THE BIG NOWHERE

At 12:03, a four-vehicle fender bender at Sunset and La Cienega resulted in a half dozen injuries; the deputies who responded got eyewitness testimony: the crash was caused by the clown in the brown DeSoto and the army major in the Camp Cooke staff car racing no-hands with dogs wearing paper party hats on their laps. Two arrests; one call to the Verdugo Street Animal Shelter. At 12:14, an uninhabited vet’s shack on Sweetzer collapsed in a heap of drenched prefab, killing a teenaged boy and girl necking under the foundation; two County Morgue DOA’s. At 12:29, a neon lawn display featuring Santa Claus and his helpers short-circuited, shooting flames along the electrical cord to its inside terminus – a plug attached to a maze of adapters fueling a large, brightly lit Christmas tree and nativity scene – severely burning three children heaping tissue-wrapped presents on a glow-in-the-dark baby Jesus. One fire truck, one ambulance and three Sheriff’s prowl cars to the scene, a minor jurisdictional foul-up when the LAPD appeared in force, a rookie dispatcher mistaking the Sierra Bonita Drive address as City – not County – territory. Then five drunk drivings; then a slew of drunk and disorderlies as the clubs on the Strip let out; then a strongarm heist in front of Dave’s Blue Room, the victims two Iowa yokels in town for the Rose Bowl, the muscle two niggers who escaped in a ’47 Merc with purple fender skirts. When the rain petered out shortly after 3:00, Detective Deputy Danny Upshaw, the station’s acting watch commander, predicted that the 1950’s were going to be a shit decade.

Except for the drunks and nonbooze misdemeanants in the holding tank, he was alone. Every black-and-white and unmarked was out working graveyard; there was no chain of command, no switchboard/clerical girl, no plainclothes deputies in the squadroom. No khaki and olive drab patrolmen strutting around, smirking over their plum duty – the Strip, glossy women, Christmas baskets from Mickey Cohen, the real grief over the city line with the LAPD. No one to give him the fisheye when he picked up his criminology textbooks: Vollmer, Thorwald, Maslick – grid-searching crime scenes, blood spatter marks explained, how to toss an 18-foot-by-24-foot room for hard evidence in an hour flat.

Danny settled in to read, his feet up on the front desk, the station-to-prowler two-way turned down low. Hans Maslick was digressing on how to roll fingerprints off severely burned flesh, the best chemical compounds to remove scabbed tissue without singeing the skin below the surface of the print pattern. Maslick had perfected his technique during the aftermath of a prison fire in Düsseldorf in 1931. He had plenty of stiffs and fingerprint abstracts to work from; there was a chemical plant nearby, with an ambitious young lab assistant eager to help him. Together, they worked rapid fire: caustic solutions burning too deep, milder compounds not penetrating scarred flesh. Danny jotted chemical symbols on a notepad as he read; he pictured himself as Maslick’s assistant, working side by side with the great criminologist, who would give him a fatherly embrace every time he made a brilliant logical jump. Soon he was transposing the scorched nativity scene kids against his reading, going solo, lifting prints off tiny fingers, double-checking them against birth records, the hospital precaution they took in case newborns got switched around –

‘Boss, we got a hot one.’

Danny glanced up. Hosford, a uniformed deputy working the northeast border of the division, was in the doorway. ‘What? Why didn’t you call it in?’

‘I did. You mustn’t of –’

Danny pushed his text and notepad out of sight. ‘What is it?’

‘Man down. I found him – Allegro, a half mile up from the Strip. Jesus dog, you ain’t ever seen noth –’

He left his Chevy at the curb and walked over. A knot of deputies in rain slickers were pointing flashlights at the ground; cherry lamp glow fluttered over a sign for the ALLEGRO PLANTATION ARMS – FULL TENANCY BY SPRING 1951. The prowlers’ low beams crisscrossed the lot, picking out booze empties, sodden lumber and paper debris. Danny cleared his throat; one of the men wheeled and pulled his gun, spastic twitchy. Danny said, ‘Easy, Gibbs. It’s me, Upshaw.’

Gibbs reholstered his piece; the other cops separated. Danny looked down at the corpse, felt his knees buckle and made like a criminologist so he wouldn’t pass out or vomit:

‘Deffry, Henderson, keep your lights on the decedent. Gibbs, write down what I say verbatim.

‘Dead male Caucasian, nude. Approximate age thirty to thirty-five. The cadaver is lying supine, the arms and legs spread. There are ligature marks on the neck, the eyes have been removed and the empty sockets are extruding a gelatinous substance.’

Danny squatted by the corpse; Deffry and Henderson moved their flashlights in to give him some close-ups. ‘The genitals are bruised and swollen, there are bite marks on the glans of the penis.’ He reached under the dead man’s back and felt wet dirt; he touched the chest near the heart, got dry skin and a residue of body heat. ‘There is no precipitation on the cadaver, and since it rained heavily between midnight and three A.M., we can assume the victim was placed here within the past hour.’

