The Big Nowhere

Chapter One

Thundershowers hit just before midnight, drowning out the horn honks and noisemaker blare that usually signalled New Year’s on the Strip, bringing 1950 to the West Hollywood Substation in a wave of hot squeals with meat wagon backup.

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—”

“You stay here, I’m going.”

Allegro Street was a narrow residential road, half Spanish bungalow courts, half building sites fronted by signs promising DELUXE LIVING in the Tudor, French Provincial and Streamline Moderne styles. Danny drove up it in his civilian car, slowing when he saw a barrier of sawhorses with red blinkers, three black-and-whites parked behind it, their headlights beaming out into a weed-strewn vacant lot.

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 $$$ kin 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.”

Eyes poked out. Sex organs mauled. Bare flesh gored down to the quick. Danny followed the morgue wagon downtown, wishing his car had a siren to get him there faster.

The LA City and County morgues occupied the bottom floor of a warehouse on Alameda just south of Chinatown. A wooden partition separated the two operations: examination slabs, refrigerators and dissecting tables for bodies found within City confines, a different set of facilities for stiffs from the unincorporated area patrolled by the Sheriff’s Department. Before Mickey Cohen sent the LAPD and Mayor’s Office topsy-turvy with his Brenda Allen revelations — the high brass taking kickbacks from LA’s most famous whores — there had been solid City/County cooperation, pathologists and cadaver caddies sharing plastic sheets, bone saws and pickling fluid. Now, with the County cops giving Cohen shelter on the Strip, there was nothing but interagency grief.

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 side-stepped 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.”

Danny added a five-spot to his bribe and handed it to Carty; the old man kissed a faded snapshot of a dead movie star. “I guess you are now.”

Danny got his evidence kit from the car and went to work, Carty standing sentry in case the duty ME showed up pissed.

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 teeth mark 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.

Chapter Two

Lieutenant Mal Considine was looking at a photograph of his wife and son, trying not to think of Buchenwald.

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 rot-kopf 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—”

“Put my son on, goddamn you.”

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 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.”

Mal put down the phone. His hands were shaking and his eyes held a film of tears.

Downtown LA was shut down tight, like it was sleeping off a drunk. The only citizens in view were winos lining up for doughnuts and coffee outside the Union Rescue Mission; cars were erratically parked — snouts to smashed fenders — in front of the hot-sheet hotels on South Main. Sodden confetti hung out of windows and littered the sidewalk, and the sun that was looming above the eastern basin had the feel of heat, steam and bad hangovers. Mal drove to the Pacific Dining Car wishing the first day of the new decade an early death.

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 bite 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 brain trust 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, devil’s 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 à 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 brethren 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 — subversive 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 don’t 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.”

Chapter Three

Turner “Buzz” Meeks watched rental cops patrol the grounds of Hughes Aircraft, laying four to one that Howard hired the ineffectual bastards because he liked their uniforms, two to one he designed the threads himself. Which meant that the Mighty Man Agency was an RKO Pictures/Hughes Aircraft/Tool Company “Stray Dog” — the big guy’s tag for tax-write-off operations that he bought and meddled in out of whim. Hughes owned a brassiere factory in San Ysidro — 100 percent wetback-run; he owned a plant that manufactured electroplate trophies; he owned four strategically located snack stands — essential to the maintenance of his all-cheeseburger/chili dog diet. Buzz stood in his office doorway, noticed pleated flaps on the pockets of the Mighty Man standing by the hangar across from him, made the style as identical to a blouse Howard designed to spotlight Jane Russell’s tits, and called the odds off. And for the three trillionth time in his life, he wondered why he always cut bets when he was bored.

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 boss man 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.”

Buzz said, “Like shit in the back seat,” and hung up. He grabbed his LAPD-issue equalizer and headed for the Cahuenga Pass.

The run to the Valley took him an hour; the search for Vista View Court another twenty minutes of prowling housing developments: stucco cubes arrayed in semicircles gouged out of the Hollywood Hills. 1187 was a peach-colored prefab, the paint already fading, the aluminum siding streaked with rust. Identically built pads flanked it — lemon yellow, lavender, turquoise, salmon and hot pink alternating down the hillside, ending at a sign proclaiming, VISTA VIEW GARDENS! CALIFORNIA LIVING AT ITS FINEST! NO $ DOWN FOR VETS! Buzz parked in front of the yellow dive, thinking of gumballs tossed in a ditch.

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.

Buzz decided on five minutes to toss the pad, checked his watch and went to work. Scuffed drawers yielded male and female undergarments tangled up indiscriminately and a stash of marijuana cigarettes; an end cabinet held 78s and dime novels. The closet showed a woman on her way up, a man running second: dresses and skirts from Beverly Hills shops, mothball-reeking navy uniforms and slacks, dandruff-flecked jackets.

With 3:20 down, Buzz turned to the bed: blue satin sheets, upholstered headboard embroidered with cupids and hearts. He ran a hand under the mattress, felt wood and metal, grabbed and pulled out a sawed-off pump shotgun, big black muzzle, probably a .10 gauge. Checking the breech, he saw that it was loaded — five rounds, double-aught buckshot. He removed the ammo and stuffed it in his pocket; played a hunch on Tommy Sifakis’ brain and looked under the pillow.

A German Luger, loaded, one in the chamber.

Buzz ejected the chambered round and emptied the clip, pissed that he didn’t have time to prowl for a safe, find the doggy stuff to shove in Lucy Whitehall’s face later, a jolt to scare her away from Greeks with dandruff and bedroom ordnance. He walked back to the living room, stopping when he saw an address book on the coffee table.

He leafed through it, no familiar names until he hit the G’s and saw Sol Gelfman, his home and MGM numbers ringed with doodles; the M’s and P’s got him Donny Maslow and Chick Pardell, dinks he rousted working Narco, reefer pushers who hung out at studio commissaries — not the extortionist type. Then he hit S and got his lever to squeeze the Greek dry and maybe glom himself a few solids on the side:

Johnny Stompanato, Crestview-6103. Mickey Cohen’s personal bodyguard. Rumored to have financed his way out of lowball duty with the Cleveland Combination via strongarm extortion schemes; rumored to front Mexican marijuana to local dealers for a 30 percent kickback.

Handsome Johnny Stomp. His name ringed in dollar signs and question marks.

Buzz went back to his car to wait. He turned the ignition key to Accessory, skimmed the radio dial across a half dozen stations, found Spade Cooley and his Cowboy Rhythm Hour and listened with the volume down low. The music was syrup on top of gravy — too sweet, too much. It made him think of the Oklahoma sticks, what it might have been like if he’d stayed. Then Spade went too far — warbling a tune about a man about to go to the state prison gallows for a crime he didn’t commit. That made him think of the price he paid to get out.

In 1931 Lizard Ridge, Oklahoma, was a dying hick town in the lungs of the Dustbowl. It had one source of income: a factory that manufactured stuffed souvenir armadillos, armadillo purses and Gila monster wallets, then sold them to tourists blowing through on the highway. Locals and Indians off the reservation shot and skinned the reptiles and sold them to the factory piecework; sometimes they got carried away and shot each other. Then the ’31 dust storms closed down U.S. 1 for six months straight, the armadillos and Gilas went crazy, ate themselves diseased on jimson weed, crawled off to die or stormed Lizard Ridge’s main drag and got squashed by cars. Either way, their hides were too trashed and shriveled to make anyone a dime. Turner Meeks, ace Gila killer, capable of nailing the bastards with a .22 from thirty yards out — right on the spine where the factory cut its master stitches — knew it was time to leave town.

So he moved to LA and got work in the movies — revolving cowboy extra — Paramount one day, Columbia the next, the Gower Gulch cut-rate outfits when things got tight. Any reasonably presentable white man who could twirl a rope and ride a horse for real was skilled labor in Depression Hollywood.

But in ’34 the trend turned from westerns to musicals. Work got scarce. He was about to take a test offered by the LA Municipal Bus Company — three openings for an expected six hundred applicants — when Hollywood saved him again.

Monogram Studio was being besieged by picketers: a combine of unions under the AFL banner. He was hired as a strike-breaker — five dollars a day, guaranteed extra work as a bonus once the strike was quelled.

He broke heads for two weeks straight, so good with a billy club that an off-duty cop nicknamed him “Buzz” and introduced him to Captain James Culhane, the head of the LAPD’s Riot Squad. Culhane knew a born policeman when he saw one. Two weeks later he was walking a beat in downtown LA; a month later he was a rifle instructor at the Police Academy. Teaching Chief Steckel’s daughter to shoot a .22 and ride a horse earned him a sergeantcy, tours in Bunco, Robbery and the big enchilada — Narcotics.

Narco duty carried with it an unwritten ethos: you roust the lowest forms of humanity, you walk your tour knee-deep in shit, you get a dispensation. If you play the duty straight, you don’t rat on those who don’t. If you don’t, you lay off a percentage of what you confiscate direct to the coloreds or the syndicate boys who sell to shines only: Jack Dragna, Benny Siegel, Mickey C. And you watch the straight arrows in other divisions — the guys who want you out so they can get your job.

When he came on Narco in ’44, he struck his deal with Mickey Cohen, then the dark horse in the LA rackets, the hungry guy coming up. Jack Dragna hated Mickey; Mickey hated Jack; Buzz shook down Jack’s niggertown pushers, skimmed five grams on the ounce and sold it to Mickey, who loved him for giving Jack grief. Mickey took him to Hollywood parties, introduced him to people who needed police favors and were willing to pay; fixed him up with a roundheeled blonde whose cop husband was serving with the MPs in Europe. He met Howard Hughes and started bird-dogging for him, picking up star-struck farm girls, ensconcing them in the fuck pads the big guy had set up all over LA. It was going aces on all fronts: the duty, the money, the affair with Laura Considine. Until June 21, 1946, when an anonymous tip on a storefront operation at 68th and Slauson led him into an alleyway ambush: two in the shoulder, one in the arm, one through the left cheek of his ass. And a speedy wound ticket out of the LAPD, full pension, into the arms of Howard Hughes, who just happened to need a man...

And he still didn’t know who the shooters were. The slugs they took out of him indicated two men; he had two suspects: Dragna triggers or contract boys hired by Mal Considine, Laura’s husband, the Administrative Vice sergeant back from the war. He had Considine checked out within the Department, heard that he turned tail from bar brawls in Watts, that he got his jollies sending in rookies to operate whores when he ran the night watch in Ad Vice, that he brought a Czech woman and her son back from Buchenwald and was planning to divorce Laura. Nothing concrete — one way or the other.

The only thing he had down for sure was that Considine knew about the deal with his soon-to-be ex and hated him. He’d taken a retirement tour of the Detective Bureau, a chance to say goodbye and pick up his courtesy badge, a chance to get a take on the man he cuckolded. He walked by Considine’s desk in the Ad Vice squadroom, saw a tall guy who looked more like a lawyer than a cop and stuck out his hand. Considine gave him a slow eyeball, said, “Laura always did have a thing for pimps,” and looked away.

Even odds: Considine or Dragna, take your pick.

Buzz saw a late-model Pontiac ragtop pull up in front of 1187. Two women in crinoline party dresses got out and rocked toward the door on high high heels; a big Greek in a too-tight suitcoat and too-short trousers followed them. The taller of the skirts caught her stiletto spike in a pavement crack and went down on one knee; Buzz recognized Audrey Anders, hair in a pageboy, twice as beautiful as her picture. The other girl — “Juicy Lucy” from the publicity stills — helped her up and into the house, the big man right behind them. Buzz laid three to one that Tommy Sifakis wouldn’t respond to the subtle approach, grabbed his billy club and walked up to the Pontiac.

His first shot sheared off the Indian-head hood ornament; his second smashed the windshield. Three, four, five and six were a Spade Cooley refrain that dented the grille into the radiator, causing steam clouds to billow all around him. Seven was a blind swing at the driver’s side window, the crash followed by a loud “What the fuck!” and a familiar metal-on-metal noise: a shotgun slide jacking a shell into the chamber.

Buzz turned and saw Tommy Sifakis striding down the walkway, the sawed-off held in trembling hands. Four to one the Greek was too mad to notice the weapon’s light weight; two to one he didn’t have time to grab his box of shells and reload. Bluff bet, straight across.

His baton at port arms, Buzz charged. When they were within heavy damage range, the Greek pulled the trigger and got a tiny little click. Buzz countered, swinging at a hairy left hand frantically trying to pump in ammo that wasn’t there. Tommy Sifakis screamed and dropped the shotgun; Buzz brought him down with a forehand/backhand to the rib cage. The Greek spat blood and tried to curl into a ball, cradling his wounded parts. Buzz knelt beside him and spoke softly, accentuating his okie drawl. “Son, let’s let bygones be bygones. You rip up them pictures and shitcan the negatives and I won’t tell Johnny Stomp you fingered him on the squeeze. Deal?”

Sifakis spat a thick wad of blood and “F-f-fuck you”; Buzz whacked him across the knees. The Greek shrieked gobbledygook; Buzz said, “I was gonna give you and Lucy another chance to work things out, but now I think I’m gonna advise her to find more suitable lodging. You feel like apologizin’ to her?”

“F-f-f-y-y-you.”

Buzz drew out a long sigh, just like he did playing a homesteader who’d taken enough shit in an old Monogram serial. “Son, here’s my last offer. You apologize to Lucy, or I tell Johnny you snitched him, Mickey C. you’re extortin’ his girlfriend’s pal and Donny Maslow and Chick Pardell you snitched them to Narco. Deal?”

Sifakis tried to extend a smashed middle finger; Buzz stroked his baton, catching a sidelong view of Audrey Anders and Lucy Whitehall in the doorway, jaws wide. The Greek lolled his head on the pavement and rasped, “I p-pologize.”

Buzz saw flashes of Lucy and her canine co-star, Sol Gelfman botching her career with grade Z turkeys, the girl crawling back to the Greek for rough sex. He said, “Good boy,” popped the baton into Sifakis’ gut and walked over to the women.

Lucy Whitehall was shrinking back into the living room; Audrey Anders was blocking the doorway, barefoot. She pointed to Buzz’s lapel. “It’s a phony.”

Buzz caught the South in her voice; remembered locker room talk: the Va Va Voom Girl could twirl her pastie tassels in opposite directions at the same time. “Wheaties. You from New Orleans? Atlanta?”

Audrey looked at Tommy Sifakis, belly-crawling over to the curb. “Mobile. Did Mickey send you to do that?”

“No. I was wonderin’ why you didn’t seem surprised. Now I know.”

“You care to tell me about it?”

“No.”

“But you’ve done work for Mickey?”

Buzz saw Lucy Whitehall sit down on the couch and grab a stolen radio for something to hold. Her face was blotchy red and rivers of mascara were running down her cheeks. “I certainly have. Mickey disapprove of Mr. Sifakis there?”

Audrey laughed. “He knows trash when he sees it, I’ll give him that. What’s your name?”

“Turner Meeks.”

“Buzz Meeks?”

“That’s right. Miss Anders, have you got a place for Miss Whitehall to stay?”

“Yes. But what—”

“Mickey still hang out New Year’s at Breneman’s Ham ’n’ Eggs?”

“Yes”

“You get Lucy to pack a grip, then. I’ll run you over there.”

Audrey flushed. Buzz wondered how much of her smarts Mickey put up with before he jerked the chain; if she ever did the tassel trick for him. She went over and knelt beside Lucy Whitehall, smoothing her hair, prying the radio out of her grasp. Buzz got his car and backed it up on the gravel front yard, one eye on the Greek, still moaning low. Neighbor people were peering out their windows, spread venetian blinds all around the cul-de-sac. Audrey led Lucy out of the house a few minutes later, one arm around her shoulders, one hand carrying a cardboard suitcase. On the way to the car, she stopped to give Tommy Sifakis a kick in the balls.

Buzz took Laurel Canyon back to Hollywood — more time to figure out the play if Johnny Stompanato turned up at his boss’s side. Lucy Whitehall mumbled litanies on Tommy Sifakis as a nice guy with rough edges, Audrey cooing “There, there,” feeding her cigarettes to shut her up.

It was coming on as a three-horse parlay: a grand from Gelfman, whatever Mickey slipped him if he got sentimental over Lucy and a shakedown or favor pried out of Johnny Stomp. Play it soft with the Mick — he hadn’t seen him since he quit the Department and their percentage deal. Since then the man had survived a pipe bomb explosion, two IRS audits, his right-hand goon Hooky Rothman stubbing his face on the business end of an Ithaca .12 gauge and the shootout outside Sherry’s — chalk that one up to Jack Dragna or shooters from the LAPD, revenge for the cop heads that rolled over the Brenda Allen job. Mickey had half of bookmaking, loan-sharking, the race wire and the dope action in LA; he owned the West Hollywood Sheriff’s and the few City high brass who didn’t want to see him crucified. And Johnny Stomp had stuck with him through all of it: guinea factotum to a Jew prince. Play them both very soft.

Laurel Canyon ended just north of the Strip; Buzz took side streets over to Hollywood and Vine, dawdling at stoplights. He could feel Audrey Anders eyeing him from the back seat, probably trying to get a take on him and the Mick. Pulling up in front of Breneman’s, he said, “You and Lucy stay here. I got to talk to Mickey in private.”

Lucy dry-sobbed and fumbled with her pack of cigarettes; Audrey reached for the door handle. “I’m going, too.”

“No, you’re not.”

Audrey flushed; Buzz turned to Lucy. “Sweetheart, this is about them pictures of you and that big old dog. Tommy was tryin’ to squeeze Mr. Gelfman, and if you go inside looking distraught, Mickey just might kill him and get all of us in heaps of trouble. Tommy’s got them rough edges, but the two of you just might be able to work things—”

Lucy bawled and made him stop; Audrey’s look said he was lower than the dog. Buzz headed into Breneman’s at a trot. The restaurant was crowded, the radio crew for “Tom Breneman’s Breakfast in Hollywood” packing up equipment and hustling it toward a side exit. Mickey Cohen was sitting in a wraparound booth, Johnny Stompanato and another muscle boy sandwiching him. A third man sat alone at an adjoining table, eyes constantly circling, a newspaper folded open on the seat beside him — obviously camouflaging a monster piece.

Buzz walked over; the gunman’s hand slid under his morning Herald. Mickey stood up, smiling; Johnny Stomp and the other guy pasted identical grins on their faces and slid over to let him into the booth. Buzz stuck out his hand; Cohen ignored it, grabbed the back of his head and kissed him on both cheeks, scraping him with razor stubble. “Big fellow, it has been too long!”

Buzz recoiled from a blast of cologne. “Much too long, big fellow. How’s business?”

Cohen laughed. “The haberdashery? I got a florist’s shop and an ice cream parlor now, too.”

Buzz saw that Mickey was giving him a shrewd once-over; that he’d caught his frayed shirt cuffs and home manicure. “No. Business.”

Cohen nudged the man on his left, a bony guy with wide blue eyes and a jailhouse pallor. “Davey, business he wants. Tell him.”

Davey said, “Men got to gamble and borrow money and schtup women. The shvartzes got to fly to cloud nine on white powder airlines. Business is good.”

Mickey howled with laughter. Buzz chuckled, faked a coughing attack, turned to Johnny Stompanato and whispered, “Sifakis and Lucy Whitehall. Keep your fucking mouth shut.”

Mickey pounded his back and held up a glass of water; Buzz kept coughing, enjoying the look on Stompanato’s face — a guinea Adonis turned into a busted schoolboy, his perfectly oiled pompadour about to wilt from fright. Cohen’s back slaps got harder; Buzz took a gulp of water and pretended to catch his breath. “Davey, you’re a funny man.”

Davey half smiled. “Best in the West. I write all Mr. Cohen’s routines for the smokers at the Friar’s Club. Ask him, ”How’s the wife?’ ”

Buzz saluted Davey with his glass. “Mickey, how’s the wife?”

Mickey Cohen smoothed his lapels and sniffed the carnation in the buttonhole. “Some women you want to see, my wife you want to flee. These two Dragna humps were staking out my house after the Sherry’s job, my wife brought them milk and cookies, told them to shoot low, she ain’t had it from me since Lucky Lindy crossed the Atlantic, she don’t want nobody else getting it either. My wife is so cold that the maid calls our bedroom the polar icecap. People come up to me and ask, ‘Mickey, are you getting any?’ and I pull a thermometer out of my jockey shorts, it says twenty-five below. People say, ‘Mickey, you’re popular with the ladies, you must get reamed, steamed and dry-cleaned regularly.’ I say, ”You don’t know my wife — hog-tied, fried and swept to the side is more like it.’ Some women you got to see, some you got to flee. Oops — here she comes now!”

Mickey ended his schtick with a broad grab for his hat. Davey the gagster collapsed on the table, convulsed with laughter. Buzz tried to drum up chortles and couldn’t; he was thinking that Meyer Harris Cohen had killed eleven men that he knew of and had to rake in at least ten million a year tax free. Shaking his head, he said, “Mickey, you’re a pisser.”

A group of squarejohns at the next table was giving the routine a round of applause; Mickey tipped his hat to them. “Yeah? Then why ain’t you laughing? Davey, Johnny, go sit someplace.”

Stompanato and the gagster slid silently out of the booth. Cohen said, “You need work or a touch, am I right?”

“Nix.”

“Howard treating you right?”

“He treats me fine.”

Cohen toyed with his glass, tapping it with the six-carat rock on his pinky. “I know you’re in hock to some handbooks. You should be with me, boychik. Good terms, no sweat on the payback.”

“I like the risk the other way. It gets my juices goin’.”

“You’re a crazy fuck. What do you want? Name it.”

Buzz looked around the room, saw Stompanato at the bar belting a stiff one for guts and solid citizen types giving Mickey surreptitious glances, like he was a zoo gorilla who might bolt his cage. “I want you not to lean on a guy who’s about to make you real mad.”

“What?”

“You know Audrey’s friend Lucy Whitehall?”

Mickey traced an hourglass figure in the air. “Sure. Solly Gelfman’s gonna use her in his next picture. He thinks she’s going places.”

Buzz said, “Hell in a bucket maybe,” saw Mickey going into his patented low simmer — nostrils flaring, jaw grinding, eyes trawling for something to smash — and handed him the half-full Bloody Mary Johnny Stompanato left behind. Cohen took a gulp and licked lemon pulp off his lips. “Spill it. Now.”

Buzz said, “Lucy’s shack job’s been squeezing Solly with some dirty pictures. I broke it up, strong-armed the boy a little. Lucy needs a safe place to flop, and I know for a fact that the Greek’s got pals on the West Hollywood Sheriff’s — your pals. I also know he used to push reefer in Dragna territory — which made old Jack D. real mad. Two damn good reasons for you to leave him alone.”

Cohen was gripping his glass with sausage fingers clenched blue-white. “What... kind... of... pictures?”

The big wrong question — Mickey might be talking to Sol Gelfman and get the true skinny. Buzz braced himself. “Lucy and a dog.”

Mickey’s hand popped the glass, shards exploding all over the table, tomato juice and vodka spritzing Buzz. Mickey looked at his bloody palm and pressed it flat on the tabletop. When the white linen started to turn red, he said, “The Greek is fucking dead. He is fucking dog food.”

Two waiters had approached; they stood around shuffling their feet. The squarejohns at the next table were making with shocked faces — one old lady with her jaw practically down to her soup. Buzz waved the waiters away, slid next to Cohen and put an arm around his twitching shoulders. “Mickey, you can’t, and you know it. You put out the word that anybody who bucks Jack D. is your friend, and the Greek did that — in spades. Audrey saw me work him over — and she’d know. And the Greek didn’t know how stand-up you are — that your woman’s friends are like kin to you. Mickey, you got to let it go. You got too much to lose. Fix Lucy up with a nice place to stay, someplace where the Greek can’t find her. Make it a mitzvah.”

Cohen took his hand from the table, shook it free of glass slivers and licked lemon goo off his fingers. “Who was in it besides the Greek?”

Buzz showed him his eyes, the loyal henchman who’d never lie; he came up with two gunsels he’d run out of town for crashing Lew the Jew Wershow’s handbook at Paramount. “Bruno Geyer and Steve Katzenbach. Fairies. You gonna find Lucy a place?”

Cohen snapped his fingers; waiters materialized and stripped the table dervish fast. Buzz sensed wheels turning behind the Mick’s blank face — in his direction. He moved over to cut the man some slack; he stayed deadpan when Mickey said, “Mitzvah, huh? You fucking goyishe shitheel. Where’s Audrey and Lucy now?”

“Out by my car.”

“What’s Solly pay you?”

“A grand.”

Mickey dug in his pants pockets and pulled out a roll of hundreds. He peeled off ten, placed them in a row on the table and said, “That’s the only mitzvah you know from, you hump. But you saved me grief, so I’m matching. Buy yourself some clothes.”

Buzz palmed the money and stood up. “Thanks, Mick.”

“Fuck you. What do you call an elephant who moonlights as a prostitute?”

“I don’t know. What?”

Mickey cracked a big grin. “A two-ton pickup that lays for peanuts.”

“That’s a riot, Mick.”

“Then why ain’t you laughing? Send the girls in — now.”

Buzz walked over to the bar, catching Johnny Stompanato working on another shot. Turning, he saw Cohen being glad-handed by Tom Breneman and the maitre d’, out of eyeshot. Johnny Stomp swiveled around; Buzz put five Mickey C-notes in his hand. “Sifakis snitched you, but I don’t want him touched. And I didn’t tell Mickey bubkis. You owe me.”

Johnny smiled and pocketed the cash. “Thanks, pal.”

Buzz said, “I ain’t your pal, you wop cocksucker,” and walked outside, stuffing the remaining hundreds in his shirt pocket, spitting on his necktie and using it to daub the tomato juice stains on his best Oviatt’s worsted. Audrey Anders was standing on the sidewalk watching him. She said, “Nice life you’ve got, Meeks.”

Chapter Four

Part of him knew it was just a dream — that it was 1950, not 1941; that the story would run its course while part of him grasped for new details and part tried to be dead still so as not to disrupt the unraveling.

He was speeding south on 101, wheeling a hot La Salle sedan. Highway Patrol sirens were closing the gap; Kern County scrubland loomed all around him. He saw a series of dirt roads snaking off the highway and hit the one on the far left, figuring the prowl cars would pursue straight ahead or down the middle. The road wound past farmhouses and fruit pickers’ shacks into a box canyon; he heard sirens to his left and right, behind him and in front of him. Knowing any roadway was capture, he down-shifted and plowed across furrowed dirt, gaining distance on the wheeirr, wheeirr, wheeirr. He saw stationary lights up ahead and made them for a farmhouse; a fence materialized; he down-shifted, swung around in slow second gear and got a perfect view of a brightly lit picture window:

Two men swinging axes at a young blonde woman pressed into a doorway. A half-second flash of an arm severed off. A wide-open mouth smeared with orange lipstick screaming mute.

The dream speeded up.

He made it to Bakersfield; unloaded the La Salle; got paid. Back to San Berdoo, biology classes at JC, nightmares about the mouth and the arm. Pearl Harbor, 4F from a punctured eardrum. No amount of study, cash GTAs or anything can push the girl away. Months pass, and he returns to find out how and why.

It takes a while, but he comes up with a triangle: a missing local girl named Kathy Hudgens, her spurned lover Marty Sidwell — dead on Saipan — questioned by the cops and let go because no body was found. The number-two man most likely Buddy Jastrow, Folsom parolee, known for his love of torturing dogs and cats. Also missing — last seen two days after he tore across the dry cabbage field. The dream dissolving into typescript — criminology texts filled with forensic gore shots. Joining the LASD in ’44 to know WHY; advancing through jail and patrol duty; other deputies hooting at him for his perpetual all-points want on Harlan “Buddy” Jastrow.

