“How does she get by?”
“She steals out of stores. She hasn’t asked me for anything, but she appreciates the clothes I buy her.”
Dudley said, “I’m going to have her tailed.”
They walked back to the hotel. Harbor lights blinked. Young Joan took Claire’s arm. They mimicked nineteenth-century daguerreotypes. Faux Parisians stroll Saint-Germain.
The Malecon cut inland. Shoreline hostelries loomed. They bucked a sea wind, three abreast. Alleyways bisected the sidewalk. Gaslamps lit narrow footpaths.
They walked single file. Claire said something. Young Joan slid on wet asphalt and went whee!
A man stepped in front of them. He moved alleyway to lamplight. He was unkempt and looked dissolute. He verged on raggedy-ass.
He’s got a revolver. He’s aiming it. It’s a hand cannon. The hammer’s cocked.
He yelled slogans. They were nonsensical. He braced his gun arm and aimed straight ahead. Dudley pulled his piece. His arm fluttered, his aim fluttered, he fired two shots wide.
A second man stepped out. He moved alleyway to lamplight. He’s young and sleek. Note the twill shirt and armband. He’s got a sawed-off shotgun.
He tripped two triggers. Muzzle flare lit the load:
Steel scraps/tight-packed/trench-warfare-slaughter weaponry—
The Slogan Man blew up. Such blood you’ve never seen. The scraps disemboweled him. His gun arm severed and flew.
Claire and Young Joan fell back. Dudley body-blocked them and covered their eyes. The Sleek Man dipped his fingers in the Slogan Man’s blood.
He said, “Comunista.” He spat on the corpse. He saluted Dudley and ran off.
Opium.
Kwan’s basement. His private den. The tar, the match, the pipe. His body anesthetized, his mind relinquished and adrift.
He drove to L.A., impromptu. He wanted to see Mike and Dick. He wanted to see Jim Davis. He wanted to conspire with Ace and cultivate Hideo Ashida.
Dudley smoked opium. He dipped elsewhere. He leaped time and rewrote History. He went with the tar and the pipe.
Stopover, Ensenada. All-too-recent History. Bleak moments, last night.
Statie Blackshirts arrived. They cased the stiff and called for a morgue van. He walked down that bisecting alley. He saw wet-blood artwork on a wall.
A garland of swastikas. An “SQ” wrapped in coiled snakes.
The Slogan Man remains unidentified. The Sleek Man, likewise. The attack might be premeditated. The attack might be happenstance.
His uniform denotes random target. The D. L. Smith persona denotes something else. Last month’s knife attack. Last night’s attack. Dudley Liam Smith attracts HATE.
Stopover, Europe and the eastern steppes. Here, you become someone else.
You’ve touched his uniforms and gold bayonet. You’ve read his diary. Don the attire, now. Live the History and wield the bayonet.
You’re Kyoho Hanamaka. You’re a little Jap with burn-scarred hands and a consuming appetite. You feast on horror as it disillusions you. Your diary exposits one great theme. Ideology is solely a means of entrapment and thus a barbaric shuck.
The Fascist Right. The Communist Left. Divergent in rhetoric. Identical at their core.
The Reds embrace wretchedness and promise peasants tasty gruel and a warm place to shit. They scapegoat capital and hoard it to build prison camps and tanks. The Nazis embrace Norse gods and exalt art. They extoll civilization as the Reds defame it as bourgeois. They scapegoat Jews because Jews contravene the all-is-beautiful Nazi aesthetic. The Nazis and Reds tell the selfsame lie in boldly diverse guise. Both lies indict the democratic West and defame it as naïve and effete.
Totalitarianism will win. The rabble will opt for conformed identity over chaos. Which lie will you accede to? Which hidey-hole uniform will you don?
Dudley Liam Smith, Sturmbannführer.
You donned the uniform at that party. You enacted the Night of the Long Knives. Now, wield your gold bayonet.
Stopover, Baja. Your Army duties summon you.
He read a Fed Teletype this morning. Agent Ed Satterlee wrote it. Now, hear this:
The rumors persist. Coded phone calls have been received. There’s been L.A. pay-phone to Baja pay-phone traffic. The Baja pay phone was tapped and thence transcribed. This was revealed:
There are hidden Jap airfields in San Berdoo County. No exact locations have been determined. Indio and Brawley are both rumored. He should talk to Juan Pimentel. Juan developed the phone-tap technique.
Opium.
The tar, the match, the pipe. His mind untethered, his imagination adrift.
He pictured a lineup stage. The lights remain bright. The height strips extend. The dead and the missing stand tall.
Eddie Leng and Donald Matsura. Tommy Glennon and Kyoho Hanamaka. They burn under stage lights. He interrogates them. They reveal their interconnectedness and tell him nothing else.
Ex-Chief Jim Davis. He’s vivid — if in decline.
He’s sclerotic and obese. He’s half-mad and ravaged by aphasia. He still packs two belt guns. He was a Great War doughboy. He’s tight with spic dictators and nativist hucksters. He’s volatile and sentimental. He’s mentored Elmer Jackson and Whiskey Bill Parker.
They dined at Kwan’s. Jim slurped shark-fin soup. His color was off. Malaria yellow meets dead-man gray.
“I was hoping I could ask a few favors, Chief.”
“For you the world, Dud. You say ‘Jump,’ I say ‘How high?’ ”
Dudley sipped tea. “Keep your snout down. There appears to be a Chink and Jap Fifth Column play afoot.”
Jim slurped soup. He dribbled up his suit coat. Dudley tossed him a napkin.
“And, I’d be grateful if you’d continue to watchdog Elmer Jackson. I realize that you and Ace leaned on him, but the warning might not have held.”
“I taught Elmer the whore business. He was a wet-behind-the-ears jarhead when I met him. I made him the man he is today.”
Dudley said, “He bears your imprimatur, Chief. He’s suave in the Jim Davis manner.”
Jim fidgeted. He blotted his necktie and pushed his soup bowl away.
“I’m going batshit, Dud. I’ll blow a gasket if I don’t tell someone.”
“Tell them what, Jim?”
“That Werewolf creep’s no killer. I killed the Watanabes.”
27
(Los Angeles, 1/9–1/23/42)
Fire and gold.
Scholar’s lark.
Ex officio quest.
Her father burned to death. It taught her to fight and think. That fire drove her to this riddle of two intertwined deaths. The possible-probable arson and the mint-train heist merged there. The gold symbolized her blown shot at the war.
She’s a treasure hunter. She’s the female Karl Tullock and Wayne Frank Jackson. She broods on gold. She’s bought books and done library research. She’s studied gold like she once studied fire.
She bought herself solid-gold cuff links. They cost half a week’s pay. She found treasure magazines in a used bookshop. She fell prey to Congolese diamonds and man-eating pygmies. She succumbed to gold artifacts in Malaysian caves. She’s a scientist. She stood outside her fixation and watched herself swirl. She’s a sensationalist. She fell prey because it felt good.
She’s studied PD and FD Arson Squad reports. She’s read up on the dead CCC men. No leads surfaced there. She’s logged morgue time with Dr. Nort Layman. No further leads surfaced. Dr. Nort formalized it. Karl Tullock is the man in the box.
The downtown library’s her refuge. It’s a brooder’s perch. Newspaper rolls report the gold and the fire. She’s gone from ignorant to expert. She’s a scientist trained to hypothesize.