December '41 Page 2

  Stengle was younger, quieter, an American-born tradesman who’d migrated from Maine in search of a steady job. He hadn’t found it, which remained the fate of many Americans, even after eight years of FDR’s New Deal, which made them prime targets for Nazi recruiters. Martin Browning didn’t think much of Stengle’s brainpower, either. At least he was more likable than Kessler.

  But neither would be with Martin Browning when he headed for Washington, so he didn’t care what happened to them now, as long as they didn’t incriminate him.

  He watched Kessler scratch a match and fail. Then another. He pulled out his lighter, flipped, and held it under Kessler’s nose.

  Kessler took a few puffs and said, “Thanks, Ash.”

  They called him “Ash” because they said he looked like Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind: slender and wiry, with blondish hair and a professorial air.

  A mild appearance and a tone of reserved condescension made for a good persona. But did they know that Leslie Howard, the English actor who played the Southern aristocrat, was really a Jew? Now was not the time to discuss it.

  Instead, Martin Browning knelt and ran his fingers through the grass.

  “What are you doing?” asked Stengle.

  “Cleaning up.” He’d fired ten shots. He needed to pick up ten cartridges. He’d leave no trails.

  “Forget the brass,” said Kessler. “Up the stairs.”

  “But Fritz,” said Stengle, “what if they’re guarding the stairs?” He turned to Martin. “What if they’re guarding the stairs, Ash?”

  Martin Browning didn’t answer. He was feeling, reaching, searching for that last cartridge. Had he only fired nine shots? No. Ten. Ten in the magazine, ten at the target.

  He’d counted. He always counted. He was always careful. But it was time to go.

  The G-men might not notice a single stubby cartridge among the longer casings. They might not bother to look. But he could only find nine cartridges.

  And now, blue lights were flashing through the trees. The feds had reached the bottom of the canyon.

  One of the Silver Shirts came splashing across the creek. “Herr Kessler! They’re here. You must run.”

  Kessler turned to Browning, and said, “Come on, Ash, forget the—”

  But Martin Browning was already gone, disappeared, as if into thin air.

  * * *

  IN THE CLEARING AT the powerhouse, Frank Carter was holding up his badge. “Federal agents. You’re all under arrest!”

  “Do not run,” said the head Silver Shirt, a young guy with blond hair and a sharp prairie accent. “Obey their orders.”

  “That’s right,” said Carter. “Just line up like good Nazis.”

  The leader said, “We’re good Americans, sir.”

  “Sure you are,” said Carter.

  And from the powerhouse came a German accent. “Please note, mein Herr, that we are obliging peacefully.”

  Carter jerked his head to McDonald. “See what’s in there.”

  The German asked, “Do you have a warrant?”

  “We have orders,” answered Carter. “We have custodial detention memos. We have probable cause. What’s your name?”

  “Hans Schmidt.” He raised his chin and affected the arrogant air of a Prussian officer, a neat trick for a man in a rumpled brown suit and squashed fedora.

  “What do you do here?”

  “I am the caretaker, mein Herr.”

  “I’m not your ‘Herr.’” Carter told a cop, “Cuff him.”

  Suddenly the air thrummed with the sound of the tommy gun.

  McDonald said, “I told you to let Doanie have a smoke.”

  * * *

  MARTIN BROWNING STOPPED RUNNING and located the sound of the firing. Had some trigger-happy G-man shot Kessler and Stengle on the long flight of concrete steps out of the canyon? Good, especially if they were both dead. Better dead than blabbing.

  He’d taken an escape route, scouted alone, to be followed alone. He was now pounding through the bushes and brush, straight down the line of Rustic Creek, ducking here, leaping there, running wherever he could, ignoring the wet when he couldn’t, flying headlong and fast, rock to rock, downhill but controlled. Always controlled.

  He wore good shoes, a blue wool suit, a white shirt. He carried his leather satchel over his shoulder and resembled nothing so much as a businessman on the way to work, even if that way went down a creek that bordered scrubby woodlots and big-time mansions harkening back to the days of Spanish California or Colonial Virginia.