A noise went off. Danny Upshaw snapped awake, thinking it was a siren kicking over. Then he saw the stucco swirls on his bedroom ceiling and knew it was the phone.

He picked it up. “Skipper?”

“Yeah,” Captain Al Dietrich said. “How’d you know?”

“You’re the only one who calls me.”

Dietrich snorted. “Anyone ever call you an ascetic?”

“Yeah, you.”

Dietrich laughed. “I like your luck. One night as acting watch commander and you get floods, two accident deaths and a homicide. Want to fill me in on that?”

Danny thought of the corpse: bite marks, the missing eyes. “It’s as bad as anything I’ve seen. Did you talk to Henderson and Deffry?”

“They left canvassing reports — nothing hot. Bad, huh?”

“The worst I’ve seen.”

Dietrich sighed. “Danny, you’re a rookie squadroom dick, and you’ve never worked a job like this. You’ve only seen it in your books — in black and white.”

Kathy Hudgens’ mouth and arm were superimposed against the ceiling — in Technicolor. Danny held on to his temper. “Right, Skipper. It was bad, though. I went down to the morgue and... watched the prep. It got worse. Then I went back to help Deffry and Hender—”

“They told me. They also said you got bossy. Shitcan that, or you’ll get a rep as a prima donna.”

Danny swallowed dry. “Right, Captain. Any ID on the body?”

“Not yet, but I think we’ve got the car it was transported in. It’s a ’47 Buick Super, green, abandoned a half block up from the building site. White upholstery with what looks like bloodstains. It was reported stolen at ten this morning, clouted outside a jazz club on South Central. The owner was still drunk when he called in — you call him for details.”

“Print man dusting it?”

“Being done now.”

“Is SID going over the lot?”

“No. The print man was all I could wangle downtown.”

“Shit. Captain, I want this one.”

“You can have it. No publicity, though. I don’t want another Black Dahlia mess.”

“What about another man to work with me?”

Dietrich sighed — long and slow. “If the victim warrants it. For now, it’s just you. We’ve only got four detectives, Danny. If this John Doe was trash, I don’t want to waste another man.”

Danny said, “A homicide is a homicide, sir.”

Dietrich said, “You’re smarter than that, Deputy.”

Danny said, “Yes, sir,” hung up, and rolled.

The day had turned cool and cloudy. Danny played the radio on the ride to Allegro; the weatherman was predicting more rain, maybe flooding in the canyons — and there was no news of the horrific John Doe. Passing the building site, he saw kids playing touch football in the mud and rubberneckers pointing out the scene of last night’s spectacle — an SID prowl of the lot would now yield zero.

The print wagon and abandoned Buick were up at the end of the block. Danny noticed that the sedan was perfectly parked, aligned with the curb six inches or so out, the tires pointed inward to prevent the vehicle from sliding downhill. A psych lead: the killer had just brutally snuffed his victim and transported the body from fuck knows where, yet he still had the calm to coolly dispose of his car — by the dump scene — which meant that there were probably no witnesses to the snatch.

Danny hooked his Chevy around the print car and parked, catching sight of the tech’s legs dangling out the driver’s side of the Buick. Walking over, he heard the voice the legs belonged to: “Glove prints on the wheel and dashboard, Deputy. Fresh caked blood on the back seat and some white sticky stuff on the side headliner.”

Danny looked in, saw an old plainclothesman dusting the glove compartment and a thin patch of dried blood dotted with white terrycloth on the rear seat cushion. The seat rests immediately behind the driver were matted with crisscross strips of blood — the terrycloth imbedded deeper into the caking. The velveteen sideboard by the window was streaked with the gelatinous substance he’d tagged at the morgue. Danny sniffed the goo, got the same mint/medicinal scent, clenched and unclenched his fists as he ran a spot reconstruction:

The killer drove his victim to the building site like a chauffeur, the stiff propped up in his white terry robe, eyeless head lolling against the sideboard, oozing the salve or ointment. The criss-cross strips on the seat rests were the razorlike cuts on his back soaking through; the blood patch on the cushion was the corpse flopping over sideways when the killer made a sharp right turn.

“Hey! Deputy!”

The print man was sitting up, obviously pissed that he was taking liberties. “Look, I have to dust the back now. Do you mind...”

Danny looked at the rear-view mirror, saw that it was set strangely and got in behind the wheel. Another reconstruction: the mirror held a perfect view of the back seat, blood strips and goo-streaked sideboard. The killer had adjusted it in order to steal glances at his victim as he drove.

“What’s your name, son?”

Now the old tech was really ticked. Danny said, “It’s Deputy Upshaw, and don’t bother with the back seat — this guy’s too smart.”

“Do you feel like telling me how you know that?”

The two-way in the print wagon crackled; the old-timer got out of the Buick, shaking his head. Danny memorized the registration card laminated to the steering column: Nestor J. Albanese, 1236 S. St. Andrews, LA, Dunkirk-4619. He thought of Albanese as the killer — a phony car theft reported — and nixed the idea as far-fetched; he thought of the rage it took to butcher the victim, the ice it took to drive him around LA in New Year’s Eve traffic. Why?

The tech called out, “For you, Upshaw.”

Danny walked over to the print car and grabbed the mike. “Yeah?”

A female voice, static-filtered, answered. “Karen, Danny.”

Karen Hiltscher, the clerk/dispatcher at the station; his errand girl — occasional sweet talk for her favors. She hadn’t figured out that he wasn’t interested and persisted in using first names over the County air. Danny pushed the talk button. “Yeah, Karen.”

“There’s an ID on your 187. Martin Mitchell Goines, male Caucasian, DOB 11/9/16. Two convictions for marijuana possession, two years County for the first, three to five State for the other. Paroled from San Quentin after three and a half, August of ’48. His last known address was a halfway house on 8th and Alvarado. He was a State parole absconder, bench warrant issued. Under employment he’s listed as a musician, registered with Union Local 3126 in Hollywood.”

Danny thought of the Buick stolen outside a darktown jazz club. “Have you got mugs?”

“Just came in.”

He put on his sugar voice. “Help me with paperwork, sweet? Some phone calls?”

Karen’s voice came out whiny and catty — even over the static. “Sure, Danny. You’ll pick up the mugshots?”

“Twenty minutes.” Danny looked around and saw that the print tech was back at work. He added, “You’re a doll,” hoping the girl bought it.

Danny called Nestor J. Albanese from a pay phone on Allegro and Sunset. The man had the raspy voice and skewed speech of a hangover sufferer; he told a booze-addled version of his New Year’s Eve doings, going through it three times before Danny got the chronology straight.

He was club-hopping in darktown from 9:00 or so on, the bop joints around Slauson and Central — the Zombie, Bido Lito’s, Tommy Tucker’s Playroom, Malloy’s Nest. Leaving the Nest around 1:00 A.M., he walked over to where he thought he left his Buick. It wasn’t there, so he retraced his steps, drunk, figuring he’d ditched the car on a side street. The rain was drenching him, he was woozy from mai tais and champagne, he took a cab home and woke up — still smashed — at 8:30. He took another cab back to South Central, searched for the Buick for a solid hour, didn’t find it and called the police to report it stolen. He then hailed another taxi and returned home again, to be contacted by the watch sergeant at the West Hollywood substation, who told him his pride and joy was a likely transport vehicle in a homicide case, and now, at 3:45 P.M. New Year’s Day, he wanted his baby back — and that was that.

Danny 99 percent eliminated Albanese as a suspect — the man came off as legit stupid, professed to have no criminal record and seemed sincere when he denied knowing Martin Mitchell Goines. He told him the Buick would be kicked loose from the County Impound inside three days, hung up and drove to the Station for mugshots and favors.

Karen Hiltscher was out on her dinner break; Danny was grateful she wasn’t around to make goo-goo eyes and poke his biceps, copping feels while the watch sergeant chuckled. She’d left the mugshot strip on her desk. Alive and with eyes, Martin Mitchell Goines looked young and tough — a huge, Butch-Waxed pompadour the main feature of his front, right and left side pics. The shots were from his second reefer roust: LAPD 4/16/44 on a mugboard hanging around his neck. Six years back; three and a half of them spent in Big Q. Goines had aged badly — and had died looking older than thirty-three.

Danny left Karen Hiltscher a memo: “Sweetheart — will you do this for me? 1 — Call Yellow, Beacon and the indy cab cos. Ask about pickups of single males on Sunset between Doheny and La Cienega and side sts. between 3:00 to 4:00 a.m. last nite. Ditto pickups of a drunk man, Central and Slauson to 1200 block S. St. Andrews, 12:30 — 1:30 a.m. Get all log entries for pick-ups those times and locations. 2 — Stay friendly, ok? I’m sorry about that lunch date I cancelled. I had to cram for a test. Thanks — D.U.”

The lie made Danny angry at the girl, the LASD and himself for kowtowing to teenaged passion. He thought of calling the 77th Street Station desk to tell them he was going to be operating in City territory, then kiboshed the idea — it was too much like bowing to the LAPD and their pout over the Sheriff’s harboring Mickey Cohen. He held the thought, the contempt. A killerhoodlum who longed to be a nightclub comic and got weepy over lost dogs and crippled kids brought a big-city police department to its knees with a wire recording: Vice cops taking bribes and chauffeuring prostitutes; the Hollywood Division nightwatch screwing Brenda Allen’s whores on mattresses in the Hollywood Station felony tank. Mickey C. putting out his entire smear arsenal because the City high brass upped his loan shark and bookmaking kickbacks 10 percent. Ugly. Stupid. Greedy. Wrong.

Danny let the litany simmer on his way down to darktown — Sunset east to Figueroa, Figueroa to Slauson, Slauson east to Central — a hypothetical route for the car thief/killer. Dusk started coming on, rain clouds eclipsing late sunshine trying to light up Negro slums: ramshackle houses encircled by chicken wire, pool halls, liquor stores and storefront churches on every street — until jazzland took over. Then loony swank amidst squalor, one long block of it.

Bido Lito’s was shaped like a miniature Taj Mahal, only purple; Malloy’s Nest was a bamboo hut fronted by phony Hawaiian palms strung with Christmas-tree lights. Zebra stripes comprised the paint job on Tommy Tucker’s Playroom — an obvious converted warehouse with plaster saxophones, trumpets and music clefs alternating across the edge of the roof. The Zamboanga, Royal Flush and Katydid Klub were bright pink, more purple and puke green, a hangarlike building subdivided, the respective doorways outlined in neon. And Club Zombie was a Moorish mosque featuring a three-story-tall sleepwalker growing out of the facade: a gigantic darky with glowing red eyes high-stepping into the night.

Jumbo parking lots linked the clubs; big Negro bouncers stood beside doorways and signs announcing “Early Bird” chicken dinners. A scant number of cars was stationed in the lots; Danny left his Chevy on a side street and started bracing the muscle.

The doormen at the Zamboanga and Katydid recalled seeing Martin Mitchell Goines “around”; a man setting up a menu board outside the Royal Flush took the ID a step further: Goines was a second-rate utility trombone, usually hired for fill-in duty. Since “Christmas or so” he’d been playing with the house band at Bido Lito’s. Danny read every suspicious black face he spoke to for signs of holding back; all he got was a sense that these guys thought Marty Goines was a lily-white fool.

Danny hit Bido Lito’s. A sign in front proclaimed DICKY MCCOVER AND HIS JAZZ SULTANS — SHOWS AT 7:30, 9:30 AND 11:30 NITELY — ENJOY OUR DELUXE CHICKEN BASKET. Walking in, he thought he was entering a hallucination.

The walls were pastel satin bathed by colored baby spotlights that hued the fabric garish beyond garish; the bandstand backing was a re-creation of the Pyramids, done in sparkly cardboard. The tables had fluorescent borders, the high-yellow hostesses carrying drinks and food wore low-cut tiger costumes, the whole place smelled of deep-fried meat. Danny felt his stomach growl, realized he hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours and approached the bar. Even in the hallucinatory lighting, he saw the barman make him for a cop.

He held out the mugshot strip. “Do you know this man?”

The bartender took the strip, examined it under the cash register light and handed it back. “That’s Marty. Plays ’bone with the Sultans. Comes in before the first set to eat, if you wants to talk to him.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Las’ night.”

“For the band’s last set?”

The barman’s mouth curled into a tight smile; Danny sensed that “band” was square nomenclature. “I asked you a question.”

The man wiped the bartop with a rag. “I don’ think so. Midnight set I remember seein’ him. Sultans played two late ones las’ night, on account of New Year’s.”

Danny noticed a shelf of whiskey bottles without labels. “Go get the manager.”

The bartender pressed a button by the register; Danny took a stool and swiveled to face the bandstand. A group of Negro men was opening instrument cases, pulling out sax, trumpet and drum cymbals. A fat mulatto in a double-breasted suit walked over to the bar, wearing a suck-up-to-authority smile. He said, “Thought I knew all the boys on the Squad.”

Danny said, “I’m with the Sheriff’s.”

The mulatto’s smile evaporated. “I usually deal with the Seven-Seven, Mr. Sheriff.”

“This is County business.”

“This ain’t County territory.”

Danny hooked a thumb in back of him, then nodded toward the baby spots. “You’ve got illegal booze, those lights are a fire hazard and the County runs Beverage Control and Health and Safety Code. I’ve got a summons book in the car. Want me to get it?”

The smile returned. “I surely don’t. How can I be of service, sir?”

“Tell me about Marty Goines.”

“What about him?”

“Try everything.”

The manager took his time lighting a cigarette; Danny knew his fuse was being tested. Finally the man exhaled and said, “Not much to tell. The local sent him down when the Sultans’ regular trombone fell off the wagon. I’d have preferred colored, but Marty’s got a rep for getting along with non-Caucasians, so I said okay. Except for ditching out on the guys last night, Marty never did me no dirt, just did his job copacetic. Not the world’s best slideman, not the worst neither.”

Danny pointed to the musicians on the bandstand. “Those guys are the Sultans, right?”

“Right.”

“Goines played a set with them that ended just after midnight?”

The mulatto smiled. “Dicky McCover’s up-tempo ‘Old Lang Syne.’ Even Bird envies that—”

“When was the set finished?”

“Set broke up maybe 12:20. Fifteen-minute break I give my guys. Like I said, Marty ditched out on that and the 2:00 closer. Only time he did me dirt.”

Danny went in for the Sultans’ alibi. “Were the other three men on stage for the final two sets?”

The manager nodded. “Uh-huh. Played for a private party I had going after that. What’d Marty do?”

“He got murdered.”

The mulatto choked on the smoke he was inhaling. He coughed the drag out, dropped his cigarette on the floor and stepped on it, rasping, “Who you think did it?”

Danny said, “Not you, not the Sultans. Let’s try this one: was Goines feeding a habit?”

“Say what?”

“Don’t play dumb. Junk, H, horse, a fucking heroin habit.”

The manager took a step backward. “I don’t hire no god-damned hopheads.”

“Sure you don’t, just like you don’t serve hijack booze. Let’s try this: Marty and women.”

“Never heard nothing one way or the other.”

“How about enemies? Guys with a hard-on for him?”

“Nothing.”

“What about friends, known associates, men coming around asking for him?”

“No, no and no. Marty didn’t even have no family.”

Danny shifted gears with a smile — an interrogation technique he practiced in front of his bedroom mirror. “Look, I’m sorry I came on so strong.”

“No, you ain’t.”

Danny flushed, hoping the crazy lighting didn’t pick it up. “Have you got a man watching the parking lot?”

“No.”

“Do you remember a green Buick in the lot last night?”

“No.”

“Do your kitchen workers hang out in the lot?”

“Man, my kitchen people is too busy to hang out anyplace.”

“What about your hostesses? They sell it outside after you close?”

“Man, you are out of your bailiwick and way out of line.”

Danny elbowed the mulatto aside and threaded his way through the dinner crowd to the bandstand. The Sultans saw him coming and exchanged looks: cop-wise, experienced. The drummer quit arranging his gear; the trumpeter backed off and stood by the curtains leading backstage; the saxophone man stopped adjusting his mouthpiece and stood his ground.

Danny stepped onto the platform, blinking against the hot white light shining down. He sized up the sax as the boss and decided on a soft tack — his interrogation was playing to a full house. “Sheriff’s. It’s about Marty Goines.”

The drummer answered him. “Marty’s clean. Just took the cure.”

A lead — if it wasn’t one ex-con running interference for another. “I didn’t know he had a habit.”

The sax player snorted. “Years’ worth, but he kicked.”

“Where?”

“Lex. Lexington State Hospital in Kentucky. This about Marty’s parole?”

Danny stepped back so he could eyeball all three men in one shot. “Marty got snuffed last night. I think he was snatched from around here right after your midnight set.”

Three clean reactions: the trumpeter scared, most likely afraid of cops on general principles; the drummer trembling; the sax man spooked, but coming back mad. “We all gots alibis, ’case you don’t already know.”

Danny thought: RIP Martin Mitchell Goines. “I know, so let’s try the usual drill. Did Marty have any enemies that you know of? Woman trouble? Old dope buddies hanging around?”

The sax said, “Marty was a fuckin’ cipher. All I knew about him was that he hung up his Quentin parole, that he was so hot to kick he went to Lex as a fuckin’ absconder. Big balls if you asks me — that’s a Fed hospital, and they mighta run warrant checks on him. Fuckin’ cipher. None of us even knew where he was stayin’.”

Danny kicked the skinny around and watched the trumpet player inch over from the curtains, holding his horn like it was a ikon to ward off demons. He said, “Mister, I think I got something for you.”

“What?”

“Marty told me he had to meet a guy after the midnight set, and I saw him walking across the street to the Zombie parking lot.”

“Did he mention a name?”

“No, just a guy.”

“Did he say anything else about him? What they were going to do — anything like that?”

“No, and he said he’d be coming right back.”

“Do you think he was going to buy dope?”

The saxophone player bored into Danny with blue eyes lighter than his own brown ones. “Man, I fuckin’ told you Marty was clean, and intended to stay clean.”

Boos erupted from the audience; paper debris hit Danny’s legs. He blinked against the spotlight and felt sweat creeping down his rib cage. A voice yelled, “Ofay motherfuck”; applause followed it; a half-chewed chicken wing struck Danny’s back. The sax man smiled up at him, licked his mouthpiece and winked. Danny resisted an urge to kick the horn down his throat and quick-walked out of the club by a side exit.

The night air cooled his sweat and made him shiver; pulsating neon assaulted his eyes. Little bursts of music melded together like one big noise and the nigger sleepwalker atop the Club Zombie looked like doomsday. Danny knew he was scared, and headed straight for the apparition.

The doorman backed off from his badge and let him in to four walls of smoke and dissonant screeching — the combo at the front of the room heading toward a crescendo. The bar was off to the left, shaped like a coffin and embossed with the club’s sleep-walker emblem. Danny beelined there, grabbing a stool, hooking a finger at a white man polishing glasses.

The barkeep placed a napkin in front of him. Danny yelled, “Double bonded!” above the din. A glass appeared; Danny knocked the bourbon back; the barman refilled. Danny drank again and felt his nerves go from sandpapered to warm. The music ended with a thud-boom-scree; the house lights went on amid big applause. When it trailed off, Danny reached in his pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill and the Goines mugshot strip.

The bartender said, “Two spot for the drinks.”

Danny stuffed the five in his shirt pocket and held up the strip. “Look familiar?”

Squinting, the man said, “Is this guy older now? Maybe a different haircut?”

“These are six years old. Seen him?”

The barman took glasses from his pocket, put them on and held the mugshots out at arm’s length. “Does he blow around here?”

Danny missed the question — and wondered if it was sex slang he didn’t know. “Explain what you mean.”

“I mean does he gig, jam, play music around here?”

“Trombone at Bido Lito’s.”

The barman snapped his fingers. “Okay, I know him then. Marty something. He juices between sets at Bido’s, been doing it since around Christmas, ’cause the bar at Bido’s ain’t supposed to serve the help. Hungry juicer, sort of like—”

Like you. Danny smiled, the booze notching down his temper. “Did you see him last night?”

“Yeah, on the street. Him and another guy heading over to a car down by the corner on 67th. Looked like he had a load on. Maybe...”

Danny leaned forward. “Maybe what? Spell it out.”

“Maybe a junk load. You work jazz clubs awhile, you get to know the ropes. This Marty guy was walking all rubbery, like he was on a junk nod. The other guy had his arm round him, helping him over to the car.”

Danny said, “Slow and easy now. The time, a description of the car and the other man. Real slow.”

Customers were starting to swarm the bar — Negro men in modified zoot suits, their women a half step behind, all made up and done up to look like Lena Horne. The barkeep looked at his business, then back at Danny. “Had to be 12:15 to 12:45, around in there. Marty what’s his face and the other guy were cutting across the sidewalk. I know the car was a Buick, ’cause it had them portholes on the side. All I remember about the other guy was that he was tall and had gray hair. I only saw them sort of sideways, and I thought, ‘I should have such a nice head of hair.’ Now can I serve these people?”

Danny was about to say no; the barkeep turned to a bearded young man with an alto sax slung around his neck. “Coleman, you know that white trombone from Bido’s? Marty what the fuck?”

Coleman reached over the bar, grabbed two handfuls of ice and pressed them to his face. Danny checked him out: tall, blond, late twenties and off-kilter handsome — like the boy lead in the musical Karen Hiltscher dragged him to. His voice was reedy, exhausted. “Sure. A from-hunger horn, I heard. Why?”

“Talk to this police gentleman here, he’ll tell you.”

Danny pointed to his glass, going two shots over his nightly limit. The barman filled it, then slid off. The alto said, “You’re with the Double Seven?”

Danny killed his drink, and on impulse stuck out his hand. “My name’s Upshaw. West Hollywood Sheriff’s.”

The men shook. “Coleman Healy, late of Cleveland, Chicago and the planet Mars. Marty in trouble?”

The bourbon made Danny too warm; he loosened his tie and moved closer to Healy. “He was murdered last night.”

Healy’s face contorted. Danny saw every handsome plane jerk, twitch and spasm; he looked away to let him quash his shock and get hepcat again. When he turned back, Healy was bracing himself into the bar. Danny’s knee brushed the alto’s thigh — it was taut with tension. “How well did you know him, Coleman?”

Healy’s face was now gaunt, slack under his beard. “Chewed the fat with him a couple of times around Christmas, right here at this bar. Just repop — Bird’s new record, the weather. You got an idea who did it?”

“A lead on a suspect — a tall, gray-haired man. The bartender saw him with Goines last night, walking toward a car parked on Central.”

Coleman Healy ran fingers down the keys of his sax. “I’ve seen Marty with a guy like that a couple of times. Tall, middle-aged, dignified looking.” He paused, then said, “Look, Upshaw, not to besmirch the dead, but can I give you an impression I got — on the QT?”

Danny slid his stool back, just enough to get a full-face reaction — Healy wired up, eager to help. “Go ahead, impressions help sometimes.”

“Well, I think Marty was fruit. The older guy looked like a nance to me, like a sugar daddy type. The two of them were playing footsie at a table, and when I noticed it, Marty pulled away from the guy — sort of like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar.”

Danny tingled, thinking of the tags he eschewed because they were too coarse and antithetical to Vollmer and Maslick: PANSY SLASH. QUEER BASH. FRUIT SNUFF. HOMO PASSION JOB. “Coleman, could you ID the older man?”

Healy played with his sax. “I don’t think so. The light here is strange, and the queer stuff is just an impression I got.”

“Have you seen the man before or since those times with Goines?”

“No. Never solo. And I was here all night, in case you think I did it.”

Danny shook his head. “Do you know if Goines was using narcotics?”

“Nix. He was too interested in booze to be a junk fiend.”

“What about other people who knew him? Other musicians around here?”

“Ixnay. We just gabbed a couple of times.”

Danny put out his hand; Healy turned it upside down, twisting it from a squarejohn to a jazzman shake. He said, “See you in church,” and headed for the stage.

Queer slash.

Fruit snuff.

Homo passion job.

Danny watched Coleman Healy mount the bandstand and exchange back slaps with the other musicians. Fat and cadaverous, pocked, oily and consumptive looking, they seemed wrong next to the sleek alto — like a crime scene photo with blurs that fucked up the symmetry and made you notice the wrong things. The music started: piano handing a jump melody to the trumpet, drums kicking in, Healy’s sax wailing, lilting, wailing, drifting off the base refrain into chord variations. The music digressed into noise; Danny spotted a bank of phone booths next to the powder room and rolled back to police work.

His first nickel got him the watch boss at the 77th Street Station. Danny explained that he was a Sheriff’s detective working a homicide — a jazz musician and possible dope addict slashed and dumped off the Sunset Strip. The victim was probably not currently using drugs — but he wanted a list of local H pushers anyway — the snuff might be tied to dope intrigue. The watch boss said, “How’s Mickey these days?” added, “Submit a request through official channels,” and hung up.

Pissed, Danny dialed Doc Layman’s personal number at the City Morgue, one eye on the bandstand. The pathologist answered on the second ring. “Yes?”

“Danny Upshaw, Doctor.”

Layman laughed. “Danny Upstart is more like it — I just autopsied the John Doe you tried to usurp.”

Danny drew in a breath, turning away from Coleman Healy gyrating with his sax. “Yes? And?”

“And a question first. Did you stick a tongue depressor in the corpse’s mouth?”

“Yes.”

“Deputy, never, ever, introduce foreign elements into interior cavities until after you have thoroughly spotted the exterior. The cadaver had cuts with imbedded wood slivers all over his back — pine — and you stuck a piece of pine into his mouth, leaving similar slivers. Do you see how you could have fouled up my assessment?”

“Yes, but it was obvious the victim was strangled by a towel or a sash — the terrycloth fibers were a dead giveaway.”

Layman sighed — long, exasperated. “The cause of death was a massive heroin overdose. The shot was administered into a vein by the spine, by the killer himself — the victim couldn’t have reached it. The towel was placed in the mouth to absorb blood when the heroin hit the victim’s heart and caused arteries to pop, which means the killer had at least elementary anatomical knowledge.”

Danny said, “Jesus fuck.”

Layman said, “An appropriate blasphemy, but it gets worse. Here’s some incidentals first:

“One, no residual heroin in the bloodstream — Mr. Doe was not now addicted, although needle marks on his arms indicate he once was. Two, death occurred around 1:00 to 2:00 A.M., and the neck and genital bruises were both postmortem. The cuts on the back were postmortem, almost certainly made by razor blades attached to something like a pine slab or a 2 by 4. So far, brutal — but not past my ken. However...”

Layman stopped — his old classroom orator’s pause. Danny, sweating out his jolts of bonded, said, “Come on, Doc.”

“All right. The substance in the eye sockets was KY Jelly. The killer inserted his penis into the sockets and ejaculated — at least twice. I found six cubic centimeters of semen seeping back toward the cranial vault. O+ secretor — the most common blood type among white people.”

Danny opened the phone booth door; he heard wisps of bebop and saw Coleman Healy going down on one knee, sax raised to the rafters. “The bites on the torso?”

Layman said, “Not human is what I’m thinking. The wounds were too shredded to make casts from — there’s no way I could have lifted any kind of viable teeth marks. Also, the ME’s assistant who took over after you pulled your little number swabbed the affected area with alcohol, so I couldn’t test for saliva or gastric juices. The victim’s blood — AB+ — was all I found there. You discovered the body when?”

