Zoot-Suit Murders (11 page)

“Anything in the world, Kathleen.”

“That you will always be heavenly kind to me.”

“I promise.” His lips touched hers and they opened beneath him, widening and trembling as his tongue felt into her mouth. He had never desired anyone so much. She tasted like medicine, a tonic. Her weakness became his strength. A madness came over him. He wanted to suck her very soul into him. His hands went roughly behind her back, circling her arching frail body. He clung to her like a desperate man, the veins bulging in his neck as his fingers dug into her resilient flesh. She pushed him away. Blood banging at his temples nearly blotted out her words.

“Be kind …”

“A
ll right, Younger, here’s the information you wanted on the yacht. Still no confirmation on exactly who owns the cargo ship.”

“The yacht’s more important now; that’s something in our own front yard.”

“The yacht is registered to,” Kinney’s voice dropped to an almost inaudible whisper in the dark confessional, “Americal Yachtworks. Now, that little fish is inside Americal Tuna Processing Company. If you follow the string all the way out, you find both these little fish inside Sea Biscuit Enterprises. Here’s the queer catch: the president of Sea Biscuit is a retired admiral who lives up in Beverly Hills. He’s the obvious owner of the yacht; he’s probably the big fish with a hook in his mouth.”

“Goddamn.”

“Watch your language, Younger, you’re in a Catholic church.”

“Sorry, Senator, but it’s incredible, my tip was right.”

“You mean what Wino Boy told you about betting on Sea Biscuit if you were looking for the Horse connection in the Barrio?”

“That, and more.”

“Well, the tip could have been hot, but so far you haven’t come up with anything concrete, and I still don’t see the bigger connection with the Sinarquistas.”

“We knew in the beginning, Senator, the way the Sinarquistas got influence in Zoot gangs was by getting control over the Horse flow.”

“But we know for a fact, all our investigations prove out, the Zoots weren’t using Horse before Pearl Harbor.”

“That was before the war, Senator. Before the pain of having brothers and fathers die while being barred from good jobs. Before the Sinarquistas showed up promising to save Latin-Americans from Yankee imperialism. Before the cynicism.”

“Sure, but the gangster who got involved with the Sinarquistas, the guy from Buenos Aires, what was his code name, the one called Big Banana?”

“Chiquito Banana.”

“Him, we know from FBI reports he’s out of the country. FBI figures he got booted out of the California front by higher-ups in Madrid because his heroin tactics backfired. He hooked young kids and the Zoots turned on him.”

“But the FBI has no way of knowing if Chiquito Banana is back in the Barrio doing business at the same old stand. Maybe the Germans are backing him now. What do the Germans care how many kids in the Barrio they hook if it advances their political goals?”

“Maybe. But the problem is the FBI never had a photograph of that guy Chiquito Banana. They don’t even know what the
guy actually looks like; he could be anyone. All they have are five pictures of different men. One they think is Chiquito Banana; which one is anybody’s guess. The only fact on the guy is he left the Barrio last September.”

“Can you get me those FBI pictures of the five guys?”

“You think Chiquito Banana is connected to Sea Biscuit?”

“Maybe.”

“I doubt it. When you get outside and look at the paper I gave you with the address of Sea Biscuit Enterprises, you’ll know why. The address is in Beverly Hills. Not many Fascists up in Beverly Hills. Tons of Commies, but few Fascists.”

“I don’t exactly know where this Chiquito Banana is, Senator, but I have a feeling he’s back.”

“Well, when the FBI confirms that, fine. For now, your job is to stay on top of this Mankind Incorporated thing.”

“I need those FBI pictures.”

“Okay, you’ll get them. Now tell me, are you any closer to the Voice?”

“Next week he’s at the Shrine. I’m certain I’ll see him before or after the rally, crusade, or whatever they call it.”

“Good. It’s this Doomsday Vibration machine has us worried. I know it sounds wacko like you say, but so did Hitler when he started talking about flying V-1 rocket bombers with no pilots. What about the girl? Does she suspect anything about you?”

“No, but the Zoots started avoiding me after the preliminary hearing on the FBI killings. Since I testified at your closed hearing and started seeing La Rue, the Zoots have become more suspicious. I don’t know how much longer I can keep the shell game up; none of my probation boys come to baseball practice anymore. How am I supposed to have any credibility as a Catholic social worker if I never work?”

“That’s no problem. Social workers never seem like they are working. All they do is go around sticking their noses into other people’s business. Long as you continue to make a pest of yourself people will think you are the real ticket.”

“I don’t know if that’s so certain. People aren’t so dumb as you think they are. Sometimes they surprise you. One of my probation boys who’s gone over to the Zoots, Cruz Parra …”

“You mean Angel Parra’s little brother?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, him too?”

“Him too, and he’s started to call me a Commie.”