A siren wailed toward the scene. Danny grabbed Deffry’s flashlight and went in extra close, examining the worst of it. ‘There is a total of six oval, irregular, circumscribed wounds on the torso between the navel and rib cage. Shredded flesh outlines the perimeters, entrails coated with congealed blood extruding from them. The skin around each wound is inflamed, directly outlining the shred marks, and –’

Henderson said, ‘Hickeys sure as shit.’

Danny felt his textbook spiel snap. ‘What are you talking about?’

Henderson sighed. ‘You know, love bites. Like when a dame starts sucking on your neck. Gibbsey, show plainclothes here what that hat check girl at the Blue Room did to you Christmas.’

Gibbs chuckled and kept writing; Danny stood up, pissed at being patronized by a flunky harness bull. Not talking made the stiff sucker-punch him; his legs were rubber and his stomach was flip-flops. He flashed the five-cell at the ground surrounding the dead man, saw that it had been thoroughly trampled by LASD-issue brogans and that the prowl cars had obliterated any possible tire tracks. Gibbs said, ‘I ain’t sure I got all them words spelled right.’

Danny found his textbook voice. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just hold on to it and give it to Captain Dietrich in the morning.’

‘But I’m off at eight. The skipper don’t come in till ten, and I got Bowl tickets.’

‘Sorry, but you’re staying here until daywatch relieves you or the lab techs show up.’

‘The County lab’s closed New Year’s, and I’ve had them tickets –’

A Coroner’s wagon pulled to a stop by the sawhorses, killing its siren; Danny turned to Henderson. ‘Crime scene ropes, no reporters or rubberneckers. Gibbs stays posted here, you and Deffry start shaking down the locals. You know the drill: witnesses to the dumping, suspicious loiterers, vehicles.’

‘Upshaw, it is four-twenty fucking A.M.’

‘Good. Start now, and you may be finished by noon. Leave a report in duplicate with Dietrich, and write down all the addresses where no one was home, so they can be checked later.’

Henderson stormed over to his cruiser; Danny watched the Coroner’s men place the body on a stretcher and drape it with a blanket, Gibbs talking a blue streak to them, Rose Bowl odds and a number on the Black Dahlia case, still unsolved, still a hot topic. The profusion of cherry lights, flashlights and headbeams darted over the lot, picking out details: mud puddles reflecting moonlight and shadows, the neon haze of Hollywood in the distance. Danny thought of his six months as a detective, his own two homicides open-and-shut family jobs. The morgue men loaded the body, hung a U-turn and took off sans siren. A Vollmer maxim hit home: ‘In murders of extreme passion, the killer will always betray his pathology. If the detective is willing to sort physical evidence objectively and then think subjectively from the killer’s viewpoint, he will often solve crimes that are baffling in their randomness.’

Edicts had come down from City Personnel: no loan-outs of City medical tools; no fraternizing with the County crew while on duty; no Bunsen burner moonshine parties, for fear of mistagged DOA’s and body parts snatched as souvenirs resulting in scandals to back up the Brenda Allen job. Danny Upshaw followed the stretcher bearing John Doe # 1–1/1/50 up the County loading dock, knowing his chance of getting his favorite City pathologist to do the autopsy was close to nil.

The County side was bustling: traffic fatalities lined up on gurneys, morgue jockeys tagging big toes, uniformed deputies writing dead body reports and Coroner’s men chaining cigarettes to kill the stench of blood, formaldehyde and stale chink takeout. Danny sidestepped his way over to a fire exit, then hooked around to the City loading dock, interrupting a trio of LAPD patrolmen singing ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ Inside, the scene was identical to the one on the County turf, except that the uniforms were navy blue – not olive drab and khaki.

Danny headed straight for the office of Dr. Norton Layman, Assistant Chief Medical Examiner for the City of Los Angeles, author of Science Against Crime and his instructor for the USC night school course ‘Forensic Pathology for Beginners.’ A note was tacked to the door: ‘I’m on days starting 1/1. May God bless our new epoch with less business than the first half of this rather bloody century – N. L.’

Cursing to himself, Danny got out his pen and notepad and wrote:

‘Doc – I should have known you’d take the busiest night of the year off. There’s an interesting 187 on the County side – male, sexually mutilated. Grist for your new book, and since I caught the squeal I’m sure I’ll get the case. Will you try to get the autopsy? Capt. Dietrich says the ME on the County day shift gambles and is susceptible to bribes. Enough said – D. Upshaw.’ He placed the sheet of paper on Layman’s desk blotter, anchored it with an ornamental human skull and walked back to County territory.

Business had slacked off. Daylight was starting to creep across the loading dock; the night’s catch was lined up on steel examination slabs. Danny looked around and saw that the only live one in the place was an ME’s assistant propped up in a chair by the dispatch room, alternately picking his teeth and his nose.