“Shortly after 4:00 A.M.”

“Then scavenging animals down from the hills are unlikely. The wounds are too localized for that theory, anyway.”

“Doc, are you sure we’re dealing with teeth marks?”

“Absolutely. The inflammation around the wounds is from a mouth sucking. It’s too wide to be human—”

“Do you think—”

“Don’t interrupt. I’m thinking that — maybe — the killer spread blood bait on the affected area and let some kind of well-trained vicious dog at the victim. How many men are working this job, Danny?”

“Just me.”

“ID on the victim? Leads?”

“It’s going well, Doc.”

“Get him.”

“I will.”

Danny hung up and walked outside. Cold air edged the heat off his booze intake and let him collate evidence. He now had three solid leads:

The homosexual mutilations combined with Coleman Healy’s observation of Marty Goines being “fruit”; his “nance” “sugar daddy type” — who resembled the tall, gray-haired man the bartender saw with Goines, heading toward the stolen Buick last night — an hour or so before the estimated time of death; the heroin OD cause of death; the bartender’s description of Goines weaving in a junk nod — that jolt of dope a probable precursor to the shot that burst his heart; Goines’ previous addiction and recent dope cure. Putting the possible animal mutilations out of mind, he had one hard lead: the tall, gray-haired man — a sugar daddy capable of glomming heroin, hypodermic syringes and talking a reformed junkie into geezing up on the spot and ditching his New Year’s Eve gig.

And no LAPD cooperation — yet — on local horse pushers; a junkie squeeze was the only logical play.

Danny walked across the street to Tommy Tucker’s Playroom, found an empty booth and ordered coffee to kill the liquor in his system and keep him awake. The music/motif was ballads and zebra-striped upholstery, cheap jungle wallpaper offset by tiki torches licking flames up to the ceiling, another fire hazard, a blaze to burn the whole block to cinder city. The coffee was black and strong and made inroads on the bonded; the bop was soft — caresses for the couples in the booths: lovebirds holding hands and sipping rum drinks. The total package made him think of San Berdoo circa ’39, him and Tim in a hot Olds ragger joy-riding to a hicktown prom, changing clothes at his place while the old lady hawked Watchtowers outside Coulter’s Department Store. Down to their skivvies, horseplay, jokes about substitutes for girls; Timmy with Roxanne Beausoleil outside the gym that night — the two of them bouncing the Olds almost off its suspension. Him the prom wallflower, declining seconds on Roxy, drinking spiked punch, getting mawkish with the slow grind numbers and the hurt.

Danny killed the memories with police work — eyeball prowls for Health and Safety Code violations, liquor infractions, wrongness. The doorman was admitting minors; high yellows in slit gowns were oozing around soliciting business, there was only one side exit in a huge room sixteen seconds away from fireballing. Time passed; the music went from soft to loud to soft again; coffee and constant eye circuits got his nerves fine-honed. Then he hit paydirt, spotting two Negroes by the exit curtains pulling a handoff: cash for something palmable, a quick segue into the parking lot.

Danny counted to six and followed, easing the door open, peering out. The spook who took the money was striding toward the sidewalk; the other guy was two rows of cars down, opening the door of a rig topped by a long whip antenna. Danny gave him thirty seconds to geez up, light up or snort up, then pulled his .45, hunkered down and approached.

The car was a lavender Merc; marijuana smoke was drifting out the wind wings. Danny grabbed the driver’s door and swung it open; the Negro shrieked, dropped his reefer and recoiled from the gun in his face. Danny said, “Sheriff’s. Hands on the dashboard slow or I’ll kill you.”

The youth complied, in slow motion. Danny jammed the .45’s muzzle under his chin and gave him a frisk: inside and outside jacket pockets, a waistband pat for weaponry. He found a lizardskin wallet, three marijuana cigarettes and no hardware; popped the glove compartment and flicked on the dashlight. The kid said, “Look, man”; Danny dug his gun in harder, until it cut off his air supply and forced him mute.

The reefer stench was getting brutal; Danny found the butt on the seat cushion and snuffed it. With his free hand he opened the wallet, pulled out a driver’s license and over a hundred in tens and twenties. He slipped the cash in his pocket and read the license: Carlton W. Jeffries, M.N., 5’11”, 165, DOB 6/19/29, 439 1/4 E. 98 St., L.A. A quick toss of the glove compartment got him DMV registration under the same name and a slew of unpaid traffic citations in their mailing envelopes. Danny put the license, reefers, money and registration into an envelope and dropped it on the pavement; he pulled his .45 out from under the boy’s chin and used the muzzle to turn his head toward him. Up close, he saw a chocolate brown punk next to tears, lips flapping, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he struggled for breath.

Danny said, “Information or five years State time minimum. You call it.”

Carlton W. Jeffries found a voice: high, squeaky. “What you think?”

“I think you’re smart. Give me what I want, and I’ll put that envelope in the mail to you tomorrow.”

“You could give it back now. Please. I need that money.”

“I want a hard snitch. If you play both ends and I get hurt, I’ve got you nailed. Evidence, and the confession you just made.”

“Man, I didn’t make no confession to you!”

“Sure you did. You’ve been selling a pound a week. You’re the A-number-one Southside grasshopper.”

“Man!”

Danny rested his gun barrel on Carlton W. Jeffries’ nose. “I want names. Heroin pushers around here. Give.”

“Man—”

Danny flipped the .45 up and grabbed the muzzle, reversing his grip so the gun could be used as a bludgeon. “Give, goddamn you.”

Jeffries took his hands off the dash and wrapped his arms around himself. “Only guy I know is a guy name of Otis Jackson. Lives above the laundromat on One-o-three and Beach and please don’t give me no rat jacket!”

Danny holstered his piece and backed out the car door. His foot hit the DMV envelope just as he heard Carlton W. Jeffries start bawling. He picked the evidence up, tossed it on the seat and double-timed to his Chevy so he wouldn’t hear the sad little fuck blubber his gratitude.

103rd and Beach was a run-down intersection in the heart of Watts: hair-straightening parlors on two corners, a liquor store on the third, the Koin King Washeteria occupying number four. Lights were burning in the apartment above the laundromat; Danny parked across the street, doused his headbeams and scoped out the only possible access: side steps leading up to a flimsy-looking door.

He walked over and up them, tiptoes, no hand on the railing for fear it would creak. At the top, he pulled his gun, put an ear to the door and listened, picking up a man’s voice counting: eight, nine, ten, eleven. Tapping the door, he faked a drawl straight from Amos ’n’ Andy: “Otis? You there, man? It’s me, man.”

Danny heard “Shit!” inside; seconds later the door opened, held to the jamb by a chain. A hand holding a switchblade stuck out; Danny brought his gun barrel down on the shiv, then threw his weight inward.

The switchblade hit the top step; a voice screeched; the door caved in, Danny riding it. Then it was a crash to the carpet and a topsy-turvy shot of Otis Jackson scooping junk bindles off the floor, stumbling to the bathroom, a toilet flushing. Danny got to his knees, sighted in and yelled, “Sheriff’s!” Otis Jackson flipped him his middle finger and weaved back to the living room wearing a shiteater grin.

Danny stood up, his head pounding with jazz chords. Otis Jackson said, “The fuckin’ Sheriff’s ain’t fuckin’ shit around here.”

Danny lashed the .45 across his face. Jackson hit the rug, moaned and spit out cracked bridgework. Danny squatted beside him. “You sell to a tall, gray-haired white man?”

Jackson spat bloody phlegm and a slice of his tongue. “I’m with Jack D. and the Seven-Seven, mother—”

Danny held his gun at eye level. “I’m with Mickey and the County, so what? I asked you a question.”

“I deal Hollywood, man! I know lots of gray-haired suckers!”

“Name them, and name everyone else you know who unloads at the clubs on South Central.”

“I’ll let you kill me first, sucker!”

The jazz noise was coming back, soundtracking images: Coleman Healy fondling his sax, the reefer guy about to beg. Danny said, “One more time. I want skinny on a tall white man. Middle-aged, silver hair.”

“An’ I told you—”

Danny heard footsteps coming up the stairs, grunts and the unmistakable sound of revolvers being cocked. Otis Jackson smiled; Danny glommed the gist, holstered his piece and reached for his badge holder. Two big white men popped in the doorway aiming .38’s; Danny had his shield out and a peace offering ready. “Sheriff’s. I’m a Sheriff’s detective.”

The men walked over, guns first. The taller of the two helped Otis Jackson to his feet; the other, a fat guy with curly red hair, took Danny’s ID buzzer, examined it and shook his head. “Bad enough you guys get in bed with Mickey Kike, now you gotta beat up my favorite snitch. Otis, you are one lucky nigger. Deputy Upshaw, you are one stupid white man.”

The tall cop helped Otis Jackson into the bathroom. Danny stood up and grabbed his badge holder. The fat redhead said, “Get the fuck back to the County and beat up your own niggers.”

Chapter Five

“...And the most pervasive aspect of Communism, its single most insidiously efficacious tool, is that it hides under a million banners, a million different flags, titles and combinations of initials, spreading its cancer under a million guises, all of them designed to pervert and corrupt in the name of compassion and goodness and social justice. UAES, SLDC, NAACP, AFL–CIO, League for Democratic Ideals and Concerned Americans Against Bigotry. All high-sounding organizations that all good Americans should be proud to belong to. All seditious, perverted, cancerous tentacles of the Communist Conspiracy.”

Mal Considine had been sizing up Edmund J. Satterlee, ex-Fed, ex-Jesuit seminarian, for close to half an hour, taking occasional glances at the rest of the audience. Satterlee was a tall man, pearshaped, in his early forties; his verbal style was a cross between Harry Truman homespun and Pershing Square crackpot — and you never knew when he was going to shout or whisper. Dudley Smith, chain-smoking, seemed to be enjoying his pitch; Ellis Loew kept looking at his watch and at Dudley — probably afraid that he was going to drop ash all over his new living room carpet. Dr. Saul Lesnick, psychiatrist/longtime Fed informant, sat as far away from the Red Chaser as possible while remaining in the same room. He was a small, frail old man with bright blue eyes and a cough that he kept feeding with harsh European cigarettes; he had the look native to stool pigeons everywhere — loathing for the presence of his captors — even though he had allegedly volunteered his services.

Satterlee was pacing now, gesticulating to them like they were four hundred, not four. Mal squirmed in his chair, reminding himself that this guy was his ticket to a captaincy and Chief DA’s Investigator.

“...and in the early days of the war I worked with the Alien Squad relocating Japs. I gained my first insights into how anti-American sentiment breeds. The Japs who wanted to be good Americans offered to enlist in the armed forces, most were resentful and confused, and the subversive element — under the guise of patriotism — attempted to coerce them into treason by concerted, heavily intellectualized attacks on alleged American racial injustices. Under a banner of American concerns: liberty, justice and free enterprise, the seditious Japs portrayed this democracy as a land of lynched Negroes and limited opportunities for coloreds, even though the Nisei were emerging as middle-class merchants when the war broke out. After the war, when the Communist Conspiracy emerged as the number-one threat to America’s internal security, I saw how the same kind of thinking, of manipulation, was being used by the Reds to subvert our moral fiber. The entertainment industry and business were rife with fellow travelers, and I founded Red Crosscurrents to help weed out radicals and subversives. Organizations that want to keep themselves Red-free pay us a nominal fee to screen their employees and prospective employees for Commie associations, and we keep an exhaustive file on the Reds we uncover. This service also allows innocent people accused of being Pink to prove their innocence and gain employment that they might have been denied. Further—”

Mal heard Dr. Saul Lesnick cough; he looked at the old man sidelong and saw that the eruption was half laughter. Satterlee paused; Ellis Loew said, “Ed, can we gloss the background and get down to business?”

Satterlee flushed, picked up his briefcase and took out a stack of papers, four individually clipped sheafs. He handed one each to Mal, Loew and Dudley Smith; Dr. Lesnick declined his with a shake of the head. Mal skimmed the top sheet. It was a deposition detailing picket line scuttlebutt: members of the United Alliance of Extras and Stagehands mouthing Pinko platitudes overheard by counter-pickets from the Teamsters. Mal checked the signees’ names, recognizing Morris Jahelka, Davey Goldman and Fritzie “Icepick” Kupferman — known Mickey Cohen strongarms.

Satterlee resumed his position in front of them; Mal thought he looked like a man who would kill for a lectern — or any resting place for his long, gangly arms. “These pieces of paper are our first wave of ammunition. I have worked with a score of municipal grand juries nationwide, and the sworn statements of patriotic citizens always have a salutary effect on Grand Jury members. I think we have a great chance for a successful one here in Los Angeles now — the labor infighting between the Teamsters and the UAES is a great impetus, a shot at the limelight that will probably not come again. Communist influence in Hollywood is a broad topic, and the picket line trouble and UAES’s fomenting of subversion within both contexts is a good device to get the public interested. Let me quote from the deposition of Mr. Morris Jahelka: ‘While picketing outside Variety International Pictures on the morning of November 29, 1949, I heard a UAES member, a woman named “Claire,” tell another UAES member: “With the UAES in the studios we can advance the cause better than the entire Red Guard. Movies are the new opiate of the people. They’ll believe anything we can get on the screen.” ’ Gentlemen, Claire is Claire Katherine De Haven, a consort of Hollywood 10 traitors and a known member of no fewer than fourteen organizations that have been classified as Communist Fronts by the California State Attorney General’s Office. Is that not impressive?”

Mal raised his hand. Edmund J. Satterlee said, “Yes, Lieutenant Considine? A question?”

“No, a statement. Morris Jahelka has two convictions for felony statch rape. Your patriotic citizen screws twelve-year-old girls.”

Ellis Loew said, “Goddamnit, Malcolm.”

Satterlee tried a smile, faltered at it and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I see. Anything else on Mr. Jahelka?”

“Yes. He also likes little boys, but he’s never been caught at it.”

Dudley Smith laughed. “Politics makes for strange bedfellows, which doesn’t negate the fact that in this case Mr. Jahelka is on the side of the angels. Besides, lad, we’ll be damn sure his jacket is sealed, and the goddamn Pinks probably won’t bring in lawyers for redirect questioning.”

Mal concentrated on keeping his voice calm. “Is that true, Ellis?”

Loew fanned away plumes of Doc Lesnick’s cigarette smoke. “Essentially, yes. We’re trying to get as many UAESers as possible to volunteer as witnesses, and hostile witnesses — subpoenaed ones — tend to try to assert their innocence by not retaining counsel. Also, the studios have a clause in their contract with UAES, stating that they can terminate the contract if certain areas of malfeasance can be proven against the contractee. Before the grand jury convenes — if our evidence is strong enough — I’m going to the studio heads to get UAES ousted on that clause — which should make the bastards hopping mad and rabid when they hit the witness stand. An angry witness is an ineffectual witness. You know that, Mal.”

Cohen and his Teamsters in; UAES out. Mal wondered if Mickey C. was a contributor to Loew’s six-figure slush fund — which should hit the half million mark by the time of the ’52 primaries. “You’re good, counselor.”

“So are you, Captain. Down to brass tacks, Ed. I’m due in court at noon.”

Satterlee handed Mal and Dudley mimeographed sheets. “My thoughts on the interrogation of subversives,” he said. “Guilt by association is a strong lever on these people — they’re all connected up — everyone on the far left knows everyone else to one degree or another. In with your depositions I’ve got lists of Commie front meetings cross-filed with donation lists, which are excellent levers to procure information and get Reds to inform on other Reds to save their own damn skin. The donations also mean bank records that can be subpoenaed as evidence. Proffering surveillance photos to potential witnesses is my personal favorite technique — being shown at a subversive meeting puts the fear of God into the most Godless Pinks, and they’ll inform on their own mother to stay out of jail. I may be able to get us some extremely damaging photos from a friend who works for Red Channels — some extremely good pictures of Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee picnics. In fact, I’ve been told the photos are the Rembrandts of Federal surveillance — actual CP bigwigs and Hollywood stars along with our friends in UAES. Mr. Loew?”

Loew said, “Thank you, Ed,” and gave his standard one finger up, indicating everybody stand. Dudley Smith practically leaped to his feet; Mal stood and saw Doc Lesnick walking to the bathroom holding his chest. Awful wet coughs echoed from the hallway; he pictured Lesnick retching blood. Satterlee, Smith and Loew broke up their circle of handshaking; the Red Chaser went out the door with the DA kneading his shoulders.

Dudley Smith said, “Zealots are always tiresome. Ed’s good at what he does, but he doesn’t know when to quit performing. Five hundred dollars a lecture he gets. Capitalist exploitation of Communism, wouldn’t you say so, Captain?”

“I’m not a captain yet, Lieutenant.”

“Ha! And a grand wit you have, too, to go with your rank.”

Mal studied the Irishman, less scared than he was yesterday morning at the restaurant. “What’s in this for you? You’re a case man, you don’t want Jack Tierney’s job.”

“Maybe I just want to get next to you, lad. You’re odds on for Chief of Police or County Sheriff somewhere down the line, all that grand work you did in Europe, liberating our persecuted Jewish brethren. Speaking of which, here comes the Hebrew contingent now.”

Ellis Loew was leading Lesnick into the living room and settling him into an easy chair by the fireplace. The old man arranged a pack of Gauloises, a lighter and ashtray on his lap, crossing one stick leg over the other to hold them in place. Loew pulled up chairs around him in a semicircle; Smith winked and sat down. Mal saw cardboard boxes packed with folders filling up the dining alcove, four typewriters stacked in one corner to accommodate the grand jury team’s paperwork. Ellis Loew was preparing for war, his ranch house as headquarters.

Mal took the leftover chair. Doc Lesnick lit a cigarette, coughed and started talking. His voice was highbrow New York Jew working with one lung; Mal made his pitch as processed, spieled to a load of other cops and DAs.

“Mr. Satterlee did you a disservice by not going back further in his rather threadbare history of subversive elements in America. He neglected to mention the Depression, starvation and desperate people, concerned people, who wanted to change terrible conditions.” Lesnick paused, got breath and stubbed out his Gauloise. Mal saw a bony chest heaving, nailed the old man as gravebait and sensed that he was wavering: the pain of speech versus a chance to justify his fink duty. Finally he sucked in a huge draft of air and kept going, some kind of fervor lighting up his eyes.

“I was one of those people, twenty years ago. I signed petitions, wrote letters and went to labor meetings that accomplished nothing. The Communist Party, despite its evil connotations, was the only organization that did not seem ineffectual. Its reputation gave it a certain panache, a cachet, and the self-righteous hypocrites who condemned it in a blanket manner made me want to belong to it in order to assert my defiance of them.

“It was an injudicious decision, one that I came to regret. Being a psychiatrist, I was designated the official CP analyst here in Los Angeles. Marxism and Freudian analysis were very much in the intellectual vogue, and a number of people whom I later realized were conspirators against this country told me their... secrets, so to speak, emotional and political. Many were Hollywood people, writers and actors and their satellites — working-class people as deluded as I was regarding Communism, people who wanted to get close to the Hollywood people because of their movie connections. Just before the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact I became disillusioned with the Party. In ’39, during the California State HUAC probe, I volunteered to serve the FBI as an undercover informant. I have served in that capacity for over ten years, while concurrently acting as CP analyst. I secretly made my private files available to the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee probers, and I am doing the same for this grand jury probe now. The files are for UAES members essential to your probe, and should you require assistance in interpreting them, I would be happy to be of service.”

The old man nearly choked on his last words. He reached for his cigarette pack; Ellis Loew, holding a glass of water, got to him first. Lesnick gulped, coughed, gulped; Dudley Smith walked into the dining alcove and tapped the filing boxes and typewriters with his spit-shined brogues — uncharacteristically idle footwork.

A horn honked outside. Mal stood up to thank Lesnick and shake his hand. The old man looked away and pushed himself to his feet, almost not making it. The horn beeped again; Loew opened the door and gestured to the cab in the driveway. Lesnick shuffled out, gulping fresh morning air.

The taxi drove away; Loew turned on a wall fan. Dudley Smith said, “How long does he have, Ellis? Will you be sending him an invitation to your victory celebration come ’52?”

Loew scooped big handfuls of files off the floor and laid them out on the dining room table; he repeated the process until there were two stacks of paper halfway to the ceiling. “Long enough to suit our purposes.”

Mal walked over and looked at their evidence: information extraction thumbscrews. “He won’t testify before the grand jury, though?”

“No, never. He’s terrified of losing his credibility as a psychiatrist. Confidentiality, you know. It’s a good hiding place for lawyers, and doctors covet it too. Of course, it’s not legally binding for them. Lesnick would be kaput as a psychiatrist if he testified.”

Dudley said, “You would think he would like to meet his maker as a good patriotic American, though. He did volunteer, and that should be a grand satisfaction for someone whose next life looms so imminently.”

Loew laughed. “Dud, have you ever taken a step without spotting the angles?”

“The last time you did, counselor. Captain Considine, yourself?”

Mal said, “Sometime back in the Roaring Twenties,” thinking that mano a mano, brain to brain, he’d favor the Dublin street thug over the Harvard Phi Bete. “Ellis, when do we start approaching witnesses?”

Loew tapped the file stacks. “Soon, after you’ve digested these. Based on what you learn here, you’ll be making your first approaches — on weak points — weak people — who’d seem most likely to cooperate. If we can build up an array of friendly witnesses fast, fine. But if we don’t get a fair amount of initial cooperation, we’ll have to put in a plant. Our friends on the Teamsters have heard picket line talk — that the UAES is planning strategy meetings aimed at coercing exorbitant contract demands out of the studios. If we get a string of balks right off the bat, I want to pull back and put a decoy into the UAES. I want both of you to think of smart, tough, idealistic-looking young cops we can use if it comes to that.”

Chills grabbed Mal. Sending in decoys, operating, had made his rep at Ad Vice — it was what he was best at as a policeman. He said, “I’ll think on it. There’s just Dudley and me as investigators?”

Loew made a gesture that took in his whole house. “Clerks from the City pool here to handle the paperwork, Ed Satterlee for the use of his contacts, Lesnick for our psychiatric edification. You two to interrogate. I might get us a third man to prowl for criminal stuff, rattle cages, that kind of thing.”

Mal got itchy to read, think, operate. He said, “I’m going to clear up some loose ends at the Hall, go home and work.”

Loew said, “I’m going to prosecute a real estate man for drunk driving on his son’s motorcycle.”

Dudley Smith toasted his boss with an imaginary glass. “Have mercy. Most real estate men are good patriotic Republicans, and you might need his contribution one day.”

Back at City Hall, Mal made calls to satisfy his curiosity on his two new colleagues. Bob Cathcart, a savvy Criminal Division FBI man he’d worked with, gave him the scoop on Edmund J. Satterlee. Cathcart’s take: the man was a religious crackpot with a wild hair up his ass about Communism, so extreme in his views that Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s number-two man at the Bureau, repeatedly issued gag orders on him when he served as Agent in Charge at the Waco, Texas, field office. Satterlee was estimated to earn fifty thousand dollars a year in anti-Communist lecture fees; Red Crosscurrents was “a shakedown racket” — “They’d clear Karl Marx if the dough was right.” Satterlee was rumored to have been bounced off the Allen Squad for attempting a kickback operation: cash vouchers from interned Japanese prisoners in exchange for his safeguarding their confiscated property until they were released. Agent Cathcart’s summation: Ed Satterlee was a loony, albeit a rich and very efficient one — very adept at advancing conspiracy theories that stood up in court; very good at gathering evidence; very good at running outside interference for grand jury investigators.

A call to an old pal working the LAPD Metropolitan Squad and one to an ex-DA’s man now with the State Attorney General’s office supplied Mal with the true story on Saul Lesnick, MD, PhD. The old man was, and remained, a CP card carrier; he had been a Fed snitch since ’39 — when he was approached by two LA office agents, who made him a deal: provide confidential psychiatric dirt to various committees and police agencies, and his daughter would be sprung from her five-to-ten-year sentence for hit and run drunk driving — one year down, four more to go minimum — the girl then currently hardtiming in Tehachapi. Lesnick agreed; his daughter was released and placed on indeterminate Federal parole — which would be revoked if the good doctor ever broke his cover or otherwise refused to cooperate. Lesnick, given six months tops in his fight with lung cancer, had secured a promise from a high-ranking Justice Department official: upon his death, all the confidential files he had loaned out would be destroyed; his daughter’s vehicular manslaughter conviction and parole records would be expunged and all Fed/Municipal/State grand jury notations currently on official paper vis-à-vis Lesnick and his breaches of confidentiality with subversive patients would burn. No one would know that for ten years Saul Lesnick, Communist, psychiatrist, had played both ends against the middle — and had won his holding action.

Mal segued, new colleagues to old business, thinking that the lunger got what he paid for in spades, that his dance with the Feds was good value: a daughter spared broomstick rape and pernicious anemia from Tehachapi’s famous all-starch cuisine in exchange for the rest of his life — shortened by suicide via French tobacco. And he’d have done the same thing for Stefan — he wouldn’t have thought twice.

Paperwork was arrayed neatly across his desk; Mal, stealing glances at the huge grand jury pile, got to it. He wrote memos to Ellis Loew suggesting investigators to dig for backup evidence; he typed routing slips: case files to the green young Deputy DAs who would be prosecuting now that Loew was engaged full-time in battling Communism. A Chinatown hooker killing went to a kid six months out of the worst law school in California; the perpetrator, a pimp known for his love of inflicting pain with a metal-studded dildo, would probably walk on the charge. Two shine snuffs were routed to a youth still short of his twenty-fifth birthday — smart, but naive. This perp, a Purple Cobra warlord, had fired into a crowd of kids outside Manual Arts High School on the off-chance that there might be members of the Purple Scorpions in it. There weren’t; an honor student and her boyfriend went down dead. Mal gave the kid a fifty-fifty chance for a conviction — Negroes killing Negroes bored white juries and they often dropped their verdicts on whim.

The armed robbery/ADW at Minnie Roberts’ Casbah went to a Loew protégé; writing evidence summaries on the three cases took four hours and gave Mal finger cramps. Finishing, he checked his watch and saw that it was 3:10 — Stefan would be home from school. If he was lucky, Celeste would be visiting her crony down the street, bullshitting in Czech, gabbing about the old country before the war. Mal grabbed his stack of psychiatric dirt and drove home, resisting a kid’s urge: to stop at an army-navy store and buy himself a pair of silver captain’s bars.

Home was in the Wilshire District: a big white two-story that devoured his savings and most of his salary. It was the house that was too good for Laura — a kid marriage based on rutting didn’t warrant the tariff. He’d bought it when he returned from Europe in ’46, knowing that Laura was out and Celeste was in, sensing that he loved the boy more than he could ever love the woman — that the marriage was for Stefan’s safety. There was a park with basketball hoops and a baseball diamond nearby; the neighborhood’s crime rate was near zero and the local schools had the highest academic standing in the state. It was his happy ending to Stefan’s nightmare.

Mal parked in the driveway and walked across the lawn — Stefan’s lackluster mowing job, Stefan’s softball and bat weighing down the hedge that he’d neglected to trim. Going in the door, he heard voices: the two-language fight he’d refereed a thousand times before. Celeste was running down verb conjugations in Czech, sitting on the divan in her sewing room, gesturing to Stefan, her captive in a straight-backed chair. The boy was fiddling with objects on an end table — thimbles and thread spools — arranging them by progression of color, so smart that he had to keep occupied even while on the receiving end of a lecture. Mal stood aside from the doorway and watched, loving Stefan for his defiance; glad that he was dark and pudgy like his real father was supposed to be — not lean and sandy-haired like Celeste — even though Mal was blond, and it clued people in that they weren’t blood relations.