“That’s not so unusual. If he’s a Zoot, the Sinarquistas have probably gotten to him by now. He probably calls his Mama a Commie too.”

“But why me? What am I doing different now than I’ve ever done?”

“I told you, Younger, he’s probably a little Sinarquista robot.”

“Anyway, the whole business is beginning to make me sick.”

“There are far worse things than being called a Commie, Younger. After all, what if you were one?”

“No, that’s not what makes me sick. It’s this Cruz kid. I’ve known the kid’s family for three years, now they won’t even talk to me. They’re like most people in the Barrio—they’re decent people, damn poor, but decent human beings.”

“They’re a lot better off here than in Mexico. Here there’s always seasonal work.”

“That’s not the point. If you’re starving and can’t get a job, it makes no difference where you are.”

“Come on, Younger, save your sermonizing for Kathleen La Rue, that’s her line of business. Me, I have to go, have to be up in Sacramento by tonight to prepare for arguments on that Italian bill we want to get through. Right now I’m more worried about the wops in our own backyard than the spies.” Kinney slid the screen closed.

“It’s not sermonizing when you feel sick in your stomach for killing a kid.”

“What do you mean,
killing
a kid?”

“The only way I could get information out of Cruz was to give him the money to buy a kick of Horse.”

“You did that?”

“I did it, but I made him promise me it would be his last kick.”

“You know it won’t be. If he’s hooked now and he gets a free kick, it’ll just make his mouth water for more.”

“I know. It’s a risk I had to take. It makes me sick to think he’ll die all junked up.” Younger heard Kinney’s chair scraping beneath him as he stood to leave.

“You must remember this.” Kinney’s voice whispered down at Younger. “I don’t like involving innocents any more than you. The business of war is not pretty. To win we must expend ourselves more than the next guy. It’s like a train ticket; the guy willing to buy the most expensive one is going to get the longest ride.”

T
owering palm trees were waving in the wind all over Beverly Hills like hula girls hired for the rich. The cab driver squinted through his windshield at the skinny trees, their skimpy palm frond skirts tearing and fluttering in the wind. “Damn wonder these freak trees don’t snap in two in weather like this. Every time you think the wind has the better of one of them and is going to rip it right out of the ground, it pops back up like some kind of queer jack-in-the-box. These trees are real queer. Ain’t like your basic Eastern tree what loses its leaves every winter. Hell, they don’t lose nothin’. They say palms here don’t even have no coconuts growing on them like over in Hawaii. But brother you wouldn’t catch me walking under one, be just my luck to get bonked on the noggin with a queer coconut. Kill you
dead as a doornail, like a Jap sniper dropping a grenade on you is how good a job it would do. How much farther? You got ten bucks on the meter now.”

“Turn right, up here on Tremonto, and slow down.” Younger was busy trying to read house numbers, but it wasn’t easy. Many were set in Spanish tiles on ivy-covered pillars leading up driveways that snaked out of sight behind curves of mammoth flowering bushes and sharp rows of blue-fingered cacti.

“Right here? This the one you want?” The cab driver slowed at a steep intersection with five narrow roads spurring off it, each road disappearing into a jungle of growth.

“Yes. One of these is Tremonto, isn’t it?”

“How the hell do I know? You think I live up here? Think I’m Ralph R. Rockefeller or something?”

“Try that road off there to the left, the one with the jacaranda tree.”

“The what kind of jack tree?”

“The tree with the big purple blossoms on it.”

“Listen, mister, you give me white man’s directions. I don’t know a jack-a-miranda tree from a jack-o’-lantern.” The driver swung the wheel sharply, leaving a thick track of rubber behind him as the cab’s tires gripped the steep black pavement speared between the perfect cut of English hedges. “Who the hell lives up here anyway, big movie star or something?”

“Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Stop the cab and back up.”

The cab driver backed slowly down the hill, stopping before the intricate iron scrollwork of twenty-foot-high gates blocking a narrow driveway.

“Get out and see if the gates are open.”

“That’s a queer thing to do. Ain’t the people who you’re going to see expectin’ you, so the gates wouldn’t be locked?”

“Just try them.”

“Damn queer thing.” The cab driver pulled in before the gates and yanked the emergency brake, but before he could get
out the gates began swinging slowly back with a faint little buzzing sound. “Hey, what do you know, one of those electric-eye jobs!”

Younger handed the fare over the seat to the driver. “This is far enough. I’ll walk the rest of the way from here.”

“Sure you don’t want me to drive you? No extra charge. I’d like to see the house, must be some mansion with a gate like this protecting it, must be somebody famous like Lana Turner or Barbara Carr.”

“No.” Younger got out and slammed the door. “I’ll walk.”

The cab driver backed out of the driveway entrance, calling through the open window as he turned and headed down the street, “Damn queer thing is all I got to say!”