He walked over. The old man, breathing raisinjack, said, ‘Who are you?’

‘Deputy Upshaw, West Hollywood Squad. Who’s catching?’

‘Nice duty. Ain’t you a little young for a gravy job like that?’

‘I’m a hard worker. Who’s catching?’

The old man wiped his nose-picking finger on the wall. ‘I can tell conversation ain’t your strong suit. Doc Katz was catching, only a snootful of juice caught him. Now he’s catching a few winks in that kike kayak of his. How come the hebes all drive Cadillacs? You’re a detective, you got an answer for that?’

Danny felt his fists jam into his pockets and clench, his warning to ease down. ‘It beats me. What’s your name?’

‘Ralph Carty, that’s –’

‘Ralph, have you ever done a preautopsy prep?’

Carty laughed. ‘Sonny, I done them all. I did Rudy Valentino, who was hung like a cricket. I did Lupe Velez and Carole Landis, and I got pictures of both of them. Lupe shaved her snatch. You pretend they ain’t dead, you can have fun. What do you say? Lupe and Carole, five-spot a throw?’

Danny got out his billfold and peeled off two tens; Carty went for his inside jacket pocket, whipping out a deck of glossies. Danny said, ‘Nix. The guy I want is on a tray over there.’

‘What?’

‘I’m doing the prep. Now.’

‘Sonny, you ain’t a certified County morgue attendant.’

He stripped the sheet off the corpse and felt the limbs for postmortem lividity; he held the arms and legs aloft, dropped them and got the buckle that indicated rigor mortis coming on. He wrote, ‘Death around 1:00 A.M. likely,’ on his notepad, then smeared the dead man’s fingertips with ink and rolled his prints onto a piece of stiff cardboard, pleased that he got a perfect spread the first time around.

Next he examined the neck and head, measuring the purpled ligature marks with a caliper, writing the specs down. The marks encompassed the entire neck; much too long and broad to be a single- or double-hand span. Squinting, he saw a fiber under the chin; he picked it off with a tweezer, nailed it as white terrycloth, placed it in a test tube and on impulse forced the half-locked jaws open, holding them wide with a tongue depressor. Shining his penlight into the mouth, he saw identical fibers on the roof, tongue and gums; he wrote, ‘Strangled and suffocated with white terrycloth towel,’ took a deep breath and checked out the eye sockets.

The penlight beam picked out bruised membranes streaked with the gelatinous substance he’d noticed at the building site; Danny took a Q-tip and swabbed three slide samples from each cavity. The goo had a minty medicinal odor.

Working down the cadaver, Danny spot-checked every inch; scrutinizing the inside crook of the elbows, he tingled: old needle scars – faded, but there in force on both the right and left arms. The victim was a drug addict – maybe reformed – none of the tracks were fresh. He wrote the information down, grabbed his caliper and braced himself for the torso wounds.

The six ovals measured to within three centimeters of each other. They all bore teethmark outlines too shredded to cut casts from – and all were too large to have been made by a human mouth biting straight down. Danny scraped congealed blood off the intestinal tubes that extended from the wounds; he smeared the samples on slides and made a speculative jump that Doc Layman would have crucified him for:

The killer used an animal or animals in the postmortem abuse of his victim.

Danny looked at the dead man’s penis; saw unmistakable human teeth marks on the glans, what Layman called ‘homicidal affection,’ working for laughs in a classroom packed with ambitious off-duty cops. He knew he should check the underside and scrotum, saw Ralph Carty watching him and did it, getting no additional mutilations. Carty cackled, ‘Hung like a cashew’; Danny said, ‘Shut the fuck up.’

Carty shrugged and went back to his Screenworld. Danny turned the corpse onto its back and gasped.

Deep, razor-sharp cuts, dozens of them crisscrossing the back and shoulders from every angle, wood splinters matted into the narrow strips of caked blood.

Danny stared, juxtaposing the front and backside mutilations, trying to put them together. Cold sweat was soaking his shirt cuffs, making his hands twitch. Then a gruff voice. ‘Carty, who is this guy? What’s he doing here?’

Danny turned around, putting a pacify-the-locals grin on; he saw a fat man in a soiled white smock and party hat with ‘1950’ in green spangles. ‘Deputy Upshaw. You’re Dr. Katz?’

The fat man started to stick out his hand, then let it drop. ‘What are you doing with that cadaver? And by what authority do you come in here and disrupt my workload?’

Carty was shrinking into the background, making with supplicating eyes. Danny said, ‘I caught the squeal and wanted to prep the body myself. I’m qualified, and I lied and told Ralphy you said it was kosher.’

Dr. Katz said, ‘Get out of here, Deputy Upshaw.’

Danny said, ‘Happy New Year.’

