Ashida slack-jawed it. Mr. Brain was struck dumb. Bill Parker lounged right behind him. Joan smelled his dumb lime cologne.
16
(Tijuana, 2:00 P.M., 1/3/42)
He knew the look. It said YOU’RE A JAP. It vexed him in L.A. This border variant scared him.
Mexican cops. With their hate glares. With their soiled uniforms and hand-tooled gun belts. Swastikas and coiled snakes carved in.
Dudley wrangled him an Army pass. A slew of border guards perused it. They hemmed and hawed. Cars piled up behind him.
Horns blared. A man yelled, “Goddamn Jap!” Time stuttered and stalled flat.
A guard returned his pass. A guard pointed south. A guard grabbed his crotch. A guard spit on his windshield.
Ashida floored the gas. He detoured through T.J. and hit the coast road. He counted days backward. He stopped Christmas Day.
It was his first Baja visit. He joined Dudley, Mike B., and Dick C. He survived the botched dope raid. He survived the Statie jail and mucho torture. He caught the first beached-sub incursion. He questioned captured sailors and beat them with sap gloves. A fat sailor called him a swish.
He searched the sub. Dudley assisted. They found a cash stash and bought their freedom. They hog-tied the sailors and dumped them in the sub. He started the engines and got the sub out to sea.
It was explosive-rigged. Twenty-four men fired shotguns and tore out the hull. The sub detonated. The sailors burned alive.
They drove back to L.A. then. He sat in the backseat. Dudley sat beside him. Their legs brushed. He fluttered, all over.
Ashida drove south. Rain clouds gathered off the coast. He brought an evidence kit. He left notes for Elmer Jackson and Lee Blanchard.
He called off their bodyguard schifts. He fed Elmer a P.S. It laid out Joan Conville’s charred-box diagnosis. “I know about your brother. This new wrinkle’s a non sequitur. It shouldn’t bother you.”
Ashida drove south. He played the radio and caught a news broadcast. “Recent Jap aggressions” blared. He turned the radio off.
Ensenada came and went. Low clouds seeped rain. He saw Statie goons perched on a beach bluff.
He pulled over. The goons came on servile. They pointed him down a steep roadway. He skidded on hard dirt and sand.
The beachfront was right there. He brodied in tight. He hit his headlights and framed the scene.
Low tide. A beached sub. Dead sailors stacked on wood pallets. A cove entry right behind them.
Rain tarps at the ready. Two generators. Dry ice, dumped in wire-mesh buckets. It foils decomposition. We’ve got fans rigged. They’ll blow cold air on the stiffs.
And there’s Dudley. He’s dashing in his olive drabs. He’s with a Statie captain. Note the jodhpurs and peaked Nazi hat.
Ashida walked over. El Fascisto clicked his heels.
Dudley embraced him. Dudley said, “Hello, my dear friend.”
He surveyed the scene and went in close. Statie goons held spotlights. The tarps deflected light rain.
High tides eradicated drag marks. Storm tides hit the cove and wrecked his trace-element search. A Statie van backed down to the tide line. The tailgate gave him a flat place to work.
Ashida examined the bodies. He saw the facial powder burns that Dudley saw first. He studied a rock outcropping. He found three dead flashbulbs. He restudied the dead men and examined their tunics and exposed upper chests.
The goons held their spotlights tight-close. Ashida saw silencer threads and noted varied formations. He tweezer-plucked three representative batches and placed them on slides. He carried them to the tailgate and dialed his microscope tight-tight.
Dudley hovered. Ashida studied the threads. He saw three individuated formations. He looked at Dudley. He smiled and bowed.
“There were three gunmen. They stood at that near outcropping and hit the sailors with flashbulb glare. They ran up and shot them while they were blinded, and they used silencer-fitted guns.”
Dudley smiled and bowed. Ashida walked back to the pallets. The goons snapped to. He pointed to the sailors’ heads. He said, “Se siente todos.”
The goons flashed their spotlights. Ashida went in with a surgeon’s ax and knife.
He cracked skulls. Eyeball sockets collapsed. He scooped brain tissue and dropped it in the sand. He dug out forty-eight spent bullets, todos.
The goons looked ill. They murmured prayers. Ashida was blood-spattered, blood-smeared, blood-flecked.
He walked back to the van. Dudley and Vasquez-Cruz hovered. Ashida sprayed his hands with 100-proof alcohol. He dipped the spents in gasoline and blotter-dried them.
He clamped sixteen spents to microscope slides. He dialed the scope close and passed the slides under his lens. He studied fragmentary striations.
Dudley and Vasquez-Cruz hovered. They chain-smoked and eyed the process. Ashida ran through said process three times.
“The lands and grooves are obliterated, but I can state that the bullets themselves are surely of U.S. manufacture. Based on what I can see of circumference, my best guess would be Smith & Wesson Police .38s.”
Dudley said, “Ambush. Three capable men, identically armed.”
Vasquez-Cruz went tee-hee. He spoke baritone and tittered soprano.
Dudley winked at Ashida. “The submarine, lad. We’re looking for money, of course.”
Ashida worked straight through. He felt energized. Dudley worked beside him. Vasquez-Cruz supplied tools. They replicated their first inch-by-inch search.
They unscrewed bolts and looked behind panels. They unwired instrument clusters. They disassembled the periscope mount. They scuffed their knuckles and gouged their arms. They pulled up loose floor plates and found MONEY.
It was duffel-bagged the first time. It was attaché-cased tonight. Vasquez-Cruz tee-heed and cut through the locks. The yield: twenty grand, U.S.
Dudley grabbed half. El Fascisto grabbed half. A fat goon grabbed the attaché.
On to photographs. Let’s capture the dead and shoot for long-shot IDs.
El Fascisto tipped his goons. He was one high-stepping jefe. He dispensed C-notes. The goons genuflected. They went Sieg Heil and called Vasquez-Cruz “Führer.” Dudley dog-bayed and laughed himself hoarse.
It was full dark now. The goons erected arc lights. Ashida loaded his lab camera and close-up shot the stiffs.
He went through sixteen flashbulbs. He dumped bulbs and duplicated the pix. He shot two full sets. One for the Staties, one for SIS.
On to fingerprints. That was a long shot. The sailors were surely native-born Japanese. Their prints were filed in Tokyo and nowhere else.
Ashida hustled up the goons. They were half-tanked on mescal. They weeeaved through more arc-light work.
Ashida numbered sixteen print cards and inked thirty-two hands. Rigor mortis worked against him. The goons supplied weavy light. He placed the cards on a wood plank and maneuvered stiff fingertips.
Some were too stiff. He knife-severed those fingers and rolled them free and clear.
Dudley’s staff car stood cliffside. Ashida washed his hands and walked up. Dudley and Vasquez-Cruz worked in the backseat.
They dug through file carbons. Resident-alien files. Baja-resident Japanese/pickup orders issued. They trawled for Japanese Navy KAs.