Celeste was saying, “...and it is the language of your people.”

Stefan was stacking the spools, making a little house out of them — dark colors the foundation, pastels on top. “But I am to be an American now. Malcolm told me he can get me cit-cit-citizenship.”

“Malcolm is a minister’s son and a policeman who does not understand our old country traditions. Stefan, your heritage. Learn to make your mother happy.”

Mal could tell his boy wasn’t buying it; he smiled when Stefan demolished the spool house, his dark eyes fired up. “Malcolm said Czechoslovakia is a... a... a...”

“A what, darling?”

“A Bohunk rubble heap! A shit pile! Scheiss! Scheiss! In German for mutti!”

Celeste raised a hand, stopped and hit her own pinched-together knees. “In English for you — little ingrate, disgrace to your real father, a cultured man, a doctor, not a consort of whores and hoodlums—”

Stefan knocked over the end table and ran out of the room, straight into Mal, blocking the doorway. The small fat boy careened off his six-foot-three stepfather, then grabbed him around the waist and buried his head in his vest. Mal held him there, one hand steadying his shoulders, the other ruffling his hair. When Celeste stood up and saw them, he said, “You’ll never give it up, will you?”

Celeste mouthed words; Mal knew they were native tongue obscenities she didn’t want Stefan to hear. The boy held on tighter, then let go and ran upstairs to his room. Mal heard ting-ting-ting — Stefan’s toy soldiers being hurled at the door. He said, “You know what it makes him think of, and you still won’t give it up.”

Celeste adjusted her arms inside her overslung cardigan — the single European affectation Mal hated the most. “Nein, herr Leutnant” — pure German, pure Celeste — Buchenwald, the gas man, Major Considine, cold-blooded killer.

Mal braced himself into the doorway. “Captain soon, Fräulein. Chief DA’s Investigator, and climbing. Juice, Fräulein. Just in case I think you’re ruining my son and I have to take him away from you.”

Celeste sat down, knees together, a finishing school move, Prague 1934. “To the mother the child belongs. Even a failed lawyer like you should know that maxim.”

A line that couldn’t be topped. Mal kicked up the carpeting on his way outside; he sat on the steps and watched rain clouds hover. Celeste’s sewing machine started to whir; upstairs, Stefan’s soldiers were still dinging his already cracked and dented bedroom door. Mal thought that soon they’d be stripped of paint, dragoons without uniforms, and that simple fact would tear down everything he’d built up since the war.

In ’45 he was an army major, stationed at a temporary MP barracks near the recently liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. His assignment was to interrogate surviving inmates, specifically the ones the medical evacuation teams deemed terminally ill — the husks of human beings who would most likely never live to identify their captors in court. The question and answer sessions were horrific; Mal knew that only the stony cold presence of his interpreter was keeping him frosty, contained, a pro. News from the home front was just as bad: friends wrote him that Laura was screwing Jerry Dunleavy, a buddy from the Homicide Bureau, and Buzz Meeks, a crooked Narcotics Squad dick and bagman for Mickey Cohen. And in San Francisco, his father, the Reverend Liam Considine, was dying of congestive heart disease and sending daily telegrams begging him to embrace Jesus before he died. Mal hated the man too much to give him the satisfaction and was too busy praying for the speedy and painless deaths of every single Buchenwald survivor, for the complete cessation of their memories and his nightmares. The old man died in October; Mal’s brother Desmond, the used-car king of Sacramento, sent him a telegram rich in religious invective. It ended with words of disownment. Two days later Mal met Celeste Heisteke.

She came out of Buchenwald physically healthy and defiant, and she spoke enough English to render the interpreter unnecessary. Mal conducted his interrogations of Celeste solo; they spoke on only one topic: her whoredom with an SS lieutenant colonel named Franz Kempflerr — his price for her survival.

Celeste’s stories — graphically told — killed his nightmares better than the contraband phenobarbital he’d been blasting for weeks. They excited him, disgusted him, made him hate the Nazi colonel and hate himself for being a voyeur eight thousand miles away from his legendary whore sweep operations in Ad Vice. Celeste sensed his excitement and seduced him; together, they reenacted all of her adventures with Franz Kempflerr. Mal fell in love with her — because he knew she had his number better than dumb sexpot Laura ever did. Then, when she had him hooked, she told him of her dead husband and her six-year-old son, who might still be alive somewhere in Prague. Would he, a veteran detective, be willing to search for the boy?

Mal agreed, for the challenge and the chance to become more to Celeste than a voyeur-lover, more than the sewer crawler cop his family considered him to be. He made three trips to Prague, blundering around asking questions in pidgin Czech and German. Networks of Heisteke cousins resisted him; twice he was threatened with guns and knives and retreated, fear at his back like he was walking a beat in LA niggertown, whispers and catcalls from the okie cops who dominated the nightwatch there: college boy chickenshit, nigger scared, coward. On his final trip he located Stefan Heisteke, a pale, dark-haired child with a distended belly, sleeping outside a cigarette vendor’s stall in a rolled-up carpet lent to him by a friendly black marketeer. The man told Mal that the boy became frightened if people spoke to him in Czech, the language he seemed to best understand; phrases in German and French elicited simple yes or no answers. Mal took Stefan to his hotel, fed him and attempted to bathe him — stopping when he started to scream.

He let Stefan wash himself; he let him sleep for seventeen uninterrupted hours. Then, armed with German and French phrase books, he began his most grueling interrogation. It took a week of long silences, long pauses and halting questions and answers with half the room between them for Mal to get the story straight.

Stefan Heisteke had been left with trusted first cousins just before Celeste and her husband, gentile anti-Nazis, were captured by the Germans; they, fleeing, had shunted him to distant in-laws, who left him with friends who gave him to acquaintances sequestered in a deserted factory basement. He was there for the better part of two years, accompanied by a man and woman gone cabin-fevered. The factory processed dog food, and cans of horsemeat were all Stefan ate during that time. The man and woman used him sexually, then goo-goo-talked to him in Czech, lover’s endearments to a five-and six-year-old child. Stefan could not tolerate the sound of that language.

Mal brought Stefan back to Celeste, gave her a mercifully abbreviated account of his lost years and told her to speak French to him — or teach him English. He did not tell her that he considered her cousins accomplices to the boy’s horror, and when Stefan himself told his mother what had happened, Celeste capitulated to Mal. He knew she had been using him before; now she loved him. He had a family to replace his shattered one at home in America.

Together, they began teaching Stefan English; Mal wrote to Laura, requested a divorce and got the paperwork ready to bring his new family stateside. Things were going very smoothly; then they went haywire.

Celeste’s whoremaster officer had escaped before Buchenwald was liberated; just as Mal was about to take his discharge, he was captured in Kraków and held at the MP barracks there. Mal went to Kraków just to see him; the stockade duty officer showed him the Nazi’s confiscated property, which included unmistakable locks of Celeste’s hair. Mal walked back to Franz Kempflerr’s cell and emptied his sidearm into the man’s face.

A tight net was thrown over the incident; the military governor, an Army one-star, liked Mal’s style. Mal took an honorable discharge, brought Celeste and Stefan to America, returned to his LAPD sergeantcy and divorced Laura. Of his two cuckolders, Buzz Meeks was wounded in a shootout and pensioned off to civilian life; Jerry Dunleavy stayed on the job — but out of his way. Rumor had it that Meeks thought Mal was behind the shooting — revenge for the affair with Laura. Mal let the talk simmer: it played a good counterpoint to the coward innuendo he’d inspired in Watts. Word leaked out here and there on the gas man; Ellis Loew, DA’s comer, Jew, draft dodger, took an interest in him and offered to swing some gravy his way once he aced the lieutenant’s exam. In ’47 he made lieutenant and transferred to the DA’s Bureau of Investigations, cop protégé to the most ambitious Deputy District Attorney the City of Los Angeles ever saw. He married Celeste and settled into family life, a ready-made child part of the deal. And the closer father and son became, the more mother resented it; and the more he pressed to formally adopt the boy the more she refused — and tried to mold Stefan in the manner of the old Czech aristocracy that was yanked out from under her by the Nazis — language lessons and European culture and customs, Celeste oblivious to the memories they’d uprooted.

“To the mother the child belongs. Even a failed lawyer like you should know that maxim.”

Mal listened to Celeste’s sewing machine, Stefan’s toy soldiers hitting the door. He came up with his own epigraph: saving a woman’s life only induces gratitude if the woman has something to live for. All Celeste had was memories and a hated existence as a cop’s hausfrau. All she wanted was to take Stefan back to the time of his horror and make him part of the memories. His final epigraph: he wouldn’t let her.

Mal walked back in the house to read the Commie snitch’s files: his glory grand jury and all it would reap.

Juice.

Chapter Six

The two picket lines moved slowly down Gower, past the entrances of the Poverty Row studios. The UAES hugged the inside, displaying banners stapled to plywood strips: FAIR PAY FOR LONG HOURS, CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS NOW! PROFIT SHARES FOR ALL WORKERS. The Teamsters paced beside them, a strip of sidewalk open, their signs — REDS OUT! NO CONTRACTS FOR COMMUNISTS — atop friction-taped two-by-four’s. Talk between the factions was constant; every few seconds, “Fuck” or “Shit” or “Traitor” or “Scum” would be shouted, a wave of garbled obscenities following. Across the street, reporters stood around, smoking and playing rummy on the hoods of their cars.

Buzz Meeks watched from the walkway outside Variety International Pictures’ executive offices — three stories up, a balcony view. He remembered busting union heads back in the ’30s; he sized up the Teamsters versus the UAES and saw a bout to rival Louis and Schmeling Number Two.

Easy: the Teamsters were sharks and the UAES were minnows. The Teamster line featured Mickey Cohen goons, union muscle and hard boys hired out of the day labor joints downtown; the UAES was old leftie types, stagehands past their prime, skinny Mexicans and a woman. If push came to shove, no cameras around, the Teamsters would use their two-by-four’s as battering rams and charge — brass knuckle work in close, blood, teeth and nose cartilage on the sidewalk, maybe a few ears ripped off of heads. Then vamoose before the lackluster LAPD Riot Squad made the scene. Easy.

Buzz checked his watch. 4:45; Howard Hughes was forty-five minutes late. It was a cool January day, light blue sky mixed with rain clouds over the Hollywood Hills. Howard got sex crazy in the winter and probably wanted to send him out on a poontang prowl: Schwab’s Drugstore, the extra huts at Fox and Universal, Brownie snapshots of well-lunged girls naked from the waist up. His Majesty’s yes or no, then standard gash contracts to the yes’s — one-liners in RKO turkeys in exchange for room and board at Hughes Enterprises’ fuck pads and frequent nighttime visits from The Man himself. Hopefully, bonus money was involved: he was still in hock to a bookie named Leotis Dineen, a six-foot-six jungle bunny who hated people of the Oklahoma persuasion worse than poison.

Buzz heard a door opening behind him; a woman’s voice called out, “Mr. Hughes will see you now, Mr. Meeks.”

The woman had stuck her head out of Herman Gerstein’s doorway; if the Variety International boss was involved, then bonus dough was a possible. Buzz ambled over; Hughes was seated behind Gerstein’s desk, scanning the pictures on the walls: semicheesecake shots of Gower Gulch starlets going nowhere. He was dressed in his usual chalk stripe business suit, sporting his usual scars — facial wounds from his latest airplane crash. The big guy cultivated them with moisturizing lotion — he thought they gave him a certain panache.

And no Herman Gerstein; and no Gerstein’s secretary. Buzz dropped the formalities that Hughes required when other people were present. “Getting any, Howard?”

Hughes pointed to a chair. “You’re my bird dog, you should know. Sit, Buzz. This is important.”

Buzz sat down and made a gesture that took in the whole office: cheesecake, rococo wall tapestries and a knight’s suit of armor hatrack. “Why here, boss? Herman got a job for me?”

Hughes ignored the question. “Buzz, how long have we been colleagues?”

“Goin’ on five years, Howard.”

“And you’ve worked for me in various capacities?”

Buzz thought: fixer, bagman, pimp. “That’s right.”

“And during those five years have I given you profitable referrals to other people in need of your talents?”

“You surely have.”

Hughes cocked two finger pistols, his thumbs the hammers. “Remember the premiere of Billy the Kid? The Legion of Decency was outside Grauman’s shouting ‘Whoremonger’ at me and little old ladies from Pasadena were throwing tomatoes at Jane Russell. Death threats, the whole megillah.”

Buzz crossed his legs and picked lint off a trouser cuff. “I was there, boss.”

Hughes blew imaginary smoke off his fingertips. “Buzz, that was a dicey evening, but did I ever describe it as dangerous, or big?”

“No, boss. You surely didn’t.”

“When Bob Mitchum was arrested for those marijuana cigarettes and I called you in to help with the evidence, did I describe that as dangerous or big?”

“No.”

“And when Confidential Magazine was getting ready to publish that article that alleged that I like well-endowed underage girls, and you took your billy club down to the office to reason with the editor, did I describe that as dangerous or big?”

Buzz winced. It was late ’47, the fuck pads were at full capacity, Howard was a pork-pouring dervish and was filming his teenaged conquests’ endorsing his prowess — a ploy aimed at getting him a date with Ava Gardner. One of the film cans was snatched out of the RKO editing department and ended up at Confidential; he broke three sets of scandal mag fingers quashing the story — then blew Hughes’ bonus betting stupid on the Louis-Walcott fight. “No, Howard. You didn’t.”

Hughes shot Buzz with his finger guns. “Pow! Pow! Pow! Turner. I am telling you that that seditious spectacle down on the street is both dangerous and big, and that is why I called you here.”

Buzz looked at the pilot/inventor/mogul, exhausted by his theatrics, wanting to get to it. “Howard, is there any cash money involved in all this big danger? And if you’re askin’ me to break some union heads, take another think, ’cause I am too old and too fat.”

Hughes laughed. “Solly Gelfman wouldn’t say that.”

“Solly Gelfman is too goddamned kind. Howard, what do you want?”

Hughes draped his long legs over over Herman Gerstein’s desk. “What’s your opinion of Communism, Buzz?”

“I think it stinks. Why?”

“The UAES down there, they’re all Commies and Pinkos and fellow travelers. The City of Los Angeles is getting a grand jury together to investigate Communist influence in Hollywood, concentrating on the UAES. A bunch of studio heads — myself, Herman and some others — have formed a group called ‘Friends of the American Way in Motion Pictures’ to help the City out. I’ve contributed to the kitty, so has Herman. We thought you’d like to help out, too.”

Buzz laughed. “With a contribution out of my meager salary?”

Hughes aped the laugh, putting an exaggerated okie twang on it. “I knew appealing to your sense of patriotism was a long shot.”

“Howard, you’re only loyal to money, pussy and airplanes, and I buy you as a good buddy of the American Way like I buy Dracula turning down a job at a blood bank. So this grand jury thing is one of the three, and my money’s on money.”

Hughes flushed and fingered his favorite plane crash scar, the one a girl from the Wisconsin boonies was in love with. “Brass tacks then, Turner?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hughes said, “The UAES is in at Variety International, RKO, three others here on Gower and two of the majors. Their contract is ironclad and has five more years to run. That contract is costly, and escalation clauses will cost us a fortune over the next several years. Now the goddamn union is picketing for extras: bonuses, medical coverage and profit points. Totally unacceptable. Totally.”

Buzz locked eyes with Hughes. “So don’t renew their god-damned contract or let them strike.”

“Not good enough. The escalation clauses are too costly, and they won’t strike — they’ll pull very subtle slow dances. When we signed with UAES in ’45, no one knew how big television was going to get. We’re getting reamed at the box office, and we want the Teamsters in — despite the goddamned Pinko UAES and their goddamned ironclad contract.”

“How you gonna get around that contract?’

Hughes winked; scars and all, the act made him look like a big kid. “There’s a fine-print clause in the contract that states the UAES can be ousted if criminal malfeasance — and that includes treason — can be proved against them. And the Teamsters will work much cheaper, if certain payments are made to certain silent partners.”

Buzz winked. “Like Mickey Cohen?”

“I can’t shit a shitter.”

Buzz put his feet on Gerstein’s desk, wishing he had a cigar to light up. “So you want the UAES smeared, before the grand jury convenes or sometime during the proceedings. That way you can boot them on the malfeasance clause and put in Mickey’s boys without them Commies suin’ you — for fear of gettin’ in more shit.”

Hughes nudged Buzz’s feet off the desk with his own immaculate wing tips. “ ‘Smeared’ is a misnomer. In this case we’re talking about patriotism as the handmaid to good business. Because the UAES are a bunch of card-carrying Pinko subversives.”

“And you’ll give me a cash money bonus to—”

“And I’ll give you a leave of absence from your duties at the plant and a cash bonus to help the grand jury investigating team out. They’ve already got two cops as political interrogators, and the Deputy DA who’s running the show wants a third man to rattle for criminal skeletons and make money pickups. Buzz, there’s two things you know exceedingly well: Hollywood and our fair city’s criminal elements. You can be very valuable to this operation. Can I count you in?”

Dollar signs danced in Buzz’s head. “Who’s the DA?”

“A man named Ellis Loew. He ran for his boss’s job in ’48 and lost.”

Jewboy Loew, he of the colossal hard-on for the State of California. “Ellis is a sweetheart. The two cops?”

“An LAPD detective named Smith and a DA’s Bureau man named Considine. Buzz, are you in?”

The old odds: 50–50, either Jack Dragna or Mal Considine set up the shooting that got him two in the shoulder, one in the arm and one through the left cheek of his ass. “I don’t know, boss. There’s bad blood between me and that guy Considine. Cherchez la femme, if you follow my drift. I might have to need money really bad before I say yes.”

“Then I’m not worried. You’ll get yourself into a bind — you always do.”

Chapter Seven

Captain Al Dietrich said, “I got four phone calls about your little escapades in City territory night before last. At home yesterday. On my day off.”

Danny Upshaw stood at parade rest in front of the station commander’s desk, ready to deliver an oral rundown on the Goines homicide — a memorized pitch, to end in a plea for more Sheriff’s manpower and an LAPD liaison. While Dietrich fumed, he scotched the ending and concentrated on making his evidence compelling enough so that the old man would let him work the snuff exclusively for at least two more weeks.

“...and if you wanted information on heroin pushers, you should have had our Narco guys contact theirs. You don’t beat up the pushers, colored or otherwise. And the manager of Bido Lito’s runs another club inside the County, and he’s very simpatico with the watch sergeant at Firestone. And you were seen drinking on duty, which I do myself, but under more discreet circumstances. Follow my drift?”

Danny tried to look sheepish — a little trick he’d taught himself — eyes lowered, face scrunched up. “Yes, sir.”

Dietrich lit a cigarette. “Whenever you call me sir, I know you’re jerking my chain. You’re very lucky I like you, Deputy. You’re very lucky I think your gifts exceed your arrogance. Report on your homicide. Omit Dr. Layman’s findings, I read your summary and I don’t like gore this early in the morning.”

Danny drew himself ramrod stiff in reflex — he’d wanted to play up the horror aspects to impress Dietrich. “Captain, so far I’ve got two half-assed eyewitness descriptions of the killer — tall, gray-haired, middle-aged. O+ blood typed from his semen — very common among white people. I don’t think either witness could ID the man from mugs — those jazz clubs are dark and have distorted lighting. The print man who dusted the transport car got no latents except those belonging to the owner and his girlfriend. He did eliminations based on Civil Defense records — both Albanese and the girlfriend had CD jobs during the war. I checked taxi logs around the time the body was dumped and the car abandoned, and nothing but couples leaving the after-hours clubs on the Strip were picked up. Albanese’s story of going back to darktown to look for his car has been verified by cab records, which eliminates him as a suspect. I spent all day yesterday and most of the evening recanvassing Central Avenue, and I couldn’t find any other eyewitnesses who saw Goines with the tall, gray-haired man. I looked for the two eyewitnesses I talked to before, thinking I’d try to get some kind of composite drawing out of them, but they were gone — apparently these jazz types are mostly fly-by-nights.”

Dietrich stubbed out his cigarette. “What’s your next move?”

“Captain, this is a fag killing. The better of my two eyewitnesses pegged Goines as a deviant, and the mutilations back it up. Goines was killed with a heroin OD. I want to run mugshots of known homos by Otis Jackson and other local pushers. I want—”

Dietrich was already shaking his head. “No, you cannot go back to City territory and question the man you pistol-whipped, and LAPD Narco will never cooperate with a list of local pushers — thanks to your escapades.” He picked a copy of the Herald off his desk, folded it over and pointed to a one-column piece: “Vagrant’s Body Found Dumped Off Sunset Strip New Year’s Eve.” “Let’s keep it at this — low-key, no name on the victim. We’ve got great duty here at this division, we thrive on tourism, and I don’t want it bollixed up because some queer slashed another queer hophead trombone player. Comprende?”

Danny twisted his fingers together behind his back, then shot his CO a Vollmer maxim. “Uniform codes of investigation are the moral foundation of criminology.”

Captain Al Dietrich said, “Human garbage is human garbage. Go to work, Deputy Upshaw.”

Danny went back to the squadroom and brainstormed in his cubicle, partition walls bracketing him, the station’s other three detectives — all at least ten years his senior — typing and jabbering into phones, the noise coming at him like gangbusters, then subsiding into a lull that was like no sound at all.

A mug blowup of Harlan “Buddy” Jastrow, Kern County axe murderer and the jolt that made him a cop, glared from the wall above his desk; some deputy who’d heard about his all-point want on the man had drawn a Hitler mustache on him, a speech balloon extending from his mouth: “Hi! I’m Deputy Upshaw’s nemesis! He wants to fry my ass, but he won’t tell anybody why! Watch out for Upshaw! He’s a college boy prima donna and he thinks his shit don’t stink!” Captain Dietrich had discovered the artwork; he suggested that Danny leave it there as a reminder to hold on to his temper and not high-hat the other men. Danny agreed; word got back to him that his fellow detectives liked the touch — it made them think he had a sense of humor that he didn’t have — and it made him angry and somehow able to brainstorm better.

So far, two and a half days in, he had the basics covered. The Central Avenue jazz strip had been canvassed around the clock; every bartender, bouncer, musician and general hepcat on the block had been braced — ditto the area where the body was dumped. Karen Hiltscher had called San Quentin and Lexington State Hospital for information on Goines and his buddies, if any, there; they were waiting the results of those queries. Rousting H pushers inside City confines was out for the time being, but he could put in a memo to Sheriff’s Narco for a list of dinks dealing in the County, press on that and see if he got any crossover leads back to LAPD turf. Goines’ musicians’ union would be reopening after the holiday this morning, and for now he had nothing but his instincts — what was true, what wasn’t true, what was too farfetched to be true and so horrible that it had to be true. Going eyeball to eyeball with Buddy Jastrow, Danny reconstructed the crime.

The killer meets Goines somewhere on the jazz block and talks him into geezing up — despite Marty’s recent dope cure. He’s got the Buick already staked out, door jimmied open or unlocked, wires unhooked and ready to be juiced together for a quick start. They drive someplace quiet, someplace equidistant from darktown and the Sunset Strip. The killer jacks enough horse into a vein near Goines’ spine to pop his heart arteries, a terrycloth towel right there to shove into his mouth and keep blood from drenching him. Figure, by the Zombie barman’s estimate, that the killer and Goines left Central Avenue around 12:15 to 12:45 A.M., took a half hour to drive to the destination, ten minutes to set the snuff up and accomplish it.

1:00 to 1:30 A.M.

The killer throttles his victim postmortem; fondles his genitals until they bruise, slashes his backside with the razor blade device, pulls out his eyes, screws him in the sockets at least twice, bites — or has an animal bite — through his stomach to the intestines, then cleans him up and drives him to Allegro Street, a rainy night, no moisture atop the body, the rain having stopped shortly after 3:00, the stiff discovered at 4:00 A.M.

An hour to an hour and forty-five minutes to mutilate the body, depending on the location of the killing ground.

The killer so sex-crazed that he ejaculates twice during that time.

The killer — maybe — taking a circuitous route to the Strip, rearview mirror hooked backward so he can view the corpse he is chauffeuring.

Flaw in the reconstruction so far: Doc Layman’s tenuous “blood bait” theory doesn’t fit. Well-trained vicious dogs did not jibe with the scenario — they would be too difficult to deal with, a nuisance, a mess, too noisy at a murder scene, too hard to contain during moments of psychotic duress. Which meant that the teeth marks on the torso had to be human, even though the mouth imprints were too large to have been made by a human being biting down.

Which meant that the killer bit and gnawed and swiveled and gnashed his teeth to get a purchase on his victim’s entrails, sucking the flesh upward to leave inflamed borders as he ravaged—

Danny bolted out of his cubicle and back to the records alcove adjoining the squadroom. One battered cabinet held the division’s Vice and sex offender files — West Hollywood crime reports, complaint reports, arrest reports and trouble call sheets dating back to the station’s opening in ’37. Some of the folders were filled alphabetically under “Arrestee”; some under “Complainant”; some numerically by “Address of Occurrence.” Some held mugshots, some didn’t; gaps in the “Arrestee” folders indicated that the arrested parties had bribed deputies into stealing reports that might prove embarrassing to them — and West Hollywood was only a small fraction of County territory.

Danny spent an hour scanning “Arrestee” reports, looking for tall, gray-haired, middle-aged men with violence in their MOs, knowing it was a long shot to keep him busy until Musician’s Local 3126 opened at 10:30. The slipshod paperwork — rife with misspellings, smudged carbons and near illiterate recountings of sex crimes — had him to the point of screaming at LASD incompetence; turgid accounts of toilet liaisons and high school boys bribed into back seat blow jobs kept his stomach churning with a bile that tasted like fried coffee grounds and last night’s six shots of bonded. The time got him four possibles — men aged forty-three to fifty-five, 6′1″ to 6′4″, with a total of twenty-one sodomy convictions among them — most of the beefs stemming from fruit tank punkings — jailhouse coitus interruptus that resulted in additional County charges being filed. At 10:20, he took the folders up to the dispatcher’s office and Karen Hiltscher, sweaty, his clothes wilted before the day had hardly started.

Karen was working the switchboard, plugging in calls, a headset attached to her Veronica Lake hairdo. The girl was nineteen, bottle blonde and busty — a civilian LASD employee flagged for the next woman’s opening at the Sheriff’s Academy. Danny pegged her as bad cop stuff: the Department’s mandatory eighteen-month jail tour would probably send her off the deep end and into the arms of the first male cop who promised to take her away from dyke matrons, Mex gang putas and white trash mothers in for child abuse. The heartthrob of the West Hollywood Substation wouldn’t last two weeks as a policewoman.

Danny straightened his tie and smoothed his shirtfront, his beefcake prelude to begging favors. “Karen? You busy, sweet-heart?”

The girl noticed him and took off her headset. She looked pouty; Danny wondered if he should lube her with another dinner date. “Hi, Deputy Upshaw.”

Danny placed the sex offender files up against the switchboard. “What happened to ‘Hi, Danny’?”

Karen lit a cigarette à la Veronica Lake and coughed — she only smoked when she was trying to vamp the cops working day watch. “Sergeant Norris heard me call Eddie Edwards ‘Eddie’ and said I should call him Deputy Edwards, that I shouldn’t be so familiar until I get rank.”