Ralph Carty said, ‘It’s the truth, Doc – if I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.’

Danny packed up his evidence kit, wavering on a destination: canvassing Allegro Street or home, sleep and dreams: Kathy Hudgens, Buddy Jastrow, the blood house on a Kern County back road. Walking out to the loading dock, he looked back. Ralph Carty was splitting his bribe money with the doctor in the rhinestone party hat.

It was just after 8:00 A.M.; Mal was in his cubicle at the DA’s Criminal Investigation Bureau, coming off a fitful sleep fueled by too much Scotch. His trouser legs were covered with confetti; the roundheeled squadroom steno had smeared kisses on his door, bracketing EXECUTIVE OFFICER in Max Factor’s Crimson Decadence. The City Hall sixth floor looked like a trampled parade ground; Ellis Loew had just awakened him with a phone call: meet him and ‘someone else’ at the Pacific Dining Car in half an hour. And he’d left Celeste and Stefan at home alone to ring in 1950 – because he knew his wife would turn the occasion into a war.

Mal picked up the phone and dialed the house. Celeste answered on the third ring – ‘Yes? Who is this that is calling?’ – her bum phrasing a giveaway that she’d been speaking Czech to Stefan.

‘It’s me. I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be a few more hours.’

‘The blonde is making demands, Herr Lieutenant?’

‘There’s no blonde, Celeste. You know there’s no blonde, and you know I always sleep at the Hall after the New Year’s –’

‘How do you say in English – rotkopf? Redhead? Kleine rotkopf scheisser schtupper –’

‘Speak English, goddamn it! Don’t pull this with me!’

Celeste laughed: the stage chortles that cut through her foreign-language routine and always made him crazy. ‘Put my son on, goddamn it!’

Silence, then Celeste Heisteke Considine’s standard punch line: ‘He’s not your son, Malcolm. His father was Jan Heisteke, and Stefan knows it. You are my benefactor and my husband, and the boy is eleven and must know that his heritage is not amerikanisch police talk and baseball and –’

Celeste laughed softly. Mal knew she was acknowledging match point – him using his cop voice. The line went silent; in the background he could hear Celeste cooing Stefan out of sleep, singsong words in Czech. Then the boy was there – smack in the middle of them. ‘Dad – Malcolm?’

‘Yeah. Happy New Year.’

‘We saw the fireworks. We went on the roof and held umb-umb –’

‘You held umbrellas?’

‘Yes. We saw the City Hall light up, then the fireworks went, then they . . . fissured?’

Mal said, ‘They fizzled, Stefan. F-i-z-z-l-e-d. A fissure is a kind of a hole in the ground.’

Stefan tried the new word. ‘F-i-s-u-r-e?’

‘Two s’s. We’ll have a lesson when I get home, maybe take a drive by Westlake Park and feed the ducks.’

‘Did you see the fireworks? Did you look out the window to see?’

He had been parrying Penny Diskant’s offer of a cloakroom quickie then, breasts and legs grinding him, wishing he could do it. ‘Yeah, it was pretty. Son, I have to go now. Work. You go back to sleep so you’ll be sharp for our lesson.’

‘Yes. Do you want to speak to Mutti?’

‘No. Goodbye, Stefan.’

‘Goodbye, D-D-Dad.’

The restaurant was packed with camera-toting tourists wolfing the ‘Rose Bowl Special’ – hangtown fry, flapjacks, Bloody Marys and coffee. The headwaiter told Mal that Mr. Loew and another gentleman were waiting for him in the Gold Rush Room – a private nook favored by the downtown legal crowd. Mal walked back and rapped on the door; it was opened a split second later, and the ‘other gentleman’ stood there beaming. ‘Knock, knock, who’s there? Dudley Smith, so Reds beware. Please come in, Lieutenant. This is an auspicious assemblage of police brain power, and we should mark the occasion with proper amenities.’

Mal shook the man’s hand, recognizing his name, his style, his often imitated tenor brogue. Lieutenant Dudley Smith, LAPD Homicide. Tall, beefside broad and red-faced; Dublin born, LA raised, Jesuit college trained. Priority case hatchet man for every LA chief of police dating back to Strongarm Dick Steckel. Killed seven men in the line of duty, wore custom-made club-figured ties: 7’s, handcuff ratchets and LAPD shields stitched in concentric circles. Rumored to carry an Army .45 loaded with garlic-coated dumdums and a spring-loaded toad stabber.

‘Lieutenant, a pleasure.’

‘Call me Dudley. We’re of equal rank. I’m older, but you’re far better looking. I can tell we’re going to be grand partners. Wouldn’t you say so, Ellis?’

Mal looked past Dudley Smith to Ellis Loew. The head of the DA’s Criminal Division was seated in a thronelike leather chair, picking the oysters and bacon out of his hangtown fry. ‘I would indeed. Sit down, Mal. Are you interested in breakfast?’

