray across the table.