  * * *

  SILVER SHIRTS NOW FILLED the LAPD patrol wagon. Most appeared sullen and angry, but a few went shamefaced, as if they realized that parading in silly uniforms made them look more like movie extras than soldiers, especially now that the real war had started.

  Carter told the caretaker, “Next stop, Terminal Island.”

  “I do not like the sound of this word … ‘terminal.’”

  “You’ll have plenty of company. Of course if you help us—”

  “How?”

  “Tell me what else we’ve missed … and who else.”

  “I could not say. The owners open this property to many groups. They are good friends of Germany.”

  “Good friends of Hitler, you mean.”

  “Hitler and Germany are one and the same, holding the same hopes for friendship with America.”

  Carter almost laughed in his face.

  Then Agent McDonald came out of the powerhouse, shouting. “Hey, boss! They got a shortwave radio!”

  “Did you find codebooks?” Carter turned to Schmidt. “Are there codebooks?”

  “Codebooks? Why would we need codebooks?” asked the German.

  * * *

  MARTIN BROWNING STOPPED IN the concrete culvert that ran under Sunset Boulevard. He put on his necktie, dried his shoes with a towel he carried in his satchel, and splashed some Old Spice on his face. It would never do for a Burbank haberdasher to come to work smelling like a man who’d just run two miles down a canyon. His last gesture to good grooming: he scooped some water from the stream flowing through the culvert, wet his hair, and combed it straight back.

  Thus he became James Costner, a man who cared about his looks and his scent, a man who knew the difference between Egyptian cotton and the cheap stuff, a man to trust when he offered opinions on the length of a cuff or a nip at the waist. The final touch: a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with clear lenses to make him look more civilized, even as he climbed an embankment into the dappled sunshine of Dead Man’s Curve.

  That’s what they called this hairpin turn on Sunset, the famous thoroughfare that ran from downtown L.A., through Hollywood, across Beverly Hills, and ended with this twisty five-mile downhill run to the Pacific. Dead Man’s Curve was the perfect spot for speeders to spin off into the trees or swerve into the other lane. But from here, any G-men stationed at the corner couldn’t see him. And just downhill, a turnout led to a dirt road, a good place for a car to stop.

  The dirt road climbed through the trees to the Will Rogers Polo Field, where all the Hollywood big shots had their helmet-and-saddle fun on the weekends. Some of them, like Darryl F. Zanuck and Hal Wallis, actually put on the helmets, took to the saddles, and played. At least, that was how it was written up in the gossip pages.

  Kessler had often said that they could kill “a lot of big Jews” if they sneaked up the far side of Rustic Canyon and started shooting on a Sunday afternoon. He wanted to kill Zanuck, who was probably a Communist, too, since he’d made that Grapes of Wrath movie. When Browning pointed out that Zanuck wasn’t a Jew, Kessler said he looked like one and acted like one, which was even worse.

  Martin Browning wanted no part of that. Now that der Tag had come, he’d have bigger fish to fry than some know-it-all movie producer, Jew or Gentile. Hating Jews had never been part of his profile, despite the indoctrination of his Reich Security training. If he hated anyone, it was the French who occupied Koblenz after the Great War and caused his parents to pack up and move to America.

  He walked down to the turnout and stuck out his thumb. He didn’t care how he got a ride. He’d even take one from some Hollywood Jew.

  * * *

  FRANK CARTER WAS SITTING in the car with the German caretaker. He knew the guy was lying—about everything—but he still had questions. He held out a handful of cartridges. “Can you explain these? I found these in the grass.”

  “Shell casings on a target range? Such a surprise.”

  Carter picked out one that was stubbier than the others. “Looks like 7.63-by-25-millimeter, probably a pistol cartridge, mixed in with rifle casings.”

  The German stared out the window, as if it were none of his concern.

  “All right,” said Carter. “I hear Terminal Island is lovely this time of year.”

