1:19 p.m.
Werewolf Shudo was sin-sational. He was a Jap werewolf. The radio harped on that.
Ashida tuned in the news. He worked the lab solo. KFI ran an all-Jap scroll.
A denuded synopsis of the Watanabe job. “No Leads in Jap Phone Booth Slaying!” “No Leads on Jap Slain at Beach!” “Jap Jail Suiciders: Fifth Column All!”
He’d tuned in for word on the Anti-Axis raid. Mariko called and described what she saw. The Feds swooped down on the office. They grabbed a white girl in a red dress.
The Feds would grab the film. Claire and the others might name him. His Kay Lake kisses would be Fed-scrutinized.
It happened very fast. He had a chance to destroy the film. He went by the Lincoln Heights jail to do it. Kay scotched his chance. The film was out in the trailer. Kay was holed up there.
The radio hawked toothpaste. Back to Fuji Shudo and grid great Scotty Bennett. Hollywood High’s hero blasts a tong thug last week! Last night, he storms The Wolfman’s Den!
“You look apprehensive, lad. Given recent events, I can hardly blame you.”
The door was open. He casts no shadow. He’s the Real Werewolf.
Dudley locked the door and walked over. He killed the radio. He pulled out a revolver and popped the cylinder.
He held up the revolver. Six chambers, one bullet stuffed in.
He shut the cylinder and spun it. He put the barrel to Ashida’s head and pulled the trigger twice. The hammer hit empty chambers.
Ashida opened his eyes. He didn’t know he’d shut them. He wasn’t dead. He was still at his desk.
Dudley lounged on the desk. Dudley tapped a legal pad.
“You are to swear out an affidavit in my presence. You will address it to District Attorney William McPherson, Chief of Police C. B. Horrall, Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz and Special Agent in Charge Richard Hood of the Los Angeles FBI. You will confess to all of your withholdings and suppressions of evidence in the Watanabe family homicides of December 6, 1941, both alone and in collusion with Captain William H. Parker. You will include your knowledge of Captain Parker’s covert actions aimed at Miss Claire De Haven. You will sign and date it at the bottom of the final page. Dick Carlisle’s wife is a notary public. She will affix the appropriate seals.”
Ashida squared off the pad. His pen moved all by itself. He smelled iodine. Dudley had salved an arm wound.
Saturday, December 6th. Whalen’s Drugstore. He pilfers bullet chunks and silencer threads.
Sunday, December 7th. The Watanabe house. He finds the shortwave radio, tape rig and ledger. He steals them on Wednesday, December 10. He plays the radio and learns of the Goleta raid. Dudley confronts him outside the house. He lies about the tracts he stole. They fiercely attack the Los Angeles PD.
Dudley touches his arm. It rewards his candor.
Monday, December 8th. He visits Japanese farms in the Valley. Ryoshi Watanabe sold his farm—but who to? Wetbacks pick crops, Valley-wide. Mex Staties boss them. He sees Carlos Madrano behind it.
Dudley smiles. Lad, you got there first.
Monday, December 8th. He 459’s the Deutsches Haus and steals their gun-silencer cache. He test-fires the guns. The ordnance used at the drugstore and house came from the Deutsches Haus batch.
Dudley winks. He knew that, somehow.
Thursday, December 11th. He views the sub-raid evidence. He sees a dead “Collaborationist.” His body bears a starburst-style stab wound. It refracts a similar wound found on Ryoshi Watanabe. The soles of another dead man’s feet reek of shrimp oil. That refracts the shrimp oil on the Watanabes’ feet. He views cans of chopped shrimp among the collected debris.
Dudley slaps his knees. Lad, you delight me.
Friday, December 12th. He discovers odd tread marks in the Watanabes’ driveway. The pattern looks familiar. He matches it to a Sheriff’s bulletin, issued 12/7.
Hit-and-run. One fatality. James Larkin/British/age sixty-seven. He lives in Santa Monica Canyon. There’s a vague description of the hit-and-run driver. He’s a white man in a purple sweater. This refracts the white man seen outside the house, 12/6/41.
Dudley gawks. It’s endearing.
Friday, December 12th. He takes the Larkin lead to Captain Bill Parker. They break into Larkin’s bungalow.
They find a Japanese-language ledger. They find seventeen Lugers embossed with Nazi symbols and a fortune in Axis cash.
He translates the ledger. He believes that it details the house and farm buyouts. There is no conclusive proof.
They 459 the bungalow again. They see that Larkin possessed no telephone. They recall a Sheriff’s bulletin. It lists “three pay-phone slugs” in Larkin’s property. They steal the seventeen Lugers. He print-dusts them here at the lab. He gets a match to the unknown print at the house.
His collusive friendship with Bill Parker tanks. Parker’s tirade at Kwan’s Pagoda does it. He knows very little about the Kay Lake/Claire De Haven incursion. Kay Lake lured him in. Her motives? Specious and incomprehensible.
He omitted The Knife in Griffith Park. Bill Parker believed that Dudley and Ace Kwan killed those three men. He omitted the Wallace Hodaka interview. It provided no follow-up leads.
That’s it. Sign it—Hideo Ashida, Ph.D.
Dudley made the hand-on-heart sign. “I am moved by you and honored to know you, Hideo. You bore up to the one-in-three prospect of instant death valiantly, and you are the only detective on God’s grand earth who stands as my equal. I pledge my continued loyalty, as malign fate continues to plague your people. The next several months will surely be unkind, but I will do my best to provide you and yours with succor and devilish good fun.”
Ashida swooned. It felt like a head-to-toe flush.
“My Irish brother.”
“My yellow brother.”
Rain drummed the window. Dudley smiled and lit a cigarette.
“Have you the skills to craft a preexisting document, lad? I was thinking of a letter from Fuji Shudo to Ryoshi Watanabe, vintage 1933.”
Ashida smiled. “Yes, I can do it. I assume that you want it in kanji script.”
Dudley said, “I do, yes. The text should detail a political disagreement pertaining to Asian geopolitics, and should foreshadow Fuji Shudo’s ultimate psychic collapse. Can you apply convincing age spots to the paper and forge a postal cancellation?”
“Yes, and the letter should have been sent post office to post office. We can’t be sure that the Watanabes had their house in ’33. That official records backlog is still in effect.”
Dudley said, “Bright child. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I’ll cut a stencil and write the characters within it. I’ll get the closest approximation of Fuji’s script that way.”
Dudley smiled. “The cancellation mark?”
“Purple vegetable dye.”
“A chloral-phosphate spray and ultraviolet light.”
Dudley blew smoke rings. “Have you a final perspective on the Parker-Lake matter?”
Ashida said, “They’re both insane. They’re in love with each other, but they’re so crazy that they don’t even know it.”