Mal took a seat across from Loew; Dudley Smith sat down between them. The two were dressed in vested tweed suits – Loew’s gray, Smith’s brown. Both men sported regalia: Phi Beta Kappa key for the lawyer, lodge pins dotting the cop’s lapels. Mal adjusted the crease in his rumpled flannels and thought that Smith and Loew looked like two mean pups out of the same litter. ‘No thanks, counselor.’

Loew pointed to a silver coffeepot. ‘Java?’

‘No thanks.’

Smith laughed and slapped his knees. ‘How about an explanation for this early morning intrusion on your peaceful family life?’

Mal said, ‘I’ll guess. Ellis wants to be DA, I want to be Chief DA’s Investigator and you want to take over the Homicide Bureau when Jack Tierney retires next month. We’ve got venue on some hot little snuff that I haven’t heard about, the two of us as investigators, Ellis as prosecuting attorney. It’s a career maker. Good guess?’

Dudley let out a whooping laugh; Loew said, ‘I’m glad you didn’t finish law school, Malcolm. I wouldn’t have relished facing you in court.’

‘I hit it, then?’

Loew forked an oyster and dipped it in egg juice. ‘No. We’ve got our tickets to those positions you mentioned, though. Pure and simple. Dudley volunteered for his own –’

Smith interrupted: ‘I volunteered out of a sense of patriotism. I hate the Red filth worse than Satan.’

Mal watched Ellis take one bit of bacon, one of oyster, one of egg. Dudley lit a cigarette and watched him; Mal could see brass knuckles sticking out of his waistband. ‘Why am I thinking grand jury job?’

Loew leaned back and stretched; Mal knew he was reaching for his courtroom persona. ‘Because you’re smart. Have you been keeping abreast of the local news?’

‘Not really.’

‘Well, there’s a great deal of labor trouble going on, with the Hollywood movie studios in particular. The Teamsters have been picketing against the UAES – the United Alliance of Extras and Stagehands. They’ve got a long-term contract with RKO and the cheapie studios on Gower. They’re picketing for more money and profit points, but they’re not striking, and –’

Dudley Smith slammed the tabletop with two flattened palms. ‘Subversive, mother-hating Pinks, every one of them.’

Loew did a slow burn; Mal sized up the Irishman’s huge hands as neck snappers, ear gougers, confession makers. He made a quick jump, pegged Ellis as being afraid of Smith, Smith hating Loew on general principles: as a sharpster Jew lawyer son of a bitch. ‘Ellis, are we talking about a political job?’

Loew fondled his Phi Beta Kappa key and smiled. ‘We are talking about an extensive grand jury investigation into Communist influence in Hollywood, you and Dudley as my chief investigators. The investigation will center around the UAES. The union is rife with subversives, and they have a so-called braintrust that runs things: one woman and a half dozen men – all heavily connected to fellow travelers who went to jail for pleading the Fifth before HUAC in ’47. Collectively, UAES members have worked on a number of movies that espouse the Commie line, and they’re connected to a veritable Dun and Bradstreet of other subversives. Communism is like a spider’s web. One thread leads to a nest, another thread leads to a whole colony. The threads are names, and the names become witnesses and name more names. And you and Dudley are going to get me all those names.’

Silver captain’s bars danced in Mal’s head; he stared at Loew and ticked off objections, devils advocate against his own cause. ‘Why me instead of Captain Bledsoe? He’s Chief DA’s Investigator, he’s Mr. Toastmaster for the whole goddamn city and he’s everybody’s favorite uncle – which is important, since you come across like a shark. I’m a detective specializing in collecting homicide evidence. Dudley is Homicide brass flat out. Why us? And why now – at nine A.M. New Year’s morning?’

Loew counted rebuttal points on his fingers, the nails coated with clear polish and buffed to a gloss. ‘One, I was up late last night with the District Attorney. The Bureau’s final fiscal 1950 budget has to be submitted to the City Council tomorrow, and I convinced him that the odd forty-two thousand dollars we had left over should be used to fight the Red Menace. Two, Deputy DA Gifford of the Grand Jury Division and I have agreed to switch jobs. He wants criminal prosecution experience, and you know what I want. Three, Captain Bledsoe is going senile. Two nights ago he gave a speech to the Greater Los Angeles Kiwanis Club and lapsed into a string of obscenities. He created quite a stir when he announced his intention to “pour the pork” to Rita Hayworth, to “hose her till she bleeds.” The DA checked with Bledsoe’s doctor, and learned that our dear Captain has had a series of small strokes that he’s kept under wraps. He will be retiring on April fifth – his twentieth anniversary with the Bureau – and he is strictly a figurehead until then. Fourth, you and Dudley are damn good, damn smart detectives, and an intriguing contrast in styles. Fifth –’

Mal hit the tabletop a la Dudley Smith. ‘Fifth, we both know the DA wants an outside man for Chief Investigator. He’ll go to the Feds or fish around the LAPD before he takes me.’