“You tell Norris I said you can call me Danny.”

Karen made a face. “Daniel Thomas Upshaw is a nice name. I told my mother, and she said it was a really nice name, too.”

“What else did you tell her about me?”

“That you’re really sweet and handsome, but you’re playing hard to get. What’s in those files?”

“Sex offender reports.”

“For that homicide you’re working?”

Danny nodded. “Sweet, did Lex and Quentin call back on my Marty Goines queries?”

Karen made another face — half vixen, half coquette. “I would have told you. Why did you give me those reports?”

Danny leaned over the switchboard and winked. “I was thinking of dinner at Mike Lyman’s once I get some work cleared up. Feel like giving me a hand?”

Karen Hiltscher tried to return the wink, but her false eyelash stuck to the ridge below her eye, and she had to fumble her cigarette into a ashtray and pull it free. Danny looked away, disgusted; Karen pouted, “What do you want on those reports?”

Danny stared at the muster room wall so Karen couldn’t read his face. “Call Records at the Hall of Justice Jail and get the blood types for all four men. If you get anything other than O+ for them, drop it. On the O+’s, call County Parole for their last known addresses, rap sheets and parole disposition reports. Got it?”

Karen said, “Got it.”

Danny turned around and looked at his cut-rate Veronica Lake, her left eyelash plastered to her plucked left eyebrow. “You’re a doll. Lyman’s when I clear this job.”

Musician’s Local 3126 was on Vine Street just north of Melrose, a tan Quonset hut sandwiched between a doughnut stand and a liquor store. Hepcat types were lounging around the front door, scarfing crullers and coffee, half pints and short dogs of muscatel.

Danny parked and walked in, a group of wine guzzlers scattering to let him through. The hut’s interior was dank: folding chairs aligned in uneven rows, cigarette butts dotting a chipped linoleum floor, pictures from Downbeat and Metronome scotch-taped to the walls — half white guys, half Negroes, like the management was trying to establish jazzbo parity. The left wall held a built-in counter, file cabinets in back of it, a haggard white woman standing guard. Danny walked over, badge and Marty Goines mugshot strip out.

The woman ignored the badge and squinted at the strip. “This guy play trombone?”

“That’s right. Martin Mitchell Goines. You sent him down to Bido Lito’s around Christmas.”

The woman squinted harder. “He’s got trombone lips. What did he do you for?”

Danny lied discreetly. “Parole violation.”

The slattern tapped the strip with a long red nail. “The same old same old. What can I do you for?”

Danny pointed to the filing cabinets. “His employment record, as far back as it goes.”

The woman about-faced, opened and shut drawers, leafed through folders, yanked one and gave the top page a quick scrutiny. Laying it down on the counter, she said, “A nowhere horn. From Squaresville.”

Danny opened the folder and read through it, picking up two gaps right away: ’38 to ’40 — Goines’ County jolt for marijuana possession: ’44 to ’48 — his Quentin time for the same offense. Since ’48 the entries had been sporadic: occasional two-week engagements at Gardena pokerino lounges and his fatal gig at Bido Lito’s. Prior to Goines’ first jail sentence he got only very occasional work — Hollywood roadhouse stints in ’36 and ’37. It was the early ’40s when Marty Goines was a trombone-playing fool.

Under his self-proclaimed banner, “Mad Marty Goines & His Horn of Plenty,” he’d gigged briefly with Stan Kenton; in 1941, he pulled a tour with Wild Willie Monroe. There were a whole stack of pages detailing pickup band duty in ’42, ’43 and early ’44 — one-night stands with six- and eight-man combos playing dives in the San Fernando Valley. Only the bandleaders and/or club managers who did the hiring were listed on the employment sheets — there was no mention of other musicians.

Danny closed the folder; the woman said, “Bubkis, am I right?”

“You’re right. Look, do you think any of these guys around here might have known — I mean know — Marty Goines?”

“I can ask.”

“Do it. Would you mind?”

The woman rolled her eyes up to heaven, drew a dollar sign in the air and pointed to her cleavage. Danny felt his hands clenching the edge of the counter and smelled last night’s liquor oozing out of his skin. He was about to come on strong when he remembered he was on City ground and his CO’s shit list. He fished in his pockets for cash, came up with a five and slapped it down. “Do it now.”

The slattern snapped up the bill and disappeared behind the filing cabinets. Danny saw her out on the sidewalk a few seconds later, talking to the bottle gang, then moving to the doughnut and coffee crowd. She zeroed in on a tall Negro guy holding a bass case, grabbed his arm and led him inside. Danny smelled stale sweat, leaves and mouthwash on the man, like the knee-length overcoat he was wearing was his permanent address. The woman said, “This is Chester Brown. He knows Marty Goines.”

Danny pointed Brown to the nearest row of chairs. Miss Hepcat went back to her counter and the bass man shuffled over, plopped down and whipped out a bottle of Listerine. He said, “Breakfast of champions,” gulped, gargled and swallowed; Danny sat two chairs over, close enough to hear, far away enough to defuse the stink. “Do you know Marty Goines, Chester?”

Brown burped and said, “Why should I tell you?”

Danny handed him a dollar. “Lunch of champions.”

“I feed three times a day, officer. Snitching gives me an appetite.”

Danny forked over another single; Chester Brown palmed it, chugalugged and patted the Listerine bottle. “Helps the memory. And since I ain’t seen Marty since the war, you gonna need that memory.”

Danny got out his pen and notepad. “Shoot.”

The bass man took a deep breath. “I gigged pickup with Marty, back when he called himself the Horn of Plenty. Hunger huts out in the Valley when Ventura Boulevard was a fuckin’ beanfield. Half the boys toked sweet lucy, half took the needle route. Marty was strung like a fuckin’ dog.”

So far, his seven-dollar story was running true — based on Goines’ union jacket and what he knew of his criminal record. “Keep going, Chester.”

“Weeell, Marty pushed reefers — not too good, since I heard he did time for it, and he was a righteous boss mothafuckin’ burglar. All the pickup boys that was strung was doin’ it. They’d grab purses off of barstools and tables, get the people’s addresses and swipe their house keys while the bartender kept them drinkin’. One set you’d have no drummer, one set no trumpet, and so forth, ‘cause they was utilizizin’ their inside skinny to be burglarizizin’ the local patrons. Marty did lots of that, solo stuff, steal a car during his break, burglarizize, then be back for his next set. Like I tol’ you, he was a righteous boss mothafuckin’ burglar.”

Righteous new stuff — even to an ex-car thief cop who thought he knew most of the angles. “What years are you talking about, Chester? Think hard.”

Brown consulted his Listerine. “I’d say this was goin’ on from summer of ’43 to maybe sometime in ’44.”

Goines copped his second marijuana beef in April of ’44. “Did he work alone?”

“You mean on the burglarizizin’?”

“Right. And did he have running partners in general?”

Chester Brown said, “ ’Cept for this one kid, the Horn of Plenty was a righteous loner. He had this sidekick, though — a white blondy kid, tall and shy, loved jazz but couldn’t learn to play no instrument. He’d been in a fire and his face was all covered up in bandages like he was the fuckin’ mummy. Just a fuckin’ kid — maybe nineteen, twenty years old. Him and Marty pulled a righteous fuckin’ fuckload of burglaries together.”

Danny’s skin was tingling — even though the kid couldn’t be the killer — a youth in ’43–’44 wouldn’t be gray and middle-aged in ’50. “What happened to the sidekick, Chester?”

“I dunno, but you sure askin’ a lot of questions for a parole violation, and you ain’t asked me where I think Marty might be stayin’.”

“I was getting to that. You got any ideas?”

Brown shook his head. “Marty always stayed to himself. Never socializized with the boys out of the club.”

Danny dry-swallowed. “Is Goines a homosexual?”

“Say what?”

“Queer, fruit, homo! Did he fucking like boys!”

Brown killed the bottle of Listerine and wiped his lips. “You don’t gots to shout, and that’s a nasty thing to say about somebody never did you harm.”

Danny said, “Then answer my question.”

The bass man opened his instrument case. There was no fiddle inside, only bottles of Listerine Mouthwash. Chester Brown cracked the cap on one and took a long, slow drink. He said, “That’s for Marty, ‘cause I ain’t the fool you think I am, and I know he’s dead. And he wasn’t no queer. He may not have been much for trim, but he sure as fuck wasn’t no fuckin’ fruitfly.”

Danny took Chester Brown’s old news and rolled with it to a pay phone. First he called City/County R&I, learned that Martin Mitchell Goines had no detainments on suspicion of B&E and that no blond youths were listed as accomplices on his two marijuana rousts; no blond youths with distinguishing burn marks were arrested for burglary or narcotics violations anywhere in the San Fernando Valley circa 1942–1945. The call was a fishing expedition that went nowhere.

A buzz to the West Hollywood Station switchboard got him a pouty conversation with Karen Hiltscher, who said that the four long shots from the sex offender files proved to be just that — a toss of their jail records revealed that none of the men had O+ blood. Administrators had called in from both San Quentin and Lexington State Hospital; they said that Marty Goines was an institutional loner, and his counselor at Lex stated that he was assigned a Fed case worker in LA — but hadn’t reported to him yet, and left no word about where he would be staying when he got to Los Angeles. Even though the lead was probably a big nothing, Danny told Karen to check the station’s burglary file for B&E men with jazz musician backgrounds and for mention of a burned-face burglar boy — a jazz aficionado. Rankling, the girl agreed; Danny hung up thinking he should raise the dreaded dinner ante from Mike Lyman’s to the Coconut Grove to keep her happy.

At just after 1:00 P.M. there was nothing he could do but pound familiar pavement one more time. Danny drove to darktown and widened his canvassing area, talking Goines and the gray-haired man to locals on the side streets adjoining Central Avenue, getting four solid hours of nothing; at dusk he drove back to West Hollywood, parked on Sunset and Doheny and walked the Strip, west to east, east to west, residential streets north into the hills, south to Santa Monica Boulevard, wondering the whole time why the killer picked Allegro Street as his place to dump the body. He wondered if the killer lived nearby, desecrated Goines’ corpse for that much more time and chose Allegro so he could gloat over the police and their efforts to nail him — the abandoned car a partial ruse to convince them he lived elsewhere. That theory played with led to others — subjective thinking — a Hans Maslick fundamental. Danny thought of the killer with his real car parked nearby for a quick getaway; the killer walking the Strip New Year’s morning, sheltered by swarms of revelers, depleted from his awful back-to-back explosions. And that was when it got scary.

In a famous essay, Maslick described a technique he had developed while undergoing analysis with Sigmund Freud. It was called Man Camera, and involved screening details from the perpetrator’s viewpoint. Actual camera angles and tricks were employed; the investigator’s eyes became a lens capable of zooming in and out, freezing close-ups, selecting background motifs to interpret crime-scene evidence in an aesthetic light. Danny was crossing Sunset and Horn when the idea struck him — transpose 3:45 New Year’s morning to now, himself as a sex slasher, walking home or to his car or to an all-night market to get calm again. But he didn’t see the other people strolling the Strip or lining up to get in the Mocambo or sitting at the counter at Jack’s Drive Inn. He went straight for Marty Goines’ eyes and guts and groin, an ultra close-up in Technicolor, his preautopsy prep magnified ten million times. A car swerved in front of him then; he twitched with heebie-jeebies, saw a kaleidoscope of Coleman the alto man, his look-alike from the movie with Karen, Tim. When he pointed his Man Camera at the passersby he was supposed to be viewing, they were all gargoyles, all wrong.

It took long moments for him to calm down, to get it right. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday; he’d postponed his bourbon ration in order to tread the Strip clear-headed. Hitting late-night clubs and restaurants with questions on a tall, gray-haired man New Year’s would be straightforward police work to keep him chilled.

He did it.

And got more nothing.

Two hours’ worth.

The same accounts at Cyrano’s, Dave’s Blue Room, Ciro’s, the Mocambo, La Rue, Coffee Bob’s, Sherry’s, Bruno’s Hideaway and the Movieland Diner: every single place was packed until dawn New Year’s. No one remembered a solitary, tall, gray-haired man.

At midnight, Danny retrieved his car and drove to the Moon-glow Lounge for his four shots. Janice Modine, his favorite snitch, was hawking cigarettes to a thin weeknight crowd: lovebirds necking in wraparound booths, dancers necking while they slow-grinded to jukebox ballads. Danny took a booth that faced away from the bandstand; Janice showed up a minute later, holding a tray with four shot glasses and an ice water backup.

Danny knocked the drinks back — bam, bam, bam, bam, eyes away from Janice so she’d take the hint and leave him alone — no gratitude for the prostie beefs he’d saved her from, no overheard skinny on Mickey C. — useless because West Hollywood Division’s most auspicious criminal was greasing most of West Hollywood’s finest. The ploy didn’t work; the girl squirmed in front of him, one spaghetti strap sliding off her shoulder, then the other. Danny waited for the first blast of heat, got it and saw all the colors in the lounge go from slightly wrong to right. He said, “Sit down and tell me what you want before your dress falls off.”

Janice hunched into her straps and sat across the table from him. “It’s about John, Mr. Upshaw. He was arrested again.”

John Lembeck was Janice’s lover/pimp, a car thief specializing in custom orders: stolen chassis for the basic vehicle, parts stolen to exact specifications. He was a San Berdoo native like Danny, knew from the grapevine that a County plainclothes comer used to clout cars all over Kern and Visalia and kept his mouth shut about it when he got rousted on suspicion of grand theft auto. Danny said, “Parts or a whole goddamn car?”

Janice pulled a Kleenex out of her neckline and fretted it. “Upholstery.”

“City or County?”

“I–I think County. San Dimas Substation?”

Danny winced. San Dimas had the most rowdy detective squad in the Department; in ’46 the daywatch boss, jacked on turpen hydrate, beat a wetback fruit picker to death. “That’s the County. What’s his bail?”

“No bail, because of John’s last GTA. See, it’s a parole violation, Mr. Upshaw. John’s scared because he says the policemen there are really mean, and they made him sign a confession on all these cars he didn’t really steal. John said I should tell you a San Berdoo homeboy who loves cars should go to bat for another San Berdoo homey who loves cars. He didn’t say what it meant, but he said I should tell you.”

Pull strings to save his career from its first hint of dirt: call the San Dimas bulls, tell them John Lembeck was his trusted snitch and that a nigger hot car gang had a jail bid out on him, shiv time if the stupid shit ever made it to a County lockup. If Lembeck was docile at the holding tank, they’d let him off with a beating. “Tell John I’ll get on it in the morning.”

Janice had pinched her Kleenex into little wispy shreds. “Thanks, Mr. Upshaw. John also said I should be nice to you.”

Danny stood up, feeling warm and loose, wondering if he should muscle Lembeck for going cuntish on him. “You’re always nice to me, sweetheart. That’s why I have my nightcap here.”

Janice vamped him with wide baby blues. “He said I should be really nice to you.”

“I don’t want it.”

“I mean, like really extra nice.”

Danny said, “It’s wrong,” and placed his usual dollar tip on the table.

Chapter Eight

Mal was in his office, on his twelfth full reading of Dr. Saul Lesnick’s psychiatric files.

It was just after 1:00 A.M.; the DA’s Bureau was a string of dark cubicles, illuminated only by Mal’s wall light. The files were spread over his desk, interspersed with pages of notes splashed with coffee. Celeste would be asleep soon — he could go home and sleep in the den without her pestering him, sex offers because at this time of the morning he was her only friend, and giving him her mouth meant they could talk until one of them provoked a fight. Offers he’d accept tonight: the dirt in the files had him riled up like back in the Ad Vice days, when he put surveillance on the girls before they took down a whorehouse — the more you knew about who they were the better chance you had to get them to finger their pimps and money men. And after forty-eight hours of paper prowling, he felt like he had a pulse on the Reds in the UAES.

Deluded.

Traitorous.

Perverse.

Cliché shouters, sloganeers, fashion-conscious pseudoidealists. Locusts attacking social causes with the wrong information and bogus solutions, their one legit gripe — the Sleepy Lagoon case — almost blown through guilt by association: fellow travelers soliciting actual Party members for picketing and leaflet distribution, nearly discrediting everything the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee said and did. Hollywood writers and actors and hangers-on spouting cheap trauma, Pinko platitudes and guilt over raking in big money during the Depression, then penancing the bucks out to spurious leftist causes. People led to Lesnick’s couch by their promiscuity and dipshit politics.

Deluded.

Stupid.

Selfish.

Mal took a belt of coffee and ran a mental overview of the files, a last paraphrase before getting down to tagging the individual brain trusters he and Dudley Smith should be interrogating and the ones who should be singled out for their as yet unfound operative: Loew’s projected possibility, his favored tool already. What he got was a lot of people with too much money and too little brains pratfalling through the late ’30s and ’40s — betraying themselves, their lovers, their country and their own ideals, two events galvanizing their lunacy, spinning them out of their orbit of parties, meetings and sleeping around:

The Sleepy Lagoon case.

The 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee probe into Communist influence in the entertainment industry.

And the funny thing was — the two events gave the Pinkos some credibility, some vindication.

In August of 1942 a Mexican youth named José Diaz was beaten to death and run over with a car out at the Sleepy Lagoon — a grass-knolled meeting place for gang members in the Williams Ranch area of Central LA. The incident was allegedly sparked by Diaz being ejected from a nearby party earlier that night; he had allegedly insulted several members of a rival youth gang, and seventeen of them hauled him out to the Lagoon and snuffed him. Evidence against them was scant; the LAPD investigation and trial were conducted in an atmosphere of hysteria: the ’42–’43 zoot suit riots had produced a huge wave of anti-Mexican sentiment throughout Los Angeles. All seventeen boys received life sentences, and the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee — UAES brain trusters, Communist Party members, leftists and straight citizens — held rallies, circulated petitions and raised funds to employ a legal team — which ultimately got all seventeen pardoned. Hypocrisy within the idealism: Lesnick’s male patients, hearts bleeding over the poor railroaded Mexicans, complained to him of Communist Party white women screwing “proletariat” taco benders — then assailed themselves as rabid bigots moments later.

Mal made a mental note to talk to Ellis Loew about the Sleepy Lagoon angle: Ed Satterlee wanted to procure SLDC rally pictures from the Feds — but since the kids were exonerated, it might backfire. Ditto the info the shrinkees poured out over ’47 HUAC. Better for him and Dudley to keep it sub rosa, not jeopardize Lesnick’s complicity and use the info only by implication: to squeeze the UAESers’ suspected weak points. Going with the HUAC stuff full-bore might jeopardize their grand jury: J. Parnell Thomas, the Committee’s chairman, was currently doing time on bribery charges; hotshot Hollywood stars had protested HUAC’s methods and Lesnick’s files were rife with nonpetty trauma deriving from the spring of ’47 — suicides, attempted suicides, frantic betrayals of friendship, booze and sex to kill the pain. If the ’50 LA City grand jury team attempted to use the juice of ’47 HUAC — their first precedent — they might engender sympathy for UAES members and subsidiary hostile witnesses. Better not to dip into old HUAC testimony for conspiracy evidence; imperative that the lefties be denied a chance to boo-hoo the grand jury’s tactics to the press.

Mal felt his overview sink in as solid: good evidence, good thoughts on what to use, what to hold back. He killed his coffee and went to the individuals — the half dozen of the twenty-two most ripe for interrogation and operation.

His first was a maybe. Morton Ziffkin: UAES member, CP member, member of eleven other organizations classified as Commie fronts. Family man — a wife and two grown daughters. A highly paid screenwriter — 100 thou a year until he told HUAC to fuck off — now working for peanuts as a film splicer. Underwent analysis with Doc Lesnick out of a stated desire to “explore Freudian thought” and allay his impulses to cheat on his wife with an onslaught of CP women “out for my gelt — not my body.” A rabid, bad-tempered Marxist ideologue — a good man to bait on the witness stand — but he’d probably never snitch on his fellow Pinks. He sounded intelligent enough to make Ellis Loew seem like a fool, and his HUAC stint gave him an air of martyrdom. A maybe.

Mondo Lopez, Juan Duarte and Sammy Benavides, former Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee bigshots, recruited out of the Sinarquistas — a zoot suit gang given to sporting Nazi regalia — by CP bosses. Now token ethnics in the UAES hierarchy, the three spent the ’40s throwing it to condescending white lefty women — enraged over their airs, but grateful for the action; more enraged at being told by their “puto” cell leader to “explore” that rage by seeing a psychiatrist. Benavides, Duarte and Lopez were currently working at Variety International Pictures, half the time as stagehands, half the time playing Indians in cheapy cowboy pictures. They were also serving as picket bosses on Gower Gulch — the closest thing the UAES had to muscle — pitiful when compared to the Mickey Cohen goons the Teamsters were employing. Mal pegged them as pussy hounds who fell into clover, the Sleepy Lagoon job their only real political concern. The three probably had criminal records and connections stemming from their zoot suit days, a good approach for the team’s troubleshooter — if Ellis Loew ever found one.

Now the brain trust got ugly.

Reynolds Loftis, movie character actor, snitched to HUAC by his former homo lover Chaz Minear, a Hollywood script hack. Loftis did not suspect that Minear ratted him, and in no way reciprocated the finking. Both men were still with the UAES, still friendly at their meetings and at other political functions they attended. Minear, guilt-crazed over his fink duty, had said to Doc Lesnick: “If you knew who he left me for, you’d understand why I did it.” Mal had scanned both Loftis’ and Minear’s files for more mention of “he” and came up empty; there was a large gap in Lesnick’s Loftis transcripts — from the years ’42 to ’44 — and Minear’s pages bore no other mention of the third edge of the triangle. Mal recalled Loftis from westerns he’d taken Stefan to: a tall, lanky, silver-haired man, handsome like your idealized U.S. senator. And a Communist, and a subversive, and a hostile HUAC witness and self-described switch-hitter. A potential friendly witness par excellence — next to Chaz Minear, the Red with the most closeted skeletons.

And finally the Red Queen.

Claire De Haven did not possess a file, and several of the men had described her as too smart, strong and good to need a psychiatrist. She also screwed half her CP cell and all the SLDC bigwigs, including Benavides, Lopez and Duarte, who worshiped her. Chaz Minear was in her thrall, despite his homosexuality; Reynolds Loftis spoke of her as the “only woman I’ve ever really loved.” Mal picked up on her smarts secondhand: Claire moved behind the scenes, tended not to shout slogans and retained the political and legal connections of her late father, a stolid right-wing counsel to the LA business establishment. Minear speculated to Doc Lesnick that her old man’s political juice kept her from being subpoenaed by HUAC in ’47 — and not one other witness mentioned her name. Claire De Haven screwed like a rabbit, but didn’t come off as a slut; she inspired the loyalty of homosexual screenwriters, switch-hitter actors, Mexican stagehands and Commies of all stripes.

Mal turned off his light, reminding himself to write Doc Lesnick a memo: all the files ended in the summer of ’49 — five months ago. Why? Walking out to the elevator, he wondered what Claire De Haven looked like, where he could get a picture, if he could get his decoy to operate her out of her lust — politics and sex to nail the woman as a friendly witness, the Red Queen squeezed like a Chinatown whore, captain’s bars dancing his way at the end of a stag movie.

Chapter Nine

Bagman time.

His first stop was Variety International, where Herman Gerstein gave him a five-minute lecture on the evils of Communism and handed him a fat envelope stuffed with C-notes; stop two was a short stroll through the Teamster and UAES picket lines over to Hollywood Prestige National Pictures, where Wally Voldrich, the head of Security, kicked loose with a doughnut box full of fifties dusted with powdered sugar and chocolate sprinkles. Howard’s ten thou was already in his pocket; Mickey C.’s contribution to the Friends of the American Way in Motion Pictures would be his last pickup of the morning.

Buzz took Sunset out to Santa Monica Canyon, to the bungalow hideaway where Mickey palled with his stooges, entertained poon and hid out from his wife. The money in his pocket had him feeling brash: if Mal Considine was around when he dropped the bag with Ellis Loew, he’d rattle his cage to see what the four years since Laura had done to his balls. If it felt right, he’d tell Howard he’d sign on to fight Communism — Leotis Dineen was pressing him for a grand and a half, and he was a bad jigaboo to fuck with.

Cohen’s bungalow was a bamboo job surrounded by specially landscaped tropical foliage, camouflage for his triggermen when the Mick and Jack Dragna were skirmishing. Buzz parked in the driveway behind a white Packard ragtop, wondering where Mickey’s bulletproofed Caddy was and who’d be around to hand him his envelope. He walked up to the door and rang the buzzer; a woman’s deep-South voice drifted out a window screen. “Come in.”

Buzz opened the door and saw Audrey Anders sitting at a living room table, hitting the keys of an adding machine. No makeup, dungarees and one of Mickey’s monogrammed dress shirts didn’t dent her beauty at all; she actually looked better than she did New Year’s morning, pink party dress and high heels, kicking Tommy Sifakis in the balls. “Hello, Miss Anders.”

Audrey pointed to a Chinese lacquered coffee table; a roll of bills secured by a rubber band was resting smack in the middle. “Mickey said to tell you mazel tov, which I guess means he’s glad you’re in with this grand jury thing.”

Buzz sat down in an easy chair and put his feet up, his signal that he meant to stay and look awhile. “Mickey takin’ advantage of that master’s degree of yours?”

Audrey tapped out a transaction, checked the paper the machine expelled and wrote on a pad, all very slowly. She said, “You believe the program notes at the El Rancho Burlesque?”

“No, I just made you for the brains.”

“The brains to keep books for a lending operation?”

“Loan shark’s more the word, but I meant brains in general.”

Audrey pointed to Buzz’s feet. “Planning to stay awhile?”

“Not long. You really got a master’s degree?”

“Jesus, we keep asking each other these questions. No, I do not have a master’s degree, but I do have a certificate in accounting from a second-rate teachers college in Jackson, Mississippi. Satisfied?”

Buzz didn’t know if the woman wanted him out the door pronto or if she welcomed the interruption — totalling shark vig on a fine winter day was his idea of hunger. He played his only ace, his one opening to see what she thought of him. “Lucy Whitehall okay?”

Audrey lit a cigarette and blew two perfect smoke rings. “Yes. Sol Gelfman has her tucked away at his place in Palm Springs, and Mickey had some friend of his on the Sheriff’s Department issue something called a restraining order. If Tommy bothers Lucy, the police will arrest him. She told me she’s grateful for what you did. I didn’t tell her you did it for money.”

Buzz ignored the jibe and smiled. “Tell Lucy hi for me. Tell her she’s so pretty I might’ve done it for free.”

Audrey laughed. “In a pig’s eye you would. Meeks, what is between you and Mickey?”

“I’ll answer that one with a question. Why you wanta know?”

Audrey blew two more rings and ground out her cigarette. “Because he talked about you for an hour straight last night. Because he said he can’t figure out if you’re the stupidest smart man or the smartest stupid man he ever met, and he can’t figure out why you blow all your money with colored bookies when you could bet with him for no vig. He said that only stupid men love danger, but you love danger and you’re not stupid. He said he can’t figure out whether you’re brave or crazy. Does any of this make sense to you?”

Buzz saw the words inscribed on his tombstone, all crimped together so they’d fit. He answered straight, not caring who Audrey told. “Miss Anders, I take the risks Mickey’s afraid to, so I make him feel safe. He’s a little guy and I’m a little guy, and maybe I’m just a tad better with my hands and that baton of mine. Mickey’s got more to lose than me, so he runs scared more than me. And if I’m crazy, it means he’s smart. You know what surprises me about this talk we’re havin’, Miss Anders?”