Younger started up the winding driveway beneath thick broad-trunked trees locking branches over his head in a lush maze of green blocking out all sunlight. He heard a noise behind him and jerked around. A faint electric buzz drifted up the driveway toward him as the heavy iron gates swung closed. Sweeping red wings of tiled roof soared through the air long before he could see the house itself. Trees began to spread open and pull back from the driveway, finally surrendering to the stone expanse of a piazza spouting blue sprays of water ten feet high from a sculpted marble fountain in its center. Younger pressed a small black button next to the towering carved doors of the house before him. He heard ringing chimes inside, echoing loudly like church bells over the roofs of a Mediterranean mountain town.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

Younger pulled his hat off and nodded to the woman standing before him in the open doorway, her hair pulled tightly in a knot atop her head like a gray fist. “Oh, yes, I’m here to see the president of Sea Biscuit Enterprises.”

“I’m afraid Admiral Nemark is resting.”

Younger twisted his hat in his hands absentmindedly like it was a wet towel. “I’m, ah, really sorry but …”

“You don’t have an appointment. All the Admiral’s appointments are before luncheon.”

“Well, no, matter of fact I couldn’t get through to him and the matter is rather urgent. State business, really.”

“State business?”

“Yes, ah, you see it concerns his tuna-processing plant, Americal.”

“Go on.” The woman’s expression was sharp as the starched creases in her black-and-white uniform.

“State of California, ma’am. I’m with the Department of Health. It appears there’s been a case of botulism reported up north in a Monterey restaurant, and one of the items served was Americal tuna.”

“You wait here.” The woman turned quickly away, the heavy doors thudding closed in Younger’s face; behind him short bursts of wind picked up the watery spray from the fountain and splattered the back of his pants. The doors opened again. The woman ushered Younger through. He followed her for what seemed a mile, through sitting room after sitting room. The thick cushion of Persian carpets beneath his feet made him feel like he was floating. All around him were life-size bronze castings of naked Greek boys, about to hurl ebony javelins through ceiling-high windows across a garden dropping off in giant green strides of lawn. One garden terrace after another followed down the mountainside, appearing to stretch across the entire city skyline below, twenty miles to the blue haze of Pacific Ocean horizon. Once, in
Collier’s
magazine, Younger saw photographs of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst’s castle. The Hearst castle crowned a mountaintop above the ocean, but it seemed smaller than where he was now. The man who could afford all this must consider the price of the yacht Younger saw dumped into the grain hold of the cargo ship nothing more monumental than a nickel phone call.

“Would you please step this way.” The woman stopped at the end of a long room; behind her appeared a gigantic picture of Washington, D.C., showing that city in flames, British warship barges anchored calmly in the Potomac River.

Younger passed the length of the painting, stepping into the
dark recesses of a paneled library with rows of leather-spined books, their gold embossed titles aimed at the man sitting behind a desk so large it could have a sail hoisted on it and cruised the seas to China.

“I am Admiral Nemark. You are the state official with the alarming news?” The man behind the big desk rose quickly. Younger noticed the silver wings of hair swept back under the blue bill of his yacht captain’s cap. He was the same man who abandoned the new yacht to the grain ship.

“That’s correct, sir, and I’m afraid the situation is more than serious.” Younger took out a pencil and notebook and started writing rapidly so the Admiral couldn’t interrupt him with questions. “Now, there are certain facts and dates we will have to immediately be appraised of. If you’ll—”

“Why wasn’t my plant manager called?”

“Well, Admiral, he was informed a short while ago.”

“Why the devil didn’t he call me then?”

“Because we wanted to inspect the operation immediately to ascertain if any of the tuna on the premises contained poisonous bacteria.”

“Inspect the premises! My good man, you’re standing there telling me you went into my plant without a warrant of inspection or proper authorization and started breaking open crates and cans without informing me!”

“That’s exactly what we did do.”

“What the devil!” The Admiral sank down in the padded leather of his chair, the distinguished lines of his lean face shadowed and darkened into crevices of concern.

“We had to act hastily. One person was dead and three more hospitalized up in Monterey.”

“And what the devil did you find?”

Younger tapped his pencil against the notebook and looked directly at the Admiral. Although the man was in his late fifties, he was fit as a panther, ready to leap across the desk and sink his teeth into Younger’s neck.

“Nothing. We found only good wholesome tuna in the cans.”

“What the devil were you looking for?”

“A certain strain of botulism, but that particular bacteria could not have incubated in your canned tuna under the packing conditions employed.”

“So?” The Admiral’s breath came more calmly. “Are you informing me I’m off the hook?”

“So to speak.”

“So to speak what? Am I, or am I not clean?”