Ellis Loew leaned forward. ‘Mal, he’s agreed to give it to you. Chief Investigator and a captaincy. You’re thirty-eight?’

‘Thirty-nine.’

‘A mere infant. Do well at the job and within five years you’ll be fending off police chief offers with a stick. And I’ll be District Attorney and McPherson will be Lieutenant Governor. Are you in?’

Ellis Loew’s right hand was resting flat on the table; Dudley Smith covered it with his and smiled, all blarney. Mal reviewed his caseload: a hooker snuff in Chinatown, two unsolved shine killings in Watts, a stickup and ADW at a coon whorehouse frequented by LAPD brass. Low priority, no priority. He put his hand on the pile and said, ‘I’m in.’

The pile dispersed; Dudley Smith winked at Mal. ‘Grand partners in a grand crusade.’ Ellis Loew stood up beside his chair. ‘First, I’ll tell you what we have, then I’ll tell you what we need.

‘We have sworn depositions from Teamster members, stating Red encroachment within the UAES. We’ve got Commie front membership lists cross-filed with a UAES membership list – with a lot of matching names. We’ve got prints of pro-Soviet films made during the war – pure Red propaganda – that UAES members worked on. We’ve got the heavy artillery that I’ll mention in a minute and I’m working on getting a batch of Fed surveillance photos: UAES brain trusters hobnobbing with known Communist Party members and HUAC indictees at Sleepy Lagoon protest activities back in ’43 and ’44. Good ammo, right from the gate.’

Mal said, ‘The Sleepy Lagoon stuff might backfire. The kids that were convicted were innocent, they never got the real killer and the cause was too popular. Republicans signed the protest petition. You might want to rethink that approach.’

Dudley Smith doused his cigarette in the remains of his coffee. ‘They were guilty, lad. All seventeen. I know that case. They beat José Diaz half to death, dragged him out to the Lagoon and ran him down with an old jalopy. A pachuco passion job, pure and simple. Diaz was sticking it to somebody’s cousin’s brother’s sister. You know how those taco benders intermarry and breed. Mongoloid idiots, all of them.’

Mal sighed. ‘It was a railroad, Lieutenant. It was right before the zoot suit riots, and everyone was cuckoo about the mexes. And a Republican governor pardoned those kids, not the Commies.’

Smith looked at Loew. ‘Our friend here takes the word of the fourth estate over the word of a brother officer. Next he’ll be telling us the Department was responsible for all our pooooor Latin breathren hurt during the riot. A popular Pinko interpretation, I might add.’

Mal reached for a plate of rolls – keeping his voice steady to show the big Irishman he wasn’t afraid of him. ‘No, a popular LAPD one. I was on the Department then, and the men I worked with tagged the job as horseshit, pure and simple. Besides –’

Loew raised his voice – just as Mal heard his own voice start to quiver. ‘Gentlemen, please.’

The interruption allowed Mal to swallow, dredge up a cold look and shoot it at Dudley Smith. The big man shot back a bland smile, said, ‘Enough contentiousness over a worthless dead spic,’ and extended his hand. Mal shook it; Smith winked.

Ellis Loew said, ‘That’s better, because guilty or not guilty isn’t germane to the issue here. The fact is that the Sleepy Lagoon case attracted a lot of subversives and they exploited it to their ends. That’s our focus. Now I know you both want to go home to your families, so I’ll wind this up for today.

‘Essentially, you two will be bringing in what the Feds call “friendly witnesses” – UAESers and other lefties willing to come clean on their Commie associations and name names. You’ve got to get admissions that the pro-Red movies UAES worked on were part of a conscious plot – propaganda to advance the Communist cause. You’ve got to get proof of venue – subersive activities within LA City proper. It also wouldn’t hurt to get some big names. It’s common knowledge that a lot of big Hollywood stars are fellow travelers. That would give us some . . .’

Loew paused. Mal said, ‘Marquee value?’

‘Yes. Well put, if a bit cynical. I can tell that patriotic sentiment doesn’t come easy to you, Malcolm. You might try to dredge up some fervor for this assignment, though.’

Mal thought of a rumor he’d heard: that Mickey Cohen bought a piece of the LA Teamsters off of their East Coast front man – an ex-syndicate trigger looking for money to invest in Havana casinos. ‘Mickey C. might be a good one to tap for a few bucks if the City funding runs low. I’ll bet he wouldn’t mind seeing the UAES out and his boys in. Lots of money to be made in Hollywood, you know.’

Loew flushed. Dudley Smith tapped the table with a huge knuckle. ‘No dummy, our friend Malcolm. Yes, lad. Mickey would like the Teamsters in and the studios would like the UAES out. Which doesn’t negate the fact that the UAES is crawling with Pinks. Did you know, lad, that we were almost colleagues once before?’