The question interrupted Audrey starting to smile — a big beam that showed off two slightly crooked teeth and a cold sore on her lower lip. “No, what?”

“That Mickey thinks enough of you to talk to you about stuff like that. That surely does surprise me.”

Audrey’s smile fizzled out. “He loves me.”

“You mean he appreciates the favors you do him. Like when I was a cop, I skimmed that good old white powder and sold it to Mickey, not Jack D. We got to be as friendly as anybody and Mickey can be ’cause of that. I’m just surprised he plays it that close with a woman is all.”

Audrey lit another cigarette; Buzz saw it as cover for bad thoughts, good banter flushed down the toilet. He said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so personal.”

Audrey’s eyes ignited. “Oh yes you did, Meeks. You surely did.”

Buzz got up and walked around the room, checking out the strange chink furnishings, wondering who’d picked them out, Mickey’s wife or this ex-stripper/bookkeeper who was making him feel jumpy, like a gun would go off if he said the wrong thing. He tried small talk. “Nice stuff. Hate to see Jack D. put bullet holes in it.”

Audrey’s voice was shaky. “Mickey and Jack are talking about burying the hatchet. Jack wants to go in on a deal with him. Maybe dope, maybe a casino in Vegas. Meeks, I love Mickey and he loves me.”

Buzz heard the last words as bang, bang, bang, bang. He picked up the cash roll, stuffed it in his pocket and said, “Yeah, he loves takin’ you to the Troc and the Mocambo, cause he knows every man there is droolin’ for you and afraid of him. Then it’s an hour at your place and back to the wife. It’s real nice the two of you talk every once in awhile, but as far as I’m concerned you’re gettin’ short shrift from a Jewboy who ain’t got the brains to know what he’s got.”

Audrey’s jaw dropped; her cigarette fell into her lap. She picked it up and stubbed it out. “Are you this crazy or that stupid?”

Bang, bang, bang, bang — cannon loud. Buzz said, “Maybe I just trust you,” walked over and kissed Audrey Anders full on the lips, one hand holding her head, cradling it. She didn’t open her mouth and she didn’t embrace him back and she didn’t push him away. When Buzz snapped that it was all he was going to get, he broke the clinch and floated to the car with quicksand under his feet.

It was bang, bang, bang, bang on the drive downtown, ricochets, old dumb moves kicked around to see how they stood up next to this doozie.

In ’33 he’d charged six picket bulls outside MGM, caught nail-studded baseball bats upside his arms, took the boys out with his baton and caught tetanus — stupid, but the audaciousness helped get him his LAPD appointment.

Early in ’42 he worked with the Alien Squad, rounding up Japs and relocating them to the horse paddocks at Santa Anita Racetrack. He grabbed a wiseacre kid named Bob Takahashi just as he was en route to get his ashes hauled for the first time, felt sorry for him and took him on a six-day toot in Tijuana — booze, whores, the dog track and a teary farewell at the border — bad Bob hightailing it south, a slant-eyed stranger in a round-eyed land. Very stupid — but he covered his absent ass by shaking down a suspicious-looking car outside San Diego, busting four grasshoppers transporting a pound of premium maryjane. The punks had a total of nineteen outstanding LA City warrants between them; he got a commendation letter and four felony notches on his gun. Another shit play turned into clover.

But the granddaddy was his brother Fud. Three days out of the Texas State Pen, Fud shows up at the door of then Detective-Sergeant Turner Meeks, informs him that he just stuck up a liquor store in Hermosa Beach, pistol-whipped the proprietor and intended to pay Buzz back the six yards he owed him with the proceeds. Just as Fud was digging through his blood-soaked paper bag, there was a knock at the door. Buzz looked through the spy hole, saw two blue uniforms, tagged blood as thicker than water and fired his own service revolver into the living room wall four times. The bluesuits started knocking down the door; Buzz hustled Fud to the cellar, locked him in, smashed the window leading to the back porch and trampled his landlady’s prize petunias. When the patrolmen made it inside, Buzz told them he was LAPD and the perpetrator was a hophead he’d sent to Big Q — Davis Haskins — in reality a recent overdose in Billings, Montana; he’d picked up the info working an extradition job. The blues fanned out, called for backup and surrounded the neighborhood until dawn; Davis Haskins made the front page of the Mirror and Daily News; Buzz shat bricks for a week and kept Fud docile in the cellar with whiskey, baloney sandwiches and smut mags swiped from the Central Vice squadroom. And he walked on the caper, white trash chutzpah carrying him through, no one informing the police powers that be that a dead man robbed the Happy Time Liquor Store, drove a stolen La Salle up to the front door of Sergeant Turner “Buzz” Meeks, then shot out his living room wall and escaped on foot. When Fud bought it a year later at Guadalcanal, his squad leader sent Buzz a letter; baby brother’s last words were something like, “Tell Turner thanks for the fur books and sandwiches.”

Stupid, crazy, sentimental, lunatic dumb.

But kissing Audrey Anders was worse.

Buzz parked in the City Hall lot, transferred all the cash to his doughnut box and took it upstairs to Ellis Loew’s office. Going in the door, he saw Loew, Big Dudley Smith and Mal Considine sitting around a table, all of them talking at once, garbled stuff about cop decoys. No one glanced up; Buzz eyeballed Considine four years after he gave him the cuckold’s horns. The man still looked more like a lawyer than a cop; his blond hair was going gray; there was something nervous and raggedy-assed about him.

Buzz rapped on the door and tossed the box onto the chair holding it open. The three looked over; he fixed his eyes on Considine. Ellis Loew nodded, all business; Dudley Smith said, “Hello, Turner, old colleague,” all blarney; Considine eyed him back, all curiosity, like he was examining a reptile specimen he’d never seen before.

They held the look. Buzz said, “Hello, Mal.”

Mal Considine said, “Nice tie, Meeks. Who’d you roll for it?”

Buzz laughed. “How’s the ex, Lieutenant? She still wearin’ crotchless panties?”

Considine stared, his mouth twitching. Buzz stared back, his mouth dry.

Mexican standoff.

50-50, Considine or Dragna.

Maybe he’d hold off just a tad, cut the Red Menace just a bit more slack before he signed on.

Chapter Ten

It was two nights of bad dreams and a day’s worth of dead ends that had him making the run to Malibu Canyon.

Driving northbound on Pacific Coast Highway, Danny chalked it up as an elimination job: talk to the men on the list of fighting dog breeders he’d gotten from Sheriff’s Central Vice, make nice with them and get educated confirmations or denials on Doc Layman’s animal-aided killing/blood bait thesis. No such beast existed in the County Homicide files or with City R&I; if the breeders, men who would know if anyone did, laughed the theory off as nonsense, then maybe tonight he could sleep without the company of snapping hounds, entrails and screechy jazz.

It started this way:

After the Moonglow Lounge and Janice Modine’s pass, he’d gotten an idea — build his own file on the Goines snuff, write down every shred of information, glom carbons of the autopsy and print reports, stick Dietrich with lackluster summaries and concentrate on his paperwork, his case — the 187 he’d follow up even if he didn’t nail the bastard before the skipper pulled the plug. He drove to the Hollywood Ranch Market then, grabbed a stack of cardboard cartons, bought manila folders, colored side tabs, yellow legal pads, typing and carbon paper and drove home with them — allowing himself two extra shots of I.W. Harper as a reward for his dedication. The booze put him out on the couch — and it got hairy.

Goines’ mutilations in wraparound Technicolor. Guts and big bruised penises, so close up that at first he couldn’t tell what they were. Dogs rooting in the gore, him right there, Man Camera filming it until he joined the brood and started biting.

Two nights of it.

With a day of shit in between.

He put the first night’s dream off as scare stuff caused by a frustrating case and no food in his system. In the morning he got double bacon, eggs, hash browns, toast and sweet rolls at the Wilshire Derby, drove downtown to the Sheriff’s Central Bureau and scanned Homicide files. No animal-aided murders were on record; the only homosexual slashings even remotely similar to Marty Goines’ were open-and-shut jobs — lovers’ spats where the perpetrator was captured, still serving time or executed by the State of California.

Shitwork was next.

He called Karen Hiltscher at the Station and sweet-talked her into making phone queries of other musician’s locals that might have sent Marty Goines out on gigs, and LA area jazz clubs that might have hired his trombone independently. He told her to ring the other LASD station houses and solicit run-throughs of their burglary files: paper scans for jazz musician/burglars who might prove to be known associates of Goines. The girl reluctantly agreed; he blew kisses into the phone, promised to call for results later and drove back to Local 3126.

There, the counterwoman gave him another look at the Horn of Plenty’s employment record, and Danny copied down club and roadhouse addresses going back to Mad Marty’s first gig in ’36. He spent the rest of the day driving by jazz spots that were now laundromats and hamburger joints; jazz spots that had changed hands a half dozen times; jazz spots that had retained the same owner for years. And he got the same response across the board: a shrug at Goines’ mugshot strip, the words “Marty who?”, a deadpan on the topics of jazzbo burglars and the longshot of a burglar kid with his face bandaged up.

At dusk, he called Karen for her results. Goose egg: more “Marty who?”, the burglar files yielding eleven names — seven Negroes, two Mexicans, two white men whose jail records revealed AB+ and O- blood. Pure undiluted shit.

He remembered his promise to Janice Modine then, called the San Dimas Substation and talked to the boss of the Auto Theft Detail. John Lembeck was still in custody there, being sweated over a series of GTAs. Danny told the man his snitch story, stressing the angle that Lembeck was dead meat if he made it to the County jail. The squad boss agreed to roll him up for release; Danny could tell Jungle John was in for a severe thumping first — but not half as bad as he was going to give him.

Then it was back to his apartment, four shots of I.W. and work on the file, side tabs labeled and stuck to folders — “Interviews,” “Eliminations,” “Chronology,” “Canvassing,” “Physical Evidence,” “Background.” One thought burned throughout the writing of a detailed summary: where was Marty Goines living between the time of his release from Lexington State and his death? The thought led to a phone call — the night switchboard at the hospital for a list of other men released to California around the same time as Goines. The answer, after holding the line long distance for twenty minutes — none.

Exhaustion, writer’s cramp and no sleep followed. Four bonus shots and a sheet-thrashing roll on the bed got him unconsciousness and the dogs again, the Man Camera with teeth — his — biting at a whole morgueful of O+ stiffs lined up on gurneys. Morning and another big breakfast convinced him to make the elimination; he called Central Vice, got the list of breeders and was warned to go easy: the dog farms in Malibu Canyon were run by cracker strongarms, cousins from the Tennessee sticks. They bred their pit bulls there, which was not against the law; they only fought them in South LA, and none of the men had been convicted of dog fighting since the war.

Danny turned off Pacific Coast Highway at the Canyon Road and climbed inland through scrub-covered hills laced with little streams and valleys. The road was a narrow two-laner, the left side featuring kiddie camps, stables and occasional nightclubs, the right a wood retaining wall and a long drop into green-brown bush forest. Signs pointing into the scrub indicated clearings and houses and people; Danny saw the roofs of villas, Tudor steeples, the chimneys of extravagant log cabins. Gradually, the quality of the real estate declined — no ocean view, no sea breeze, the scrub thicker and thicker, no dwellings at all. When he hit the top of Malibu Ridge and started rolling downhill, he knew the dog farms had to be nearby — his vista was now dotted with tar-papered shacks and the heat was zooming up as the shade-producing foliage thinned out.

The Vice officer he’d talked to had the three farms tagged as a mile in on a dirt access road marked by a sign: PIT PUPS — AUTO PARTS. Danny found the sign just as the two-lane leveled off into a long, flat stretch, the San Fernando Valley in the distance. He swung onto it and wracked his Chevy’s undercarriage for three-quarters of a mile, sharecropper-like shacks on both sides of him. Then he saw them — three cinderblock huts encircled by a barbed-wire fence; three dirt yards littered with axles, drive shafts and cylinder blocks; three individually penned broods of squat, muscular dogs.

Danny pulled up to the fence, pinned his badge to his jacket front and tapped the horn — a little courtesy to the hut dwellers. The dogs barked at the noise; Danny walked over to the nearest stretch of wire and looked at them.

They weren’t the dogs from his dreams — black and sleek with flashing white teeth — they were brindle and tan and speckled terriers, barrel-chested, jaw-heavy and all muscle. They didn’t have the outsized genitalia of his dogs; their barks weren’t death snaps; they weren’t ugly — they were just animals bred for a mean utility. Danny eyed the ones penned up closest to him, wondering what they’d do if he gave them a pat on the head, then told them he was glad they didn’t look like some other dogs he knew.

“Rape-o, Hacksaw and Night Train. Them dogs won sixteen altogether. Southern California record for one man’s stable.”

Danny turned to face the voice. A very fat man in overalls was standing in the doorway of the shack just off to his left; he was wearing thick glasses and probably couldn’t see too well. Danny unpinned his badge and slipped it in his pocket, thinking the man was garrulous and ripe for an insurance agent ploy. “Can I talk to you for a second about your dogs?”

The man ambled to the fence, squinting and blinking. He said, “Booth Conklin. You in the market for a good pit hound?”

Danny looked into Booth Conklin’s eyes, one a free-floating waller, the other cloudy and pocked with cataracts. “Dan Up-shaw. You could start me off with some information on them.”

Conklin said, “I kin do better than that,” waddled to a speckled dog’s pen and flipped the latch. The beast made a dash, hit the fence with his front paws and started licking the wire. Danny knelt and scratched his snout, a slick pink tongue sliding over his fingers. He said, “Good boy, good fellow,” putting off Doc Layman’s theories as long longshots then and there.

Booth Conklin waddled back, holding a long piece of wood. “First lesson with pits is don’t talk baby talk to ’em or they won’t respect you. Rape-o here’s a leg pumper, just wants to get your trousers wet. My cousin Wallace named him Rape-o ’cause he’ll mount anything with bad intentions. Down, Rape-o, down!”

The pit bull kept nuzzling Danny’s fingers; Booth Conklin whacked him in the ass with his stick. Rape-o let out a shrill yowl, cowered away and started rubbing his backside in the dirt, all fours up and treading air. Danny felt his fists clenching; Conklin stuck the stick in Rape-o’s mouth. The dog clamped down his jaws; Conklin lifted him up and held him out at arm’s length. Danny gasped at the feat of strength.

Conklin spoke calmly, like holding seventy pounds of dog at the end of a stick was everyday stuff. “Pits dish it out, so they gotta be able to take it. I won’t sell you no dog if you gonna coddle it.”

Rape-o was hanging stock-still, groans vibrating from his throat. Every muscle was perfectly outlined; Danny thought that the animal was perfect mean beauty. He said, “I live in an apartment, so I can’t have a dog.”

“You just come out to look and jaw?”

Rape-o’s groans were getting deeper and more pleasured; his balls constricted and he popped an erection. Danny looked away. “Questions more than anything else.”

Conklin squinted, his eyes slits behind coke bottle glasses. “You ain’t a policeman, are you?”

“No, I’m an insurance investigator. I’m working a death claim and I thought you could help me with some questions.”

Conklin said, “I’m the helpful type, ain’t I, Rape-o,” moving the stick up and down, wrist flicks while the dog humped the air. Rape-o yowled, yipped and whimpered; Danny knew what was happening and fixed on the fat man’s coke bottles. Rape-o let out a final yowl/yip/groan, let go and fell to the dirt. Conklin laughed. “You ain’t got the sense of humor for pits, I can tell. Ask your questions, boy. I got a cousin who’s an insurance man, so I’m prone to the breed.”

Rape-o slinked over to the fence and tried to rub his snout up against Danny’s knee; Danny took a step backward. “It’s a murder claim. We know the victim was killed by a man, but the coroner thinks he may have let a dog or coyote or wolf at him after he was dead. What do you think of the idea?”

Conklin stuck a toothpick in his mouth and worked his words around it. “Mister, I know the canine family real good, and coyotes and wolves is out — ’less the killer captured and starved them and left the dead guy out for them to pick clean someplace amenable. What kind of damage on your victim?”

Danny watched Rape-o curl up in the dirt and go to sleep, sated, his muscles slack. “Localized. Teeth marks on the stomach, the intestines bitten and sucked on. It had to have happened someplace inside, because the body was clean when the police found it.”

Conklin snickered. “Then you rule out coyotes and wolves — they’d go crazy and eat the fucker whole, and you can’t exactly keep them inside the house. You thinkin’ pits? Dogs?”

“If anything, yes.”

“You sure them teeth marks ain’t human?”

“No, we’re not sure.”

Booth Conklin pointed to his pit pens. “Mister, I run these three farms for my cousins, and I know how to get what I want from dogs, and if I was crazy enough to want one of my pups to eat a man’s guts, I imagine I could think up a way for him to do it. I’ll tell you though, I’ve got a real taste for blood sport, and I couldn’t imagine any human being doin’ what you just told me.”

Danny said, “If you wanted to, how would you do it?”

Conklin petted Rape-o’s hindquarters; the dog lazily wagged its tail. “I’d starve him and pen him and let bitch dogs in heat parade around in front of his cage and make him crazy. I’d muzzle him and bind his legs and put a restrainer around his dick so he couldn’t get himself off. I’d get me a rubber glove and tweak his dick till he just about got there, then I’d clamp his balls so he couldn’t shoot. I’d get me some doggie menstrual blood and spray it in his eyes and nose for a week or so, till he came to think of it as food and love. Then, when I had me that dead man, I’d spread a big puddle of pussy blood right where I wanted him to bite. And, mister? I’d have a gun handy in case that tormented old dog decided to eat me. That answer satisfy you?”

Danny thought: No animals, it just isn’t right. But — have Doc Layman do organ taps on Goines, his body parts near the mutilations, tests for a second, nonhuman, blood type. He threw Booth Conklin a long-shot question. “What kind of people buy dogs from you?”

“Boys who love blood sport, and I ain’t talkin’ ’bout your crazy shit either.”

“Isn’t dog fighting against the law?”

“You know who to grease, then there ain’t no law. You sure you ain’t a policeman?”

Danny shook his head. “Amalgamated Insurance. Look, do you remember selling a dog to a tall, gray-haired man, middle-aged, within the past six months or so?”

Conklin gave Rape-o a gentle kick; the dog stirred, got up and trotted back to his pen. “Mister, my customers are young studs in pickup trucks and niggers lookin’ to have the toughest dog on the block.”

“Do any of your customers stand out as different than that? Unusual?”

Booth Conklin laughed so hard he almost swallowed his toothpick. “Back durin’ the war, these movie types saw my sign, came by and said they wanted to make a little home movie, two dogs dressed up with masks and costumes fightin’ to the death. I sold them boys two twenty-dollar dogs for a C-note apiece.”

“Did they make their movie?”

“I ain’t seen it advertised at Grauman’s Chinese, so how should I know? There’s this sanitarium over on the beach side of the Canyon, dryout place for all the Hollywood types. I figured they were visitin’ there and headin’ to the Valley when they saw my sign.”

“Were any of the men tall and gray-haired?”

Conklin shrugged. “I don’t really remember. One guy had a funny European accent, that I do recall. Besides, my eyes ain’t the best in the world. You about done with your questions, son?”

Ninety-five percent against on the blood bait theory; maybe a quash on his nightmares; useless dope on Hollywood lunacy. Danny said, “Thanks, Mr. Conklin. You were a big help.”

“My pleasure, son. Come back sometime. Rape-o likes you.”

Danny drove to the Station, sent out for a hamburger, fries and milk even though he wasn’t hungry, ate half the meal and called Doc Layman at the City Morgue.

“Norton Layman speaking.”

“It’s Danny Upshaw, Doctor.”

“Just the man I was going to call. Your news first or mine?”

Danny flashed: Rape-o chewing on Marty Goines’ midsection. He threw the remains of his burger in the wastebasket and said, “Mine. I’m sure the teethmarks are human. I just talked to a man who breeds fighting dogs, and he said your blood bait theory is feasible, but it would take a lot of planning, and I think the killing wasn’t that premeditated. He said dog menstrual blood would be the best bait, and I was thinking you could tap the cadaver’s organs next to his wounds, see if you got any foreign blood.”

Layman sighed. “Danny, the City of Los Angeles cremated Martin Mitchell Goines this morning. Autopsy completed, no claim on the body within forty-eight hours, ashes to ashes. I have some good news, though.”

Danny thought, “Shit”; said, “Shoot.”

“The slash wounds on the victim’s back interested me, and I remembered Gordon Kienzle’s wound book. Do you know it?”

“No.”

“Well, Kienzle is a pathologist who started out as an emergency room MD. He was fascinated with nonfatal assaults, and he put together a book of photos and specifications on man-inflicted woundings. I consulted it, and the cuts on Martin Mitchell Goines’ back are identical to the sample wounds listed under ‘Zoot Stick,’ a two-by-four with a razor blade or blades attached at the end. Now, the zoot stick dates back to ’42 and ’43. It was popular with anti-Mexican gangs and Riot Squad cops, who used it to slash the zoot suits certain Latin elements were sporting.”

Check the City/County Homicide files for zoot stick killings. Danny said, “It’s a good lead, Doc. Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I checked the files before I decided to call you. There are no zoot stick homicides on record. A friend of mine on the LAPD Riot Squad said 99 percent of your white-on-Mexican assaults weren’t reported and the Mexicans never took the damn sticks to each other, it was considered dirty pool or whatever. But it is a lead.”

Robe wad suffocating, hands or sash strangling, teeth biting, and now a zoot stick cutting. Why the different forms of brutality? Danny said, “See you in class, Doctor,” hung up and walked back to his car just to be moving. Jungle John Lembeck was leaning against the hood, his face bruised, one eye purple and closed. He said, “They got real rough with me, Mr. Upshaw. I wouldn’t have told Janice to ditz you, except they were hurting me so bad. I’m stand-up, Mr. Upshaw. So if you want payback, I’ll understand.”

Danny balled his right fist and got ready to swing it — but a flash of Booth Conklin and his pit hound stopped him.

Chapter Eleven

The cigars were Havanas, and their aroma made Mal wish he hadn’t quit smoking; Herman Gerstein’s pep talk and Dudley Smith’s accompaniment — smiles, nods, little chuckles — made him wish that he was back at the LAPD Academy interviewing recruits for the role of idealistic young leftist. His one day of it had yielded no one near appropriate, and starting their interrogations without a decoy at the ready felt like a mistake. But Ellis Loew and Dudley, fired up by Lesnick’s psychiatric dirt, were trigger-happy — and here they were getting ready to brace Mondo Lopez, Sammy Benavides and Juan Duarte, UAESers playing Indians on the set of Tomahawk Massacre. And now Gerstein’s schtick was making him itchy, too.

The Variety International boss was pacing behind his desk, waving his Havana; Mal kept thinking of Buzz Meeks sliming back into his life at the worst possible moment.

“...and I can tell you this, gentlemen: through passive resistance and other Commie shit the UAES is gonna force the Teamsters into kicking some ass, which is gonna make the UAES look good and us look bad. Commies like to get hurt. They’ll eat any amount of shit, smile like it’s filet mignon and ask for seconds, turn the other cheek, then bite you on the ass. Like those pachucos down on Set 23. Zoot suit punks who got themselves a union card, a license to give shit and think their own shit don’t stink. Am I right or is Eleanor Roosevelt a dyke?”

Dudley Smith laughed uproariously. “And a grand quiff diver she is. Dark meat, too, I’ve heard. And we all know about the late Franklin’s bent for little black terriers. Mr. Gerstein, Lieutenant Considine and I would like to thank you for your contributions to our endeavor and your hospitality this morning.”

Mal took the cue and stood up; Herman Gerstein reached into a humidor and grabbed a handful of cigars. Dudley got to his feet; Gerstein came at them like a fullback, pumping hands, stuffing Havanas in all their available pockets, showing them the door with hard back slaps. When it closed behind him, Dudley said, “No flair for language. You can take the Jew out of the gutter, but you can’t take the gutter out of the Jew. Are you ready to interrogate, Captain?”

Mal looked down at the UAES picket line, caught a back view of a woman in slacks and wondered if she was Claire De Haven. “Okay, Lieutenant.”

“Ah, Malcolm, what a grand wit you have!”

They took Herman Gerstein’s private elevator down to ground level and two rows of sound stages separated by a center walkway. The buildings were tan stucco, silo tall and humpbacked at the top, with sandwich boards propped up by the front doors — the name, director and shooting schedule of the movie crayoned on white plastic. Actors riding bicycles — cowboys, Indians, baseball players, Revolutionary War soldiers — whizzed by; motorized carts hauled camera equipment; technicians hobnobbed by a snack cart where a Roman centurion dished out doughnuts and coffee. The enclosed sets extended for nearly a quarter mile, black numbers above the doors marking them. Mal walked ahead of Dudley Smith, running Benavides/Lopez/Duarte file dirt through his head, hoping an on-the-job bracing wasn’t too much, too quick.

Dudley caught up outside Set 23. Mal rang the buzzer; a woman in a saloon girl outfit opened the door and popped her gum at them. Mal displayed his badge and identification. “We’re with the District Attorney’s Office, and we want to speak to Mondo Lopez, Juan Duarte and Sammy Benavides.”

The saloon girl gave her gum a last pop and spoke with a thick Brooklyn accent. “They’re on a take. They’re the hotheaded young Indians who want to attack the fort, but the wise old chief don’t want them to. They’ll be finished in a few minutes, and you can—”

Dudley cut in. “We don’t require a plot synopsis. If you’ll tell them it’s the police, they’ll adjust their busy schedule to accommodate us. And please do it now.”

The girl swallowed her gum and walked in front of them. Dudley smiled; Mal thought: he’s a spellbinder — don’t let him run the show.

The sound stage was cavernous: wire-strewn walls, lights and cameras on dollies, anemic-looking horses tethered to equipment poles and people standing around doing nothing. Right in the middle was an olive drab teepee, obviously fashioned from army surplus material, Indian symbols painted on the sides — candy apple red lacquer — like it was some brave’s customized hot rod. Cameras and tripod lights were fixed on the teepee and the four actors squatting in front of it — an old pseudo-Indian white man and three pseudo-Indian Mexicans in their late twenties.

The saloon girl stopped them a few feet behind the cameras, whispering. “There. The Latin lover types.” The old chief intoned words of peace; the three young braves delivered lines about the white eyes speaking with forked tongue, their voices pure Mex. Someone yelled, “Cut!” and the scene became a blur of moving bodies.

Mal elbowed into it, catching the three pulling cigarettes and lighters out of their buckskins. He made them make him as a cop; Dudley Smith walked over; the braves gave each other spooked looks.

Dudley flashed his shield. “Police. Am I talking to Mondo Lopez, Juan Duarte and Samuel Benavides?”

The tallest brave slipped a rubber band off his pony tail and shaped his hair into a pachuco do — duck’s ass back, pompadour front. He said, “I’m Lopez.”

Mal opened up his end strong. “Care to introduce your friends, Mr. Lopez? We don’t have all day.”

The other two squared their shoulders and stepped forward, the move half bravado, half kowtow to authority. Mal tagged the short, muscular one as Duarte, former Sinarquista squad leader, zoot suits and swastika armbands until the CP brought him around; his lanky pal as Benavides — Mr. Tight Lips to Doc Lesnick, his file a complete bore except for one session devoted to an account of how twelve-year-old Sammy molested his nine-year-old sister, a razor blade to her throat. Both men did a sullen foot dance; Muscles said, “I’m Benavides.”