“We did find one or two minor health violations which we will—”

“Blast it, man, one or
two
? I defy you to find that few in any other tuna-packing operation from Monterey to San Diego. This is wartime. Sometimes little health regulations get overlooked in our zealous pursuit to move tuna from the ocean to the table quickly as possible. You won’t find a more hygienically run ship than our Americal plant. It’s shipshape, has been since my father’s day. Clean as a shark’s tooth. We use only the most modern methods of canning. It’s not Russian herring we’re packing, you know. Excuse me.”

The Admiral picked up the ringing telephone. As he spoke softly into it Younger turned his back on him, trying to give the impression he wasn’t eavesdropping. Younger glanced over the photographs covering one entire wall; aircraft carrier ships, convoys of destroyers, submarines, the Admiral graduating from Annapolis, and one photograph that seemed out of place amid the glossy sea of photographs populated only by naval men and their seagoing regalia. The glossy picture clearly depicted a delighted Charles Lindbergh being decorated with the Service Cross of the German Eagle by a most improbable Santa Claus, Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Göring, chief of the German Luftwaffe. Younger stepped closer to the curious photograph to determine if it was a fake. He slipped a piece of Juicy Fruit into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully, pressing his nose next to the glass protecting the photograph. He couldn’t determine if anything had been retouched, or if Lindbergh’s head had been transposed onto the body of a German war hero. Yes, the photo
was real. Younger turned around, chewing steadily on the gum as he tried to ignore the pistol the Admiral had leveled at him.

“That’s a very intriguing picture, Admiral. Did Lindy give it to you himself?”

“Who the devil are you?”

“I told you, Admiral, I’m with the Department of Health.”

“I know from my telephone conversation with my plant manager that isn’t true. Now you speak plainly or this gun is very likely to go off, and the police will come to pick up one very dead liar.”

“My name is Younger, Nathan.”

“Go on.”

“I investigate un-American activities.”

“Who the devil
for
?”

“State Senator Kinney. He heads up the secret joint fact-finding committee funded by the state legislature.”

“I’ve never heard of such a cockeyed committee.”

“If you don’t believe me, Admiral, you can call Senator Kinney up in the state capitol at Sacramento right now.”

The Admiral rested the handle of the gun on the desktop. “If this is true, why would you sneak in here to spy on a retired rear admiral of the United States Navy? Why wouldn’t you be out spying on Communists? These Beverly Hills are full of them. These mansions around here are nothing more than glamorous Liberal fronts. If you want to spend your time spying on un-American activities, why don’t you try breaking into a few of them?”

“Well, sir.” Younger spit his gum out, wadding it into a sticky ball between his fingers. “Excuse me, can I drop this in that ashtray there on your desk?”

“Yes, drop the damn stuff.”

Younger plopped the gum into the silver ashtray and sat down on the edge of the desk. “The reason I came in like this is I didn’t see any real reason to alarm you at this point in our investigation.”

“Investigation, man! You don’t have to investigate me! You
don’t have to subpoena me! I’m a patriot. I’ll gladly share with any fact-finding committee any and all information I have on subversive activities in this country.” The Admiral shoved the gun carelessly away from him like a half-eaten plate of food. “And I can tell you, Mr. Younger Nathan, there’s one hell of a lot more Reds in our own backyard than just what’s running loose right here in Beverly Hills. If something isn’t done about it pronto, mister, there’s going to be the devil to pay. Here, you look at this, today’s headlines in the
Examiner.
” The Admiral pushed the front page of the newspaper at Younger.

Younger glanced down at the headlines:

Younger looked back up at the Admiral. “You know how many rapes there are every day in a city this size during wartime, Admiral?”

“As many rapes as there are Pachucos allowed to roam the streets.”

Younger pushed the paper back across the desk. “Headlines like these are meant to sell newspapers. Every time the LA cops come up empty handed without a suspect for a rape they immediately pin it on the Zoots. The fact is, it’s usually the sailors cruising the Barrio’s Zona Roja who do the raping of teenage girls unlucky enough to live around there. That’s one of the biggest reasons for the war going on between sailors and the Zoots.”

“You’re nothing but a naive boy scout if you believe that’s the case, mister.” The Admiral tried to control the angry shaking of his hands by picking up the gun, rubbing the cold barrel quickly up and down between the circle of his fingers. “Every day now, these kinds of headlines.” He banged the gun down loudly on the newspaper. “Zoot-suit Pachucos are being used as a Communist front; they’re getting bolder every day. It won’t be long before the Commies get the Zoots to start a war right
here in America. You take me to your committee. I’ll tell them a thing or two. I’ve been telling the public since before Pearl Harbor, myself and men like Colonel Lindbergh, we are fighting on the wrong side in this war. The enemy is not the Fascists who have tried to contain Communism in Europe. Only the Fascists have ever had courage to fight the Communists where they threaten most, on the home front.”