  * * *

  AFTER TEN MINUTES OF thumbing, Martin Browning wished that Claudette Colbert were with him. She got Clark Gable a ride in It Happened One Night, just by sticking her leg out. But this was no movie, and nobody was stopping. And the longer he stayed, the more likely the cops would drive by and stop to question a well-dressed guy hitchhiking on a deserted stretch of Sunset on the day after Pearl Harbor.

  Then down the hill came a ’39 Lincoln-Zephyr convertible, all maroon and chrome, top down, slowing down, pulling into the turnout. The driver was about sixty, gazing up through expensive sunglasses, looking prosperous and looking for company, too.

  Martin Browning considered himself an expert analyst of faces, attitudes, and the environments that people built to express themselves. Americans, he had concluded, were far too friendly and much too trusting. But he liked the environment this man had created. He liked the car. So he plugged in the electric grin that he could flash like a beer sign and said, “Dead battery. I could use a lift to the trolley stop at Temescal.”

  Without a moment’s thought—maybe he considered himself an expert at the size-up, too—the driver said, “Hop in.”

  Martin Browning slid onto the red leather seat and put his satchel on the floor.

  The big Lincoln rolled back onto Sunset. Traffic was light. On the radio, they were playing “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”

  Martin offered his alias: “I’m James.”

  “I’m Arthur. You like that song?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Just topped the charts yesterday. Goddamn bad luck, if you ask me.”

  “How so?”

  “How so?” The man gave the kind of dismissive laugh that a pro gives when an amateur asks a dumb question. “On the day you get to number one on Billboard, the Japs go and bomb Pearl Harbor?”

  “Takes all the fun out of it, I guess.”

  Arthur adjusted the tuning knob. “The only station playing music. The rest are still yapping about Roosevelt’s speech. We’re at war with the Japs. They started it. We’ll finish it. What the hell else do you need to know?”

  “Are we … are we also at war with Germany?” asked Martin Browning.

  “Nah. We’ll deal with them later.”

  Martin relaxed. Until Germany and the United States were officially at war, his task was to keep his head down and wait.

  Arthur said, “You mark my words, friend. Music will get us through this. The Japs and the Germans, they don’t have Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey.”

  Another thing about Americans that Martin Browning found both amusing and encouraging: they had no sense of proportion. They thought their silly songs were as potent as the arsenals of the warrior nations they were about to fight.

  Also silly were the man’s clothes—blue jersey, tweed knickers, stockings matching the jersey. A golf bag lay across the back seat with a tag reading HILLCREST COUNTRY CLUB, ARTHUR KOPPEL. So, a Jew. Only rich Jews played at Hillcrest.

  Martin said, “Golf today?”

  “Why retire in L.A. if you can’t hit the links whenever you feel like it?”

  “Golf I like very much.” Martin Browning spoke with no accent and a good knowledge of American slang. But he’d spent so many years in Germany that sometimes his syntax was slightly off, especially when he was lying. And he knew nothing about golf.

  The driver didn’t seem to notice. He said, “Where do you play?”

  “Griffith Park.” Martin knew of a course there, named for Warren G. Harding, a bad president. He often wondered how this nation could have survived so long, considering the low quality of some of the men elected to lead it. But perhaps this “experiment in democracy” wouldn’t last much longer.

  “What’s your handicap?” asked Arthur Koppel.

  “The clubs,” said Martin, hoping to conceal his ignorance with a joke.

  Mission accomplished. Arthur laughed, then asked, “So … where are you headed?”

  “Burbank. I’m a haberdasher.”

  “You’re in luck. On Mondays, I play at the Encino Country Club. I’ll take you over Topanga and drop you on Sherman Way. You can catch the trolley straight to Burbank. Much faster than starting at Temescal.”

  The Pacific Electric trolleys linked all the cities and towns of greater Los Angeles. It might take you half a day, but you could go from Reseda to San Bernardino, Pasadena to San Pedro, all on what Angelenos called “the Big Red Cars.” Martin Browning—as James Costner—knew the system well.

  “But … a haberdasher, you say? A glorified suit salesman?” Arthur Koppel raised an eyebrow. “From Burbank? Way out here on a Monday morning?”

  Martin offered an innocent smile. He had an array of smiles. Innocent was one of the best.