Mal pointed to a side door, then touched his tie clip — LAPD semaphore for Let Me Run It. “My name’s Considine, and this is Lieutenant Smith. We’re with the DA’s Office, and we’d like to ask you a few questions. It’s just routine, and we’ll have you back at work in a few minutes.”

Juan Duarte said, “We got a choice?”

Dudley chuckled; Mal put a hand on his arm. “Yes. Here or the Hall of Justice jail.”

Lopez cocked his head toward the exit; Benavides and Duarte fell in next to him, lit cigarettes and walked outside. Actors and technicians gawked at the Indian-paleface migration. Mal schemed a razzle-dazzle, himself abrasive at first, then making nice, Dudley asking the hard questions, him playing savior at the end — the big push to glom them as friendly witnesses.

The three halted their march just out the door, leaning against the wall, nonchalant. Dudley stationed himself to the left of Mal, about a half step back. Mal let the men smoke in silence, then said, “Boy, have you guys got it made.”

Three sets of eyes on the ground, three phony Indians in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Mal rattled the leader’s cage. “Can I ask you a question, Mr. Lopez?”

Mondo Lopez looked up. “Sure, Officer.”

“Mr. Lopez, you must be taking home close to a C-note a week. Is that true?”

Mondo Lopez said, “Eighty-one and change. Why?”

Mal smiled. “Well, you’re making almost half as much as I am, and I’m a college graduate and a ranking police officer with sixteen years’ experience. All of you quit high school, isn’t that true?”

A quick look passed among the three. Lopez smirked, Benavides shrugged and Duarte took a long drag on his cigarette. Mal saw them sighting in on his ploy way too soon and tried for sugar. “Look, I’ll tell you why I brought it up. You guys have beat the odds. You ran with the First Street Flats and the Sinarquistas, did some Juvie time and stayed clean. That’s impressive, and we’re not here to roust you for anything you yourselves did.”

Juan Duarte ground out his cigarette. “You mean this is about our friends?”

Mal dredged the files for ammo, grabbing the fact that all three tried to join the service after Pearl Harbor. “Look, I’ve checked your Selective Service records. You quit the Sinarquistas and the Flats, you tried to fight the Japs, you were on the right side with Sleepy Lagoon. When you were wrong you copped to it. That’s the sign of a good man in my book.”

Sammy Benavides said, “Is a stool pigeon a good man in your book, Mr. Po—”

Duarte silenced him with a sharp elbow. “Who you trying to tell us is wrong now? Who you want to be wrong?”

Finally a good opening. “How about the Party, gentlemen? How about Uncle Joe Stalin getting under the sheets with Hitler? How about slave labor camps in Siberia and all the stuff the Party has pulled in America while they condoned the stuff going on over in Russia? Gentlemen, I’ve been a cop for sixteen years and I’ve never asked a man to snitch his friends. But I’ll ask any man to snitch his enemies, especially if they also happen to be mine.”

Mal caught his breath, thinking of Summations 115 at Stanford Law; Dudley Smith stood easy at his side. Mondo Lopez eyed the blacktop, then his Tomahawk Massacre co-stars. Then all three started clapping.

Dudley flushed; Mal could see his red face going toward purple. Lopez brought a flat palm slowly down, killing the applause. “How about you tell us what this is all about?”

Mal thrashed for file dirt and came up empty. “This is a preliminary investigation into Communist influence in Hollywood. And we’re not asking you to snitch your friends, just our enemies.”

Benavides pointed west, toward the front office and two picket lines. “And this has got nothing to do with Gerstein wanting our union out and the Teamsters in?”

“No, this is a preliminary investigation that has nothing to do with whatever current labor troubles your union is involved in. This is—”

Duarte interrupted. “Why us? Why me and Sammy and Mondo?”

“Because you’re reformed criminals and you’d make damn good witnesses.”

“Because you thought we’d be jail-wise and bleed easy?”

“No, because you’ve been zooters and Reds, and we figured that maybe you had the brains to know it was all shit.”

Benavides kicked in, a leery eye on Dudley. “You know the HUAC Committee pulled this snitch routine, and good people got hurt. Now it’s happening again, and you want us to fink?”

Mal thought of Benavides as a kiddie raper talking decency; he could feel Dudley thinking the same thing, going crazy with it. “Look, I know corruption. The HUAC chairman is in Danbury for bribery, HUAC itself was reckless. And I’ll admit the LAPD screwed up on the Sleepy Lagoon thing. But you can’t tell—”

Mondo Lopez shouted, “Screwed up! Pendejo, it was a fucking pogrom against my people by your people! You’re sweet-talking the wrong people on the wrong case to get the wrong fuck—”

Dudley stepped in front of the three, his suitcoat open, 45 automatic, sap and brass knuckles in plain view. His bulk cast the Mexicans in one big shadow and his brogue went up octaves, but didn’t crack. “Your seventeen filthy compatriots murdered José Diaz in cold blood and beat the gas chamber because traitors and perverts and deluded weaklings banded up to save them. And I will brook no disrespect for a brother officer in my presence. Do you understand?”

Complete silence, the UAES men still in Dudley’s shadow, stagehands eyeballing the action from the walkway. Mal stepped up to speak for himself, taller than Dudley but half his breadth. Scared. Pendejo. He got ready to give signals, then Mondo Lopez hit back. “Those seventeen got fucked by the puto LAPD and the puto City court system. And that ees la fucking verdad.”

Dudley moved forward so that all there was between him and Lopez was the arc of a short kidney punch. Benavides backed away, shaking; Duarte mumbled that the SLDC got anonymous letters making a white guy for José Diaz, but nobody believed it; Benavides pulled him out of harm’s way. Mal grabbed Dudley’s arm; the big man flung him back and lowered his brogue to baritone range. “Did you enjoy perverting justice with the SLDC, Mondo? Did you enjoy the favors of Claire De Haven — filthy rich capitalista, tight with the City Council, a real love for that undersized spic cock?”

Benavides and Duarte had their backs to the wall and were sliding away from the scene an inch at a time. Mal stood frozen; Lopez glared at Dudley; Dudley laughed. “Perhaps that was unfair of me, lad. We all know Claire spread her favors thin, but I doubt she would have stooped to your level. Your SLDC friend Chaz Minear, now that’s another story. Was he there for the prime Mex butthole?”

Benavides moved toward Dudley; Mal snapped out of his freeze, grabbed him and pushed him into the wall, seeing razor blades held to a little girl’s throat. Benavides shouted, “That puto bought boys at a puto escort service, he didn’t do us!” Mal pressed harder, sweat-saturated suit against soaked buckskins, hard muscles straining at the body of a thin man almost forty. Benavides suddenly went slack; Mal took his hands off him and got a file flash: Sammy railing against queers to Doc Lesnick, a weak point they could have played smart.

Sammy Benavides slid down the wall and watched the Smith-Lopez eyeball duel. Mal tried to make his hands give signals, but couldn’t. Juan Duarte was standing by the walkway, scoping the business long-distance. Dudley broke the standoff with a pivot and a lilting brogue aside. “I hope you learned a lesson today, Captain. You can’t play sob sister with scum. You should have joined me on the Hat Squad. You would have learned then in grand fashion.”

Round one blown to hell.

Mal drove home, thinking of captain’s bars snatched away from him, smothered in Dudley Smith’s huge fists. And he had been partly at fault, going too easy when the Mexicans came on too smart, thinking he could reason with them, wheedle and draw them into logical traps. He’d thought of submitting a memo to Ellis Loew — lay off Sleepy Lagoon, it’s too sympathetic — then he tossed it into the pot for empathy, hit a nerve with the Mexes and upset Dudley’s bee in the bonnet on the case. And Dudley had stood up for him before he himself did, which made it hard to fault him for losing his temper; which meant that maybe direct UAES approaches were dead and they should concentrate solely on decoy infiltration and sub-rosa interrogations. His specialty — which didn’t lessen the sting of Dudley’s Hat Squad crack, and which increased the need for Buzz Meeks to join the grand jury team.

All debits, but on the plus side Dudley’s ranting didn’t put out information restricted to Lesnick’s files, leaving that avenue of manipulation still open. What was troubling was a cop as smart as the Irishman taking a nondirect attack so personally, then hitting his “brother officer” below the belt.

Pendejo.

Scared.

And Dudley Smith knows it.

At home, Mal took advantage of the empty house, dumping his sweaty clothes, showering, changing to a sport shirt and khakis and settling into the den to write a long memo to Loew — heavily stressing that there should be no further direct questioning of UAES members until their decoy was planted — a decoy now being a necessity. He was a page in when he realized that it had to be partly a gloss job — there was no way to accurately describe what happened at Variety International without portraying himself as a weakling or a fool. So he did gloss it, and filled up another page with warnings on the Loew choice for trouble-shooter — Buzz Meeks — the man who held the possible distinction of being the single most crooked cop in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department — heroin skimmer, shakedown artist, bagman and now a glorified pimp for Howard Hughes. After that page, he knew it was futile; if Meeks wanted in he was in — Hughes was the heaviest contributor to the grand jury bankroll and Meeks’ bossman — what he said would go. After two pages he knew why the tack wasn’t worth pursuing: Meeks was absolutely the best man for the job. And the best man for the job was afraid of him, just like he was afraid of Dudley Smith. Even though there was no reason for the fear.

Mal threw the Meeks memo in the wastebasket and started thinking decoy. The LAPD Academy was already out — straight arrow youths with no spark for impersonation. The Sheriff’s Academy was unlikely — the Brenda Allen mess and the LASD sheltering Mickey Cohen made it unlikely that they would lend the City a smart young recruit. Their best bet was a rank-and-file City officer, smart, good-looking, adaptable and ambitious, mid to late twenties, a malleable young man without a hard-edged cop quality.

Where?

Hollywood Division was out — half the men had been implicated over Brenda Allen, had had their pictures in the paper, were running scared and angry and wild — there was even a rumor floating around that three men on the Hollywood Detective Squad had been behind last August’s shootout at Sherry’s — a botched snuff attempt on Mickey Cohen that wounded three and killed a Cohen utility trigger. Out.

And Central was packed with unqualified rookies who made the Department because of their war records; 77th Street, Newton and University featured outsized crackers hired on to keep the Negro citizenry in line. Hollenbeck might be a good place to look — but East LA was Mex, Benavides, Lopez and Duarte still had ties there, and that might blow their decoy’s cover. The various detective divisions were a possible stalking ground — if they could find a man who didn’t come off as irredeemably jaded.

Mal grabbed his LAPD station directory and started scanning it, one eye on the wall clock as it inched toward 3:00 and Stefan’s home-from-school time. He was about to start calling CO’s for preliminary screening talks when he heard footsteps in the hall; he swiveled in his chair, dropped his arms and got ready to let his son dogpile him.

It was Celeste. She looked at Mal’s open arms until he dropped them; she said, “I told Stefan to stay late after school in order that I should talk to you.”

“Yes?”

“The look on your face does not to make this easy.”

“Spill it, goddamn you.”

Celeste clutched her beaded opera purse, a favored relic of Prague, 1935. “I am going to divorce you. I have met a nice man, a man who is cultured and will make Stefan and me a better home.”

Mal thought: perfect calm, she knows her effects. He said, “I won’t let you. Don’t hurt my boy or I’ll hurt you.”

“You cannot. To the mother the child belongs.”

Maim her, let her know he is the law. “Is he rich, Celeste? If you have to fuck to survive, you should fuck rich men. Right, Fräulein? Or powerful men, like Kempflerr.”

“You always return to that because it is so ugly and because it excites you so.”

Match point; Mal felt his sense of gamesmanship go blooey. “I saved your wretched rich-girl ass. I killed the man who made you a whore. I gave you a home.”

Celeste smiled, her standard parting of thin lips over perfect teeth. “You killed Kempflerr to prove yourself not a coward. You wanted to be like a real policeman, and you were willing to destroy yourself to do it. Only your dumb luck saved you. And you keep your secrets so badly.”

Mal stood up on punch-drunk legs. “I killed someone who deserved to die.”

Celeste fondled her purse, fingers over beadwork embroidery. Mal saw it as stage business, the buildup to a punch line. “No comeback for that one?”

Celeste put on her deepest iceberg smile. “Herr Kempflerr was very kind to me, and I only made up his nasty sexuality to excite you. He was a gentle lover, and when the war was almost over, he sabotaged the ovens and saved thousands of lives. You are lucky that military governor liked you, Malcolm. Kempflerr was going to help the Americans look for other Nazis. And I only married you because I felt very bad about the lies I seduced you with.”

Mal tried to say “No,” but couldn’t form the word; Celeste broadened her smile. Mal saw it as a target and ran to her. He grabbed her neck, held her to the doorway and aimed hard right hands at her mouth, teeth splintering up through her lips, cutting his knuckles. He hit her and hit her and hit her; he would have gone on hitting her, but “Mutti!” and tiny fists pummeling his legs made him stop and run out of the house, afraid of a little boy — his own.

Chapter Twelve

The phone wouldn’t quit ringing.

First it was Leotis Dineen, calling to tell him that Art Aragon knocked out Lupe Pimentel in the second round, raising his debt to twenty-one hundred even, with a vig payment due tomorrow. Next was the real estate man up in Ventura County. His glad tidings: the top offer for Buzz’s dry-rotted, shadeless, rock-laden, non-irrigable, poorly located and generally misanthropic farmland was fourteen dollars an acre, the offerer, the pastor of First Pentecostal Divine Eminence Church, who wanted to turn it into a cemetery for the sanctified pets of members of his congregation. Buzz said twenty per, minimum; ten minutes later the phone rang again. No salutation, just, “I didn’t tell Mickey, because you’re not worth going to the gas chamber for.” He suggested a romantic drink somewhere; Audrey Anders replied, “Fuck you.”

Skating on the stupidest stupid move of his life made him feel cocky, despite Dineen’s implied warning: my money or your kneecaps. Buzz thought of cash shakedowns — him against fences and hotel crawlers he’d leaned on as a cop, then nixed the notion — he’d gotten older and flabbier, while they’d probably gotten meaner and better armed. There was just himself against 50–50 Mal Considine, who held a mean stare but otherwise looked pretty withered. He picked up the phone and dialed his boss’s private number at the Bel-Air Hotel.

“Yes? Who is this?”

“Me. Howard, I want in on that grand jury turkey shoot. That job still open?”

Chapter Thirteen

Danny was trying hard to stay under the speed limit, hauling into Hollywood — City jurisdiction — with the speedometer needle straddling forty. A few minutes ago a Lexington State administrator had called the station; a letter from Marty Goines, postmarked four days before, had just arrived at the hospital. It was addressed to a patient there and contained nothing but innocuous stuff about jazz — and the word that Goines had moved into an above-garage flop at 2307 North Tamarind. It was a scalding hot lead; if the address had been County ground, he’d have grabbed a black-and-white and rolled red lights and siren.

2307 was a half mile north of the Boulevard, in the middle of a long block of wood-framed Tudors. Danny parked curbside and saw that the cold afternoon had kept the locals indoors — no one was out taking the air. He grabbed his evidence kit, trotted up to the door of the front house and rang the bell.

Ten seconds, no answer. Danny walked back to the garage, saw a shacklike built-on atop it and took rickety steps up to the door. He tapped the pane three times — silence — got out his pocket knife and stuck it into the lock/door jamb juncture. A few seconds of prying, and snap! Danny scanned for witnesses, saw none, pushed the door open and closed it behind him.

The smell hit him first: metallic, acidic. Danny slow-motioned his evidence kit to the floor, drew his gun and fingered the wall for a light switch. His thumb flicked one on abruptly, before he’d clamped down his nerves to look. He saw a one-room dive turned slaughterhouse.

Blood on the walls. Huge, unmistakable streaks, exemplary textbook spit marks: the killer expelling big mouthfuls, spritzing the red out through his teeth, drawing little patterns on cheap floral wallpaper. Four whole walls of it — dips and curlicues and one design that looked like an elaborate letter W. Blood matting a threadbare throw rug, blood in large caked pools on the linoleum floor, blood saturating a light-colored sofa oozing stuffing, blood splashed across a stack of newspapers next to a table holding a hot plate, saucepan and single can of soup. Much too much blood to come from one ravaged human being.

Danny hyperventilated; he saw two doorless doorways off the left wall. He holstered his .45, jammed his hands in his pockets so as not to leave prints and checked the closest one out.

The bathroom.

White walls covered with vertical and horizontal blood lines, perfectly straight, intersecting at right angles, the killer getting the knack. A bathtub, the sides and bottom caked with a pinkish-brown matter that looked like blood mixed with soapsuds. A stack of men’s clothing — shirts, trousers, a herringbone sports coat — folded atop the toilet seat.

Danny turned on the sink faucet with a knuckle, lowered his head, splashed and drank. Looking up, he caught his face in the mirror; for a second he didn’t think it was him. He walked back to the main room, took rubber gloves from his evidence kit, slipped them on, returned to the bathroom and sifted through the clothing, dropping it on the floor.

Three pairs of pants. Three skivvy shirts. Three rolled-up pairs of socks. One sweater, one windbreaker, one sports jacket.

Three victims.

One other doorway.

Danny backed out of the bathroom and pivoted into a small kitchenette, expecting a gigantic rush of crimson. What he got was perfect tidiness: scrub brush, Ajax and a soap bar lined up on a rack above a clean sink; clean dishes in a plastic drainer; a 1949 calendar tacked to the wall, the first eleven months ripped off, no notations on the page for December. A telephone on a nightstand placed against the side wall and a battered Frigidaire next to the sink.

No blood, no horror artwork. Danny felt his stomach settle and his pulse take over, jolts like wires frazzling. Two other stiffs dumped someplace; a B&E on LAPD turf — Hollywood Division, where the Brenda Allen mess was the worst, where they hated the Sheriff’s Department the most. His violation of Captain Dietrich’s direct order: no strongarm, no prima donna in the City. No way to report what he found. An outside chance of the killer bringing number four here.

Danny gulped from the sink, swathed his face, let his gloved hands and jacket sleeves get sopping. He thought of tossing the pad for a bottle; his stomach heaved; he picked up the phone and dialed the station.

Karen Hiltscher answered. “West Hollywood Sheriff’s. May I help you?”

Danny’s voice wasn’t his. “It’s me, Karen.”

“Danny? You sound strange.”

“Just listen. I’m someplace where I shouldn’t be and I need something, and I need you to call me back here when you’ve got it. And nobody can know. Nobody. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Danny, please don’t be so rough.”

“Just listen. I want your verbal on every dead body report filed city and countywide over the past forty-eight hours, and I want you to call me back here with it, quick. Ring twice, hang up and call again. Got it?”

“Yes. Sweetie, are you all—”

“Damnit, just listen. I’m at Hollywood-4619, it’s wrong and I could get in big trouble for being here, so don’t tell anybody. Do you fucking understand?”

Karen whispered, “Yes, sweetie,” and let her end of the line go dead. Danny hung up, wiped sweat off his neck and thought of ice water. He saw the Frigidaire, reached over and opened the door, bolted for the sink when he caught what was inside.

Two eyeballs coated with clear jelly in an ashtray. A severed human finger on top of a package of green beans.

Danny vomited until his chest ached and his stomach retched itself empty; he turned on the faucet and doused himself until water seeped inside his rubber gloves and he snapped that a sopping wet cop couldn’t forensic a crime scene that Vollmer or Maslick would have killed for. He turned the water off and shook himself half dry, hands braced against the sink ledge. The phone rang; he heard it as a gunshot, pulled his piece and aimed it at nothing.

Another ring, silence, a third ring. Danny picked up the receiver. “Yes? Karen?”

The girl had on her singsong pout. “Three DOAs. Two female Caucasians, one male Negro. The females were a pill suicide and a car wreck and the Negro was a wino who died of exposure, and you owe me the Coconut Grove for being so nasty.”

Eight walls of blood spritz and a would-be lady cop who wanted to go dancing. Danny laughed and opened the icebox door for more comic relief. The finger was long, white and thin, and the eyeballs were brown and starting to shrivel. “Anywhere, sweetie, anywhere.”

“Danny, are you sure you’re—”

“Karen, listen real close. I’m staying here to see who shows up. Are you working a double shift tonight?”

“Until eight tomorrow.”

“Then do this. I want the City and County air monitored for male Caucasian DBs. Stay at your switchboard, keep the City and County boxes on low and listen for homicide squeals with male Caucasian victims. Call me here the same way you just did if you get any. Have you got that?”

“Yes, Danny.”

“And sweetie, nobody can know. Not Dietrich, not anyone on the squad, not anyone.”

A long sigh, Karen’s version of Katharine Hepburn exhausted. “Yes, Deputy Upshaw,” then a soft click.

Danny hung up and forensiced the pad.

He scraped dirt and dust samples off the floor in all three rooms, placing them in individually marked glassine envelopes; he got out his Rolleiflex evidence camera and shot wide angles and close-ups of the blood patterns. He scraped, tagged and tubed bathtub blood, couch and chair blood, wall blood, rug blood and floor blood; he took fiber samples from the three sets of clothes and wrote down the brand names on the labels.

Dusk came on. Danny kept the lights off, working with a pen flash held in his teeth. He dusted for latent prints, exhausting rolls of touch, grab and press surfaces, getting a rubber glove set — most likely the killer — and a full right- and partial left-hand unknown — which did not match the Marty Goines print abstract. Knowing Goines latents should appear, he kept going and was rewarded — a left spread off the kitchen sink ledge. Reconstructing the killer showering himself free of blood, he rolled every touch surface in the bathroom — bringing up one-, two-, three-finger and full hand spans, surgical rubber tips, the hands of a large man, widely spaced where he braced himself into the shower/tub wall.

Midnight.

Danny took the severed finger out of the icebox, rolled it in ink, then on paper. A matchup to the middle right digit on the unknown set. The cut point was jagged, just above the knuckle, cauterized by scorching — charred black flesh scabbing it up. Danny checked the hot plate in the living room. Paydirt: fried skin stuck to the coils; the killer wanted to preserve the finger, a shock to whoever discovered the carnage.

Or was he planning to return with another victim?

And was he keeping the pad under surveillance to know when that option was blown?

12:45.

Danny gave the place a last toss. The one closet was empty; there was nothing secreted under the rugs; a penlight wall scan gave him another notch on his reconstruction: approximately two thirds of the blood caking was texturally uniform — victims two and three were almost certainly killed at the same time. Checking out the floor on his knees got him a last piece of evidence: a glob of hardened white paste residue, neutral in smell. He tagged and bagged it, tagged and bagged Marty Goines’ eyeballs, sat down on the nonblooded edge of the sofa, gun out and resting on his knee — and waited.

Exhaustion crept in. Danny closed his eyes and saw blood patterns superimposed on the lids, white on red, the colors reversed like photographic negatives. His hands were numb from hours of working in rubber gloves; he imagined the metallic smell of the room as the smell of good whiskey, started tasting it, shut down the thought and ran theories in his head so the taste would stay away.

2307 Tamarind was a thirty-minute drive to the Strip tops — the killer had his maximum time of two hours to play with Marty Goines’ corpse and decorate the pad. The killer was monstrously, suicidally bold to kill two other men — probably at the same time — in the same place. The killer probably had the subconscious desire to be captured that many psychopaths evinced; he was an exhibitionist and was probably distressed that the Goines snuff had received virtually no publicity. The other two bodies had probably been dumped someplace where they would be found, which meant that last night or yesterday was when murders two and three occurred. Questions: were the patterns on the wall significant in design or just blood spat in rage? What did the letter W mean? Were the three victims randomly chosen on the basis of homosexuality or dope addiction, or were they previously known to the killer?

More exhaustion, his brain wires frazzling from too much information, too few connecting threads. Danny took to looking at his luminous wristwatch dial to stay awake; 3:11 had just passed when he heard the outside lock being picked.

He got up and padded to the curtains beside the light switch, the door a foot away, his gun arm extended and braced with his left hand. The locking mechanism gave with a sharp ka-thack; the door opened; Danny hit the switch.

A fortyish fat man was frozen by the light. Danny took a step forward; the man pivoted into the muzzle of a .45 revolver. His hands jerked toward his pockets; Danny toed the door shut and barrel-lashed him across the face, knocking him into wallpaper zigzagged with blood. The fat man let out a yelp, saw the wall gore for real and hit his knees, hands clasped, ready to beg.

Danny squatted beside him, gun aimed at the trickle of blood on his cheek. The fat man mumbled Hail Marys; Danny fished out his cuffs, slid his .45 out of trouble, worked the ratchets and slapped them around prayer-pressed wrists. The bracelet teeth snapped; the man looked at Danny like he was Jesus. “Cop? You’re a cop?”

Danny gave him the once-over. Convict pallor, prison shoes, secondhand clothes and grateful that a policeman caught him breaking and entering, a parole violation and a dime minimum. The man looked at the walls, brought his eyes down, saw that he was kneeling two inches from a pool of blood with a dead cockroach basted in the middle. “Goddamnit, tell me you’re—”

Danny grabbed his throat and squeezed it. “Sheriff’s. Keep your voice down and play straight with me and I’ll let you walk out of here.” With his free hand, he gave Fats a pocket and waistband frisk, pulling out wallet, keys, a switchblade and a flat leather case, compact but heavy, with a zippered closure.

He eased off his throat hold and examined the wallet, dropping cards and papers to the floor. There was an expired California driver’s license for Leo Theodore Bordoni, DOB 6/19/09; a County Parole identification card made out to the same name; a plasma bank donor slip stating that Leo Bordoni, type AB+, could sell his plasma again on January 18, 1950. The cards were racetrack stuff — voided betting stubs, receipts, matchbook covers with the names of hot horses and race numbers jotted on the back.

Danny let go of Leo Theodore Bordoni’s neck, the fat man’s reward for a parlay — reaction to the gore, blood type and physical description — that eliminated him as a killing suspect. Bordoni gurgled and wiped blood off his face; Danny unzipped the leather case and saw a set of bonaroos: pick gouger, baby glass cutter, chisel pry and window snap, all laid out on green velvet. He said, “B&E, possession of burglar’s tools, parole violation. How many falls have you taken, Leo?”

Bordoni massaged his neck. “Three. Where’s Marty?”

Danny pointed to the walls. “Where do you think?”

“Oh fucking God.”

“That’s right. Old Marty that nobody knows much about, except maybe you. You know about Governor Warren’s habitual offender law?”

“Uh... no.”

Danny picked up his .45 and holstered it, helped Bordoni to his feet and shoved him into the one chair not soaked red/brown. “The law says any fourth fall costs you twenty to life. No plea bargains, no appeals, nada. You boost a fucking pack of cigarettes, it’s a double dime. So you tell me everything there is to know about you and Marty Goines, or you hang twenty up at Quentin.”

Bordoni flicked his eyes around the room. Danny walked to the curtains, looked out at dark yards and houses and thought of his killer leaving him, clued to a trap by the light burning. He flipped the wall switch; Bordoni let out a long breath. “Really bad for Marty? That the truth?”

Danny could see neon signs on Hollywood Boulevard, miles away. “The worst, so tell me.”

Bordoni talked while Danny looked out at neon and dwindling headlights. “I came out of Quentin two weeks ago, seven out of seven for heists. I knew Marty when he did his turn for reef, and we were buddies. Marty knew I had a parole date, and he knew my sister’s number in Frisco. He’d send me these letters every once in a while after he got out, phony name, no return address, ’cause he was an absconder and he didn’t want the censors to get a handle on him.