Mal knew: Thad Green offering him a transfer to the Hat Squad when his sergeantcy came through back in ’41. He turned it down, having no balls for armed robbery stakeouts, going in doors gun first, gunboat diplomacy police work: meeting the Quentin bus at the depot, pistol-whipping hard boys into a docile parole. Dudley Smith had killed four men working the job. ‘I wanted to work Ad Vice.’

‘I dont’ blame you, lad. Less risk, more chance for advancement.’

The old rumors: Patrolman/Sergeant/Lieutenant Mal Considine, LAPD/DA’s Bureau comer, didn’t like to get his hands dirty. Ran scared as a rookie working 77th Street Division – the heart of the Congo. Mal wondered if Dudley Smith knew about the gas man at Buchenwald. ‘That’s right. I never saw any percentage there.’

‘The squad was wicked fun, lad. You’d have fit right in. The others didn’t think so, but you’d have convinced them.’

He’s got the old talk nailed. Mal looked at Ellis Loew and said, ‘Let’s wrap this up, okay? What’s the heavy ammo you mentioned?’

Loew’s eyes moved back and forth between Mal and Dudley. ‘We’ve got two men assisting us. The first is an ex-Fed named Edmund J. Satterlee. He’s the head of a group called Red Crosscurrents. It’s on retainer to various corporations and what you might want to call “astute” people in the entertainment industry. It screens prospective employees for Communist ties and helps weed out subversive elements that may have wormed their way in already. Ed’s an expert on Communism, and he’s going to give you a rundown on how to most effectively collate your evidence. The second man is a psychiatrist, Dr. Saul Lesnick. He’s been the “approved” headshrinker for the LA Communist Party since the ’40s, and he’s been an FBI informer for years. We’ve got access to his complete file of psychiatric records – all the UAES bigwigs – their personal dirt going back to before the war. Heavy artillery.’

Smith slapped the table and stood up. ‘A howitzer, a barrage weapon, maybe even an atom bomb. We’re meeting them at your house tomorrow, Ellis? Ten o’clock?’

Loew cocked a finger at him. ‘Ten sharp.’

Dudley aped the gesture to Mal. ‘Until then, partner. It’s not the Hats, but we’ll have fun nonetheless.’

Mal nodded and watched the big man exit the room. Seconds passed; Loew said, ‘A rough piece of work. If I didn’t think the two of you would be great together, I wouldn’t have let him sign on.’

‘He volunteered?’

‘He’s got a pipeline to McPherson, and he knew about the job before I got the go-ahead. Do you think you can keep him on a tight leash?’

The question was like a road map to all the old rumors. Ellis Loew had him down straight as a Nazi killer and probably believed that he was behind the botched snuff attempt on Buzz Meeks. They had to blow the Ad Vice and 77th Street stories out of the water. Dudley Smith knew better. ‘I don’t see any problem, counselor.’

‘Good. How’s things with Celeste and Stefan?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

Loew smiled. ‘Cheer up, then. Good things are coming our way.’

He was now very bored.

It was shortly after 10:00 New Year’s morning. Buzz, in his capacity as Head of Security at Hughes Aircraft, had been up all night directing Mighty Men in what Howard Hughes called ‘Perimeter Patrol.’ The plant’s regular guards were given the night off; boozehound specters had been crisscrossing the grounds since yesterday evening. The high point of their tour was Big Howard’s New Year’s bonus – a flatbed truck loaded with hot dogs and Cokes arriving just as 1949 became 1950 – compliments of the burger write-off in Culver City. Buzz had put down his sheet of bookie calculations to watch the Mighty Men eat; he laid six to one that Howard would hit the roof if he saw their custom-embroidered uniforms dotted with mustard and sauerkraut.

Buzz checked his watch – 10:14 – he could go home and sleep at noon. He slumped into a chair, scanned the walls and studied the framed photos that lined them. Each one made him figure odds for and against himself, made him think of how perfect his figurehead job and what he really did were.

There was himself – short, broad, running to fat, standing next to Howard Hughes, tall and handsome in a chalk stripe suit – an Oklahoma shitkicker and a millionaire eccentric giving each other the cuckold’s horns. Buzz saw the photo as the two sides of a scratchy hillbilly record: one side about a sheriff corrupted by women and money, the flip a lament for the bossman who bought him out. Next was a collection of police shots – Buzz trim and fit as an LAPD rookie in ’34; getting fatter and better dressed as the pictures jumped forward in time: tours with Bunco, Robbery and Narcotics divisions; cashmere and camel’s hair blazers, the slightly nervous look in his eyes indigenous to bagmen everywhere. Then Detective Sergeant Turner Meeks in a bed at Queen of Angels, high brass hovering around him, pointing to the wounds he survived – while he wondered if it was a fellow cop who’d set him up. A string of civilian pics on the wall above his desk: a fatter, grayer Buzz with Mayor Bowron, ex-DA Buron Fitts, Errol Flynn, Mickey Cohen, producers he’d pimped for, starlets he’d gotten out of litigation and into abortions, dope cure doctors grateful for his referrals. Fixer, errand boy, hatchet wielder.

