The clerk said, “No, but that’s an odd coincidence. An Army major named Smith called and asked for Chuckie’s address, which I sure don’t have. This major was some mick with a brogue. He told me a nutso story about how he identified Chuckie from some smut film that Orson Welles showed him. I told him Chuckie’s a clandestine sort of guy, but he’ll be gigging at the Taj Mahal tonight. Orson Welles himself. Don’t that take all?”
The hackie cruised Central Avenue. They hit a midday traffic lull. Ashida steered him by the klubhaus. It was a flat vacant lot now. Jordan High footballers scrimmaged. They were colored. The white coach looked like Dudley Smith.
The hackie U-turned back to Central. There’s the jazz strip. Club Alabam, Port Afrique, Club Zombie. The façades have been refitted. Rioters had torched cars and business fronts. He killed two of them. Dudley Smith killed many more.
The cab dropped him at 48th Street. The Congregation of the Congo hogged half a block. A wide storefront with wide picture windows. Easel-propped window art.
Colored pilgrims in Africa. They rode lions and zebras and boiled white folks alive. The Rev offered steerage and deluxe passage rates. The USS Negro sailed monthly.
Ashida walked in. White janitors dusted the pews and swept the aisles. The Rev and Link Rockwell stood by the pulpit. Link wore Navy khakis. Both men smoked corncob pipes.
They saw Ashida. Looks flew, bilateral. He’s that Jap cop.
Ashida walked up. Both men grinned. Both men proffered handshakes. Both men jut-jawed their pipes.
Rockwell said, “Leander told us you might drop by.”
The Rev said, “Dr. Ashida’s hipped on the gold. I don’t think I’m being precipitous by stating that. Will you give him a gander, Link?”
Rockwell went After you. Ashida trudged a short hallway. The Rev trailed him. Rockwell opened a closet door and pulled a light cord.
Hosanna. At long last. Come let us adore it. Behold the sacred vault. It’s a good-sized closet. Gold bars are stacked floor to chest-high.
The Rev chortled. “Too bad it’s not real. If you’ve got a moment, Link will elaborate.”
Rockwell said, “As Leander told you, the Rev had me infiltrate the klubhaus. I made friends with the late Frankie Carbajal, who had developed quite a dislike for his onetime hermano, Salvador Abascal, along with his close friend, Wayne Frank Jackson. Frankie coveted the gold, which was then believed to be in the possession of the late Meyer Gelb and Señor Abascal. The late Frankie put together some leads and learned that the gold was stashed in a bank safe-deposit vault in San Diego. The Rev and I brought in Ed Satterlee then. Ed secured a seizure writ that allowed him to secure the gold and sequester it in a nearby warehouse. I flew the gold up to L.A., and the Rev brought in a metallurgist to weigh the bars and calculate their value. He was the one who determined that they were all fake.”
The Rev kicked at the bars. The Rev jabbed his pipe at Ashida.
“Cast iron, and thick-gold-plated. Formed to exactly resemble and weigh the same as solid-gold bars. Even the mint markings match, down to a tee. The bars were designed to fool the naked eye, and no more than that.”
Ashida grabbed a bar and hefted it. He’d held a real bar. The fake bar was indistinguishable.
“The robbery itself. The chain of possession and levels of dispersal. Did factionalism occur? The robbery preceded all known accounts of the forming of the Kameraden. I have a well-developed theory, and I’m wondering if you’ll confirm or refute it.”
The Rev winked. Link Rockwell winked. Mr. Moto’s got the floor. Both men jut-jawed their pipes.
“Leander walked the bars off the train. He portrayed the dumb Negro kid. The Reverend Mimms portrayed a colored sleeping-car porter. Kyoho Hanamaka portrayed a Japanese chauffeur, and Wayne Frank Jackson portrayed a white swell, perched in a limousine. Salvador portrayed a Mexican youth, hovering in the background. Skin color as disguise. Racial prejudice as a means of obfuscation. The switch was accomplished in that manner.”
The Rev bowed. “You left out Eddie Leng and Don Matsura. They were in on the job. They played Oriental train-yard workers. They also helped out with the escapes and the track-switch snafus.”
Rockwell said, “Otherwise, you’re right with Eversharp.”
Ashida said, “The initial cadre of Kameraden was formed at Dresden Polytechnic. Kyoho Hanamaka underplayed its importance to me. Abascal gave a speech, and Carbajal, Pimentel, Jamie, and Hayes heard the message. The Spanish Civil War loomed. The big war loomed, and Salvador saw it as a fait accompli. He prophesied the Hitler-Stalin pact and Hitler’s ultimate abrogation. The idea of a left-right postwar alliance took hold and flourished intellectually. The initial heist conspirators — Eckelkamp-Gelb, Wayne Frank, Leander, Salvador, Hanamaka, the Reverend Mimms, Leng, and Matsura — were watching gold prices escalate and waiting out the statute of limitations on the robbery. The statute clock stopped on May 18, 1940. The original conspirators were caught up in the crazy politics of upcoming war, but not to the extent of the Dresden Poly boys. The boys had been to Spain, the Fatherland, and Russia. Kyoho and Salvador had spent time there, and forged connections. High-level Nazis and Soviets knew the war would go bad for them, as early as the late ’30s. Salvador and Kyoho exploited their fear, and proposed the Baja conference of November ’40. The gold lured the bigwigs in. They capitulated to Abascal’s vision of postwar alliance, but the gold cinched the deal.”
The Rev bowed. Rockwell said, “Right with Eversharp.”
Ashida said, “You were perpetrating a shell game. The gold achieved the status of an open secret and a wet dream. Your informal alliance grew as the war loomed that much more palpably close. Kyoho and Meyer Gelb went back to the heist and the fire. They were Communists and arsonists and God knows what else together. Saul Lesnick signed on from the Left. He was in Gelb’s CP cell. Ed Satterlee played tangential to the heist. He signed on in a fix-it man capacity. Jim Davis signed on from the Right. Salvador killed priest-killers at Meyer’s behest. It all blew chaotically out of proportion. Idiot ideologues shot their mouths off, and rumors spread. Terry Lux, Lin Chung, Wendell Rice, and George Kapek. The Lazaro-Schmidts, Villareal-Caiz, crazy Bundists, Reds, and Sinarquistas. Come, one and all. We’ll survive this war or we won’t. The bigwigs were over in Russia and Germany, engaged in a fight for their everyday survival. They had no idea that the original conspirators had no intention of sharing the gold with them, after postwar gold prices had skyrocketed. Factionalism and personal rivalries raged within the original robbery band. Rancor fell short of fatality. The chain of possession shifted along those lines as gold prices and war catastrophe escalated. Salvador Abascal succeeded Meyer Gelb as the Kameraden’s top dog. The title is surely meaningless, if illustrative of how deep this self-deluded madness goes. Salvador got the job because he was in the original robbery band and because he recruited the Dresden Poly boys. The Nazi bigwigs loved him because they thought he was a fascist. The Soviet bigwigs loved him because they considered him a Red, and because he’d slaughtered Trotskyites. The Rev’s got his back-to-Africa con. Gelb was extorting Jewish refugees that the Kamerad-Nazis had cut loose. You’re all criminals first, and ideologues a distant second. You’ll split the gold on Armistice Day, and you’ll sell out the comrades overseas to the highest intelligence-agency bidder.”
The Rev went whew. Rockwell wiped his face with a handkerchief.