  Koppel patted his knee. “Don’t worry, pal. Your secret’s safe with me. But you missed a few spots.”

  “Missed?” Martin looked out the window so that Koppel didn’t see the color drain from his face. Some people blushed when caught out. Martin went white, and his eyes—according to certain women—lost all luster, like a snake’s.

  “With that towel sticking out of your bag. You missed a few spots on your trousers.”

  Yes, Martin Browning had missed a few spots. He would have to be more careful. He pushed the corner of the towel back into the leather satchel.

  Arthur Koppel kept talking. “So … let me guess. You came down Rustic Creek and popped out on Sunset because—”

  Martin feared what he would have to do if this guy said the wrong thing.

  But Koppel just waved a hand. “Ah, never mind. I was young myself once. I nailed a few rich wives. So … did the husband come home early? Did the wife shove you out the back, tell you to go down the creek and not let anyone see you?”

  Martin forced out a laugh and added a wink.

  Arthur Koppel laughed, too, and drove for a time with his fingers tapping out the beat of the music. Then he said, “Or was it the husband shoving you out the door because the wife came home early?”

  So, thought Martin, was that what Arthur Koppel was fishing for? Had he picked up this well-dressed hitchhiker on a dangerous bend of Sunset … for sex?

  Arthur Koppel must have seen the look in Martin’s eyes, because he said, “Hey, no offense, pal. In this town, you never know. Some of the toughest guys in the movies are just poofs when they pull their pants down. Not like us.”

  “No. Not like us.” Martin decided to let that go … or use it. Information of any kind, about anyone, was meant to be stored … and used.

  As Glenn Miller played them through sleepy Palisades Village, Arthur Koppel talked. Lonely men who picked up hitchhikers were usually talkers. He talked about lawyering for ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. They’d been in a big royalty fight with CBS and NBC. “We didn’t let them play any ASCAP songs for six months. All they had was hillbilly stuff—say, you’re not a guy who goes for that shitkicker baloney, are you?”

  Martin shook his head.

  “What about jazz and blues? You know, jigaboo music?”

  Another thing about Americans, thought Martin, they preached that their strength was many cultures mixing and thriving. E pluribus unum. Out of the many, one. But in private, or when offering unbidden opinions, it was usually the opposite that they embraced. Germans paid no such lip service to false ideals. Germans embraced the truth.

  Sunset Boulevard ended at the Pacific Coast Highway in a splash of green palm trees, golden-brown beachscape, and the boundless blues of sea and sky. Martin allowed himself to be transported by the color, by the thrum of the big twelve-cylinder engine, by the breeze blowing over the open top.

  Who could know a day like this, he thought, so warm and bright when the rest of the world lay in December gloom, and not believe that all man’s troubles might be soothed, even solved, by a little California sunshine, especially when Tommy Dorsey was playing “Blue Skies” on the radio, with Frank Sinatra doing the vocal?

  Arthur Koppel said, “My wife loved that Sinatra kid.”

  “The voice of an angel,” said Martin.

  “Yeah, well, when the docs told her she’d be singin’ with the angels soon, I retired. I wanted more time with her, but—”

  Grief was a universal emotion, like greed or joy. Even the assassin understood. When he said, “I’m sorry for you,” he meant it. But a few minutes later, he decided that he would have to kill Arthur Koppel.

  At Topanga Canyon, Koppel took the turn without slowing, as if to show off the fine cornering of his car. The force caused the satchel at Martin’s feet to fall on its side. The flap dropped open, and the towel flopped out, revealing the Mauser shoulder-stock holster.

  Did Koppel see it? Would he even know what it was?

  As the Lincoln-Zephyr climbed into the canyon, Koppel said, “Do you know, right near where I picked you up, there’s supposed to be some kind of Nazi hangout?”

  “Nazis?” Martin Browning kept his voice calm.

  “Yep. Kraut-fartin’, Hitler-heilin’, Hebrew-hatin’ Nazi son-of-a-bitches. People say they have a place back in Rustic Canyon, and they train and march and shoot and, well, we have to be careful now … about a lot of things.”