Stony broke.

Buzz sat down at his desk and jotted credits and debits. He owned fourteen acres of Ventura County farmland; parched and worthless, he’d bought it for his parents to retire to – but they foiled him by kicking in a typhus epidemic in ’44. The real estate man he’d been talking to said thirty bucks an acre tops – better to hold on to it – it couldn’t go much lower. He owned a mint green ’48 Eldo coupé – identical to Mickey C.’s, but without the bullet-proof plating. He had a shitload of suits from Oviatt’s and the London Shop, the trousers all too tight in the gut – if Mickey bought secondhand threads he was home free – he and the flashy little hebe were exactly the same size. But the Mick threw away shirts he’d worn twice, and the debit list was running off the page and onto his blotter.

The phone rang; Buzz grabbed it. ‘Security. Who’s this?’

‘It’s Sol Gelfman, Buzz. You remember me?’

The old geez at MGM with the car thief grandson, a nice boy who clouted convertibles out of Restaurant Row parking lots, raced Mulholland with them and always left his calling card – a big pile of shit – in the back seat. He’d bought off the arresting officer, who altered his report to show two – not twenty-seven – counts of GTA, along with no mention of the turd drop MO. The judge had let the kid off with probation, citing his good family and youthful verve. ‘Sure. What can I do for you, Mr. Gelfman?’

‘Well, Howard said I should call you. I’ve got a little problem, and Howard said you could help.’

‘Your grandson back to his old tricks?’

‘No, God forbid. There’s a girl in my new picture who needs help. These goniffs have got some smut pictures of her, from before I bought her contract. I gave them some money to be nice, but they’re persisting.’

Buzz groaned – it was shaping up as a muscle job. ‘What kind of pictures?’

‘Nasty. Animal stuff. Lucy and this Great Dane with a schlong like King Kong. I should have such a schlong.’

Buzz grabbed a pen and turned over his debit list to the blank side. ‘Who’s the girl and what have you got on the blackmailers?’

‘On the pickup men I got bubkis – I sent my production assistant over with the money to meet them. The girl is Lucy Whitehall, and listen, I got a private detective to trace the calls. The boss of the setup is this Greek she’s shacking with – Tommy Sifakis. Is that chutzpah? He’s blackmailing his own girlfriend, calling in his demands from their cute little love nest. He’s got pals to do the pickups and Lucy don’t even know she’s being had. Can you feature that chutzpah?’

Buzz thought of price tags; Gelfman continued his spiel. ‘Buzz, this is worth half a grand to me, and I’m doing you a favor, ’cause Lucy used to strip with Audrey Anders, Mickey Cohen’s squeeze. I coulda gone to Mickey, but you did me solid once, so I’m giving you the job. Howard said you’d know what to do.’

Buzz saw his old billy club hanging by a thong from the bathroom doorknob and wondered if he still had the touch. ‘The price is a grand, Mr. Gelfman.’

‘What! That’s highway robbery!’

‘No, it’s felony extortion settled out of court. You got an address for Sifakis?’

‘Mickey would do it for free!’

‘Mickey would go batshit and get you a homicide conspiracy beef. What’s Sifakis’ address?’

Gelfman breathed out slowly. ‘You goddamn okie lowlife. It’s 1187 Vista View Court in Studio City, and for a grand I want this thing wiped up clean.’

Little kids were racing tricycles across gravel front yards; no adults were taking the sun. Buzz pinned a cereal-box badge to his lapel, got out and rang the buzzer of 1187. Ten seconds passed – no answer. Looking around, he stuck a bobby pin in the keyhole and gave the knob a jiggle. The lock popped; he pushed the door open and entered the house.

Sunlight leaking through gauze curtains gave him a shot at the living room: cheapsky furniture, movie pinups on the walls, stacks of Philco table radios next to the sofa – obvious proceeds from a warehouse job. Buzz pulled the billy club from his waistband and walked through a grease-spattered kitchen-dinette to the bedroom.

More glossies on the walls – strippers in g-strings and pasties. Buzz recognized Audrey Anders, the ‘Va Va Voom Girl,’ alleged to have a master’s degree from some Podunk college; next to her, a slender blonde took up space. Buzz flicked on a floor lamp for a better look; he saw tame publicity stills: ‘Juicy Lucy’ in a spangly one-piece bathing suit, the address of a downtown talent agency rubber-stamped on the bottom. Squinting, he noticed that the girl had unfocused eyes and a slaphappy grin – probably jacked on some kind of hop.