“So Marty calls me at my sister’s five days or so ago, maybe the thirtieth, maybe the thirty-first. He says he’s playing horn for peanuts and hates it, he took the cure, he’s gonna stay off horseback and pull jobs — burglaries. He says he just got together with an old partner and they needed a third man for a house-break gang. I told him I’d be down in a week or so, and he gave me this address and told me to let myself in. That’s me and Marty.”

Darkness made the room pulsate. Danny said, “What was the partner’s name? Where did Goines know him from?”

“Marty didn’t say.”

“Did he describe him? Was he a partner of Marty’s when he was pulling jobs back in ’43 and ’44?”

Bordoni said, “Mister, it was a two-minute conversation, and I didn’t even know Marty pulled jobs back then.”

“Did he mention an old running partner with a burned or scarred face? He’d be mid to late twenties by now.”

“No. Marty was always close-mouthed. I was his only pal at Q, and I was surprised when he said he had an old partner. Marty wasn’t really the partner type.”

Danny shifted gears. “When Goines sent you letters, where were they postmarked and what did they say?”

Bordoni sighed like he was bored; Danny thought of giving him a peek at his old pal’s eyeballs. “Spill, Leo.”

“They were from all over the country, and they were just jive — jazz stuff, wish you were here, the horses, baseball.”

“Did Marty mention other musicians he was playing with?”

Bordoni laughed. “No, and I think he was ashamed to. He was gigging all these Podunk clubs, and all he said was ‘I’m the best trombone they’ve ever seen,’ meaning Marty knew he wasn’t much but these cats he was gigging with were really from hunger.”

“Did he mention anybody at all, other than this old partner you were going to team up with?”

“Nix. Like I told you, it was a two-minute conversation.”

The Miller High Life sign atop the Taft Building blipped off, jarring Danny. “Leo, was Marty Goines a homosexual?”

“Marty! Are you crazy! He wouldn’t even pork nancy boys up at Q!”

“Anybody up there ever make advances to him?”

“Marty would have died before he let some brunser bust his cherry!”

Danny hit the light switch, hauled Bordoni up by his cuff chain and twisted his head so that it was level with a long slash of wall blood. “That’s your friend. That’s why you were never here and you never met me. That’s heat you don’t want, so you just stay frosty and think of this thing as a nightmare.”

Bordoni bobbed his head; Danny let him go and unlocked the cuffs. Bordoni gathered his stuff up off the floor, taking extra care with his tool case. At the door, he said, “This is personal with you, right?”

Buddy Jastrow long gone, four shots a night not enough, his textbooks and classes not real. Danny said, “It’s all I’ve got.”

Alone again, Danny stared out the window, watching movie marquees blink off, turning the Boulevard into just another long, dark street. He added “possible burglary partner” to “tall, gray-haired,” “middle-aged,” “homosexual,” and “heroin-wise”; he put off Bordoni’s protestations that Marty wasn’t fruit as sincere but wrong — and wondered how long he could stick inside the room without going crazy, without risking the landlord or someone from the front house dropping by.

Looking for house lights that might be Him looking back was childish; eye prowling for sinister shapes was a kid’s game — the kind of game he played by himself as a schoolboy. Danny yawned, sat down in the chair and tried to sleep.

He got something near sleep, an exhaustion shortcut where he wasn’t quite out, couldn’t quite form thoughts and saw pictures that he wasn’t making himself. Street signs, trucks, a saxophone man running scales on his instrument, flower patterns, a dog at the end of a stick. The dog made him twitch; he tried to open his eyes, felt them gummed and eased back to wherever he was going. Autopsy instruments hot from an autoclave, Janice Modine, a ’39 Olds rocking on its suspension, a look inside, Tim pumping Roxy Beausoleil, an ether-soaked rag up to her nose so she’d giggle and pretend it was nice.

Danny jerked out of it, eyes opening to light through a part in the curtains. He swallowed dry phlegm, caught a reprise of his last image, got up and went to the kitchen for a drink of sink water. He was on a big gulping handful when the phone rang.

A second ring, stop, a third ring. Danny picked it up. “Karen?”

The girl was almost breathless. “City radio. See the maintenance man, Griffith Park, the hiking trail up from the observatory parking lot. Two dead men, LAPD rolling. Sweetie, did you know this was going to happen?”

Danny said, “Just pretend it didn’t happen,” slammed the phone down, grabbed his evidence kit and walked out of the upholstered slaughterhouse. He forced himself not to run to his car, eyes circuiting for onlookers, seeing none. Griffith Park was a mile away. He stripped off his rubber gloves, felt his hand tingle and gunned it there.

Two LAPD black-and-whites beat him.

Danny parked beside them at the foot of the hiking trail, the last stretch of asphalt before the stretch of mountain that formed the park’s northern perimeter. No other cars were in the lot; he could see four bluesuits up ahead where the trail cut into woods, a longtime haven for winos and lovebirds without the price of a room.

Danny marked the time — 6:14 A.M. — got his badge out and walked up. The cops wheeled around, hands to holsters, shakes and queasy looks. Danny pointed to his tin. “West Hollywood Sheriff’s. I’m working a dumped body case, and I heard what you got over the air at the station.”

Two cops nodded; two turned away, like a County detective was lower than dirt. Danny swallowed dry; West Hollywood Substation was a half hour away, but the dummies didn’t blink at the time glitch. They separated to give him a view; Danny got a mid-shot of hell.

Two dead men, nude, lying sideways on a little bed of dirt surrounded by low thornbushes. Rigor lock, coats of dust and leaf debris said they had been there at least twenty-four hours; the condition of the bodies said that they died at 2307 North Tamarind. Danny pulled a bush section back, knelt and zoomed his Man Camera in nightmare-close.

The men had been placed in a 69 position — head to groin, head to groin, genitals flopped toward each other’s mouths. Their hands had been placed on each other’s knees; the larger man was missing a right index finger. All four eyes were intact and wide open; the victims had been slashed like Marty Goines all over their backs — and their faces. Danny examined the pressed-together front sides; he could see blood and entrail residue.

He stood up. The patrolmen were smoking cigarettes, shuffling their feet, destroying the chance for a successful grid search. One by one they looked at him; the oldest of the four said, “Those guys like yours?”

Danny said, “Almost exactly,” thinking of the real camera in his evidence kit, snapshots for his file before the City bulls closed off their end of his case. “Who found them?”

The old-timer cop answered him. “Maintenance man saw a wino running down the hill screaming, so he went up and looked. He called us, came back up and got sick. We sent him home, and when the squad gets here they’ll send you home, too.”

The other cops laughed. Danny let it pass and jogged down the trail to get the camera. He was almost to his Chevy when a plainclothes car and Coroner’s wagon pulled into the lot and jammed up next to the black-and-whites.

A big, beef-faced man got out of the unmarked and looked right at him. Danny recognized him from newspaper pics: Detective Sergeant Gene Niles, squad whip at Hollywood Division, in up to his ears over Brenda Allen, no indictment, but a quashed lieutenancy and stalemated career — rumor having it that he took no cash, just trade goodies from Brenda’s girls. The man’s clothes said otherwise: smart navy blazer and razor-creased gray flannels, custom stuff no honest cop could afford.

Two Coroner’s men hauled out collapsible gurneys; Danny saw Niles smell cop on him and head over, looking more and more curious and pissed: strange meat on his turf, too young to be working the Homicide Bureau downtown.

He met him halfway, a new story brewing, plausible stuff to satisfy a savvy cop. Face to face, he said, “I’m with the Sheriff’s.”

Niles laughed. “You a little bit confused about your jurisdiction, Deputy?”

The “Deputy” was all scorn, like a synonym for “cancer.” Danny said, “I’m working a homicide just like the two you’ve got up the hill.”

Niles bored in with his eyes. “You sleep in those clothes, Deputy?”

Danny squeezed his hands into fists. “I was on a stakeout.”

“You ever hear of carrying a razor on all-nighters, Deputy?”

“You ever hear of professional courtesy, Niles?”

Sergeant Gene Niles looked at his watch. “A man who reads the papers. Let’s try this. How’d you get up here twenty-two minutes after we logged the squeal at the station?”

Danny knew brass balls was the only way to cover his lie. “I was down at the doughnut joint on Western, and there was a black-and-white with the radio on. How come it took you so long? You stop for a manicure?”

“A year ago I’d have reamed you for that.”

“A year ago you were going places. Do you want to hear about my homicide or do you want to sulk?”

Niles picked a piece of lint off his blazer. “The dispatcher said it looks like a queer job. I hate queer jobs, so if you’ve got another queer job, I don’t want to hear about it. Roll, Deputy. And get yourself some decent threads. Mickey Kike’s got a haberdashery, and I know he gives all his prat boys a discount.”

Danny headed back to his Chevy seeing red. He drove down the park road to Los Feliz and Vermont and a pay phone, called Doc Layman and told him two Marty Goines companion stiffs were en route, grab them for autopsy no matter what. A minute later Niles’ car and the Coroner’s wagon went by southbound, no lights or sirens, flunkies killing a fine winter morning. Danny gave them a five-minute lead, took shortcuts downtown and parked in the shade of a warehouse across the street from the City Morgue loading dock. Fourteen minutes passed before the caravan appeared; Niles made a big show of shepherding the sheet-covered gurneys to the ramp; Norton Layman came out to help. Danny heard him berating Niles for separating the bodies.

He settled into his car to wait for Layman’s findings; stretching out on the front seat, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, knowing Doc would be four hours or more on the examinations. Sleep wouldn’t come; a hot day started sizzling, warming up the car, making the upholstery sticky. Danny would begin to drop off, then start remembering his lies, what he could or couldn’t tell whom. He could brazen his lie to the patrolmen, acting sheepish over being at the doughnut stand at 6:00 A.M., implying he’d been with a woman; he had to coddle Karen Hiltscher into keeping his stint at 2307 Tamarind under wraps. He couldn’t let anyone see the contents of his evidence kit; he had to clue in LAPD to the letter that hipped him to Marty Goines’ pad, post-dating the occurrence, making it seem like nothing big, letting them discover the gore for themselves. Leo Bordoni was a wild card, but he was probably con-wise enough to stay quiet; he had to fabricate a story to account for his whereabouts yesterday — a phony summary report to Dietrich was his best bet. And the big fear and big questions: if LAPD canvassed Tamarind, would a local report the tan 1947 Chevrolet parked outside 2307 overnight? Should he take advantage of his private lead, rape the neighborhood for witnesses himself, then report the letter, hoping that the worst they could get him for was not calling the dope in? If LAPD decided to ease off on their two homicides — Niles as catching officer hating “queer jobs” — would they canvass at all? He had taken the call from Lexington State Hospital himself, via Karen Hiltscher’s switchboard. If it all got tricky, would she blab fast to save herself? Would LASD/LAPD rivalry reduce the mess to something that only he cared about?

Heat reflecting off the windshield and too many brain wires short-circuiting on angles lulled Danny to sleep. Cramps and glare woke him up sweaty and itchy; his foot hit the horn and black dreamlessness became sound waves bouncing off four bloody walls. He looked at his watch, saw 12:10 and at least four hours unconscious; the Doc might be done with his dead men. Danny got out of the car, stretched his cramps and walked across the street to the morgue.

Layman was standing near the ramp, eating lunch off an examination slab, a body sheet for a tablecloth. He saw Danny, swallowed a bite of sandwich and said, “You look bad.”

“That bad?”

“You look scared, too.”

Danny yawned; it made his gums ache. “I’ve seen the bodies, and I don’t think LAPD cares. That’s scary.”

Layman wiped his mouth with a sheet corner. “Here’s a few more scares for you, then. Times of death — twenty-six to thirty hours ago. Both men were anally raped — O+ secretor semen. The wounds on their backs were pure zoot stick, identical in size and fiber content to Martin Mitchell Goines. The missing-finger man died from a throat gash made by a sharp, serrated knife. No cause of death on the other man, but I’d be willing to bet barbiturate OD. On our missing-finger friend I found a vomit-coated, punctured capsule, right up under the tongue. I tested some powder in it and got a home compound — sodium secobarbital, one part, one part strychnine. The secobarbital would hit first, inducing unconsciousness, the strychnine would kill. I think missing finger got indigestion, puked up part of his Mickey Finn and fought to live — that that was when he lost his digit — fighting with the knife man. Once I test the blood on both men and pump their stomachs, I’ll know for sure. The missing finger man was bigger — a larger bloodstream, so the compound didn’t kill him like it did our other friend.”

Danny thought of 2307, vomit traces lost in the blood. “What about the stomach bites?”

Layman said, “Not human, but human. I found O+ saliva and human gastric juices on the wounds, and the bites were too frenzied and overlapping to make casts from. But — I got three individual tooth cuts — too large to ascribe to any known human dental abstract and too shredded at the bottom to identify on any single-tooth forensic index. I also took a glob of dental mortar paste out of one of the wounds. He wears dentures, Danny. Most likely on top of his own teeth. They might be steel, they might be some other synthetic material, they might be teeth fashioned from animal carcasses. And he’s rigged up a way to mutilate with them and swallow. They’re not human, and I know this doesn’t sound professional, but I don’t think this son of a bitch is either.”

Chapter Fourteen

Ellis Loew performed the ceremony in his office, Mal and Dudley Smith official witnesses. Buzz Meeks stood by the conference table, right hand raised; Loew recited the oath: “Do you, Turner Meeks, hereby swear to loyally and conscientiously perform the duties of Special Investigator, Grand Jury Division of the District Attorney’s Office for the City of Los Angeles, upholding the laws of this municipality, protecting the rights and property of its citizens, so help you God?”

Buzz Meeks said, “Sure.” Loew handed him an ID holder replete with license photostat and DA’s Bureau shield. Mal wondered how much Howard Hughes was paying the bastard, guessing at least three grand.

Dudley joined Meeks and Loew in a back-slapping circle; Mal credited an old rumor still holding: Meeks thought he was behind the shooting that got him his pension, Jack D. blowing it, then forgetting his grudge when the okie was no longer LAPD. Let him think it — anything to keep his new colleague as far away as two cops working the same job could be.

And Dudley. And maybe Loew now, too.

Mal watched the three share a toast, Glenlivet in crystal glasses. He took his notepad down to the far end of the table, Meeks and Dudley trading one-liners, Ellis shooting him a scowl that said, “Let’s work.” Loew’s half nod acknowledged that their bad blood was just temporary. Mal thought: he should owe me, now I owe him. He picked up his pen to doodle, his knuckles throbbed, he knew Loew was right.

After the thing with Celeste, he’d driven around directionless until his hand started swelling, the pain brutal, blunting all his frantic plans to make it up to his son. He hauled to Central Receiving, flashed his badge and got special treatment: an injection of something that sent him higher than ten kites, teeth fragments pulled out of his fingers, cleansing and suturing and bandaging. He called the house and talked to Stefan, rambling about why he did it, how Celeste had hurt him worse, how she wanted to separate the two of them forever. The boy had seemed shocked, dumbfounded, stuttering details about Celeste’s bloodied face — but he’d ended the conversation calling him “Dad” and saying, “I love you.”

And that little injection of hope made him think like a policeman. He called Ellis Loew, told him what happened, that lawyers and a custody battle were coming, don’t let Celeste file charges and gain an advantage. Loew took the reins, driving to the house and shepherding Celeste to Hollywood Presbyterian, where her lawyer was waiting. The man took photographs of her bruised and bloody face; Loew convinced him not to let Celeste file criminal charges on a ranking DA’s Bureau investigator, threatening reprisals if he did, promising not to intercede in the custody case if he agreed. The attorney did agree; Celeste’s broken nose was set and two dental surgeons worked on her nearly destroyed gums and bridgework. Loew, enraged, called the pay phone where he was waiting and said, “You’re on your own with the kid. Never ask me for another favor.”

He drove back to the house then, finding Stefan asleep, breathing Celeste’s old country sedative — schnapps and hot milk. He kissed the boy’s cheek, moved a suitcase full of clothes and Lesnick’s files to a motel on Olympic and Normandie, made arrangements for a woman cop he knew to check on Stefan once a day, slept off the painkiller on a strange bed and woke up thinking of Franz Kempflerr.

He couldn’t stop thinking about him, and he couldn’t put together any rationalizations that said Celeste was a liar. He did put together a series of phone calls that got him a lawyer: Jake Kellerman, a pragmatist who said continuances were the smart money, postpone the custody trial until Captain Considine was a grand jury hero. Kellerman advised him to stay away from Celeste and Stefan, said he’d call him for a strategy meeting soon — and left him with a Demerol hangover, aching knuckles and the certainty he should take the day off and stay away from his boss.

He still couldn’t shake Kempflerr.

Going over Lesnick’s files was just a distraction. He was getting a case on Claire De Haven, every notation on her tweaked him; he knew direct questioning was out for now, that finding an operative should be his main priority. Still, putting together the woman’s past was enticing, and when he hit a piece of information he’d overlooked — Mondo Lopez bragging to the shrink about a dress he’d shoplifted for Claire’s thirty-third birthday in May of ’43, making her exactly his age — he took the woman and the Nazi down to the main public library for research.

He scanned microfilm for hours, banishing the German, bringing the woman into focus.

Buchenwald liberated, the Nuremberg trials, the biggest Nazis stating they just followed orders. The incredible mechanized brutality. Sleepy Lagoon a just cause championed by bad people. A hunch that Claire De Haven made the society pages as a debutante; confirmation in summer 1929: nineteen-year-old Claire at the Las Madrinas Ball — blurred black and white that only hinted at who she was.

With Kempflerr eclipsed by Göring, Ribbentrop, Dönitz and Keitel, the woman came on that much stronger. He called the DMV and got her driver’s license stats, drove to Beverly Hills and kept her Spanish manse under surveillance. Two hours in, Claire left the house — her picture a prophecy of beauty fulfilled. She was trim, auburn-haired with just a few streaks of gray, and wore a face that was natural beauty and the best that money could buy — but strong. He followed her Cadillac down to the Villa Frascati; she met Reynolds Loftis there for lunch — the Mr. Dignity type he’d seen in a dozen movies. He had a drink at the bar and watched the two: the switch-hitter actor and the Red Queen held hands and kissed across the table every few minutes; they were undoubtedly lovers. He remembered Loftis to Lesnick: “Claire is the only woman I’ve ever loved” — and felt jealous.

Glasses and ashtrays hit the table; Mal glanced up from his doodling — swastikas and hangman’s nooses — and saw his fellow Red chasers looking at him. Dudley slid a clean glass and the bottle down. Mal slid it back and said, “Lieutenant, you blew it for us with the Mexicans. This is for the record. I say no direct interrogations until Meeks gets us some hard criminal stuff that we can use, like indictment threats. I say we hit lefties outside UAES exclusively, turn them as friendly witnesses, get them to inform and plant a decoy as soon as we find one. I say we cover ourselves on the Mexicans by planting some lines in the political columns. Ed Satterlee’s pals with Victor Reisel and Walter Winchell, they hate Commies, the UAES probably reads them. Something like this: ‘LA City grand jury team slated to investigate Red influence in Hollywood scotched due to lack of funds and political infighting.’ Every Pinko in the UAES knows what happened at Variety International the other day, and I say we put a lid on it and lull them to sleep.”

All eyes were on the Irishman; Mal wondered how he’d field the gauntlet — two witnesses to irrefutable logic. Dudley said, “I can only apologize for my actions, Malcolm. You were circumspect, I was bull-headed, and I was wrong. But I think we should squeeze Claire De Haven before we pull back and go sub rosa. She’s the fulcrum to snitch the whole brain trust, she’s a virgin as far as grand juries go, breaking her would demoralize all those sad excuses for men in love with her. She’s never been braced by the police, and I think she damn well might fold.”

Mal laughed. “You’re underestimating her. And I suppose you want to be the one to do the bracing?”

“No, lad, I think you should be the one. Of all of us here, you’re the only one who comes off as even remotely idealistic. A kid gloves cop you are, kid gloves with a cruel streak. You’ll nail her with that great right hook I’ve heard you’ve got.”

Ellis Loew mouthed the words, “Not me,” hard eyes on Mal’s end of the table. Buzz Meeks sipped Scotch. Mal winced, wondering exactly how much Dudley knew. “It’s a sucker play, Lieutenant. You screwed up once, now you’re asking me to compound it. Ellis, a direct approach is bullshit. Tell him that.”

Loew said, “Mal, control your language, because I agree with Dudley. Claire De Haven is a promiscuous woman, women like that are unbalanced, and I think we should risk the approach. In the meantime, Ed Satterlee is trying to co-opt a man for us, a man he knew in the seminary who’s infiltrated Communist cells in Cleveland. He’s a pro, but he doesn’t work cheap. Even if the approach with De Haven fails and the UAES is alerted to us, he’ll be able to get next to them so subtly that they’ll never know it in a million years. And I’m sure we can get the money for our decoy from Mr. Hughes. Right, Buzz?”

Buzz Meeks winked at Mal. “Ellis, if this babe is a roundheels, I wouldn’t be sendin’ in a seminary boy to work her. Howard himself might do the trick. He likes poon, so maybe you could send him in in disguise.”

Loew rolled his eyes; Dudley Smith laughed, like he’d heard a real knee-slapper at the Elks Club smoker. Meeks winked again, testing the water — were you the one who got me shot to shit back in ’46? Mal thought of his custody juice riding with a cracker buffoon, hatchet cop and hard-on lawyer. It wasn’t until Loew banged the table to dismiss them that he realized he would be meeting the Red Queen face to face, his own pawn to operate.

Chapter Fifteen

Danny spent the next morning at his apartment, updating his file, all new stuff on the two new victims tied in to his case.

Twenty-four hours in, he had this:

No ID on victims two and three; Doc Layman, as a City pathologist, was privy to Hollywood Squad summary reports and would be calling when and if the bodies got names. He had already called to say that Sergeant Gene Niles was heading the LAPD investigation, deemed it lowball and was short-shrifting it so that he could return to a fur warehouse robbery that promised some newspaper ink to make up for the Brenda Allen smear that cost him his wife and kids. Uniformed cops were rousting winos in Griffith Park and getting nowhere; Niles himself had rubber-hosed two Sterno jockeys with child molester jackets. Layman’s seventeen-page autopsy report — which did tag the smaller of the two men as dying of a barbiturate OD — was ignored by Niles and the handful of uniformed flunkies detached to work under him. The Doc was convinced that a “Reverse Black Dahlia Syndrome” was in effect — the three stiffs found so far had received a total of four inner section newspaper columns, city editors shying away because Marty Goines was trash and the whole thing was queer shit that you couldn’t print without the Legion for Decency and Concerned Catholic Mothers on your ass.

Captain Dietrich had heard him out yesterday, facts, theories, omissions, lies and his giant lie — the doughnut stand whopper to cover him on 2307 Tamarind, still unreported. He’d nodded along, then said he’d try to get the interagency ball rolling with LAPD. Sheriff’s dicks were out of the question — the three other men on the station squad were deluged and the County Detective Bureau would deem the Goines job too Mickey Mouse and messy now that City cops were involved. He had a pal working Hollywood daywatch — a lieutenant named Poulson who’d stayed tight with Mickey C. despite Brenda A. He’d talk to the man about the two departments putting a Homicide team together, and again stated that he thought it would come down to the quality of the victims. If two and three were hopheads, ex-cons or queers — forget it. If they were squarejohns — maybe. And unless the case got some juice, with an LAPD/LASD team formed, he was off it in ten days, Martin Mitchell Goines, DOD 1/1/50 tossed into the open file.

On his evidence gathered at 2307 Tamarind:

With two exceptions, just repeat stuff, what Hans Maslick called “double negatives to prove positives.” He had gotten an unknown set of prints that matched with the taller dead man’s missing finger; Layman had also rolled both stiffs. The white paste residue he bagged was obviously the denture adhesive that led Doc to his 99 percent sure denture theory. Leo Bordoni did not touch print-sustaining surfaces while he was in the room; the three sets of clothes had to be left behind in case the killer was captured and specifically confessed to leaving them folded atop the toilet. The dust and dirt trace elements were useless until he got a suspect to run comparisons on — leaving him only two jumps on LAPD and the killer: his photos of the blood streaks and his chance to canvass Tamarind Street solo if the City bulls softpedaled their investigation. Nightmares and big jeopardy.

After leaving the morgue yesterday, he drove to a camera shop and paid quadruple the normal fee to $$$ his rolls of film developed immediately. The man at the counter looked askance at his raggedy state but took his money; he waited while the job was done. The camera man handed the prints and negatives over an hour later, commenting, “Them walls what you call modern art?” He’d laughed and laughed and laughed himself home — his chuckles dying out when he tacked the photos to a corkboard evidence display he’d erected beside his file boxes.

Blood in glossy black and white was jarring, unnatural, the pictures things he could never let anyone see, even if he busted the combined homicides wide open. Thinking of them as his alone was comforting; he spent hours just staring, seeing designs within designs. Drip marks became strange body appendages; spray streaks were knives cutting at them. The eye circuits got so illogical that he turned to his case history text: blood spray marks exemplified. The cases elaborated were all German and Eastern European, psychopaths enacting vampire fantasies, spraying their victim’s blood on convenient objects, asserting their lunacy by creating pictures of little or no significance. Nothing resembling the formation of the letter W; nothing pertaining to dentures.

Dentures.

His one hard lead to come out of victims two and three.

Not human.

They could be steel teeth, they could be plastic teeth, they could be teeth ripped out of animal carcasses. The next investigatory step was a complete paper chase: men capable of making dentures cross-probed against “tall, middle-aged,” “gray-haired,” “O+ blood” and time frame opportunity.

Needles in a haystack.

Yesterday, he had taken his first step, checking dental lab listings in the seventeen separate LA City/County Yellow Pages. There were a total of 349, plus, in consideration of a possible animal carcass angle, 93 taxidermists’ shops. A phone call to a lab picked at random and a long talk with a cooperative foreman got him this information: the 349 number was low; LA was the big league for the denture industry. Some labs didn’t advertise in the Yellow Pages; some dentists had denture makers working in their offices. If a man worked on human dentures he could apply the same skills to animal or plastic teeth. He didn’t know of any labs that specialized in animal choppers, good luck Deputy Upshaw, you’ve got your work cut out for you.

It was a ride to the Station then. Karen Hiltscher was just swinging back on duty; he brought candy and flowers to chill down her curiosity over Tamarind and any poutiness for the largest deluge of shitwork he’d ever tossed her way: all individual station and Sheriff’s Bureau files checked for men with dental lab work histories, plus eliminations against blood type and physical description; calls started to his list of dental labs for breakdowns of male workers with the same physical stats. The girl took the goodies while a group of muster room loungers guffawed; she seemed hurt and miffed, didn’t mention 2307 and agreed in a Bette Davis bitch pout to make the queries in her “spare time.” He didn’t press; she knew she had gained the upper hand on him.

Danny finished up his file work, thinking of Tamarind Street as virgin canvassing territory, wondering if the burglary partner Leo Bordoni mentioned applied to the case, if he was or wasn’t connected to the burn-faced boy from Marty Goines’ past. His paperwork now totaled fifty-odd pages; he’d spent fifteen of the past twenty-four hours writing. He’d resisted the impulse to scour around Tamarind, wait, look, talk up the locals, jump the gun on LAPD. If Niles had gotten a lead on the place, Doc Layman would have called him; most likely the street was just existing, business as usual, while its residents forgot minor occurrences that might crack his case. Phone the Lexington Hospital lead to Dietrich, making like he just got the call at home, then brief Karen on the lie? Or do it after, no risk on the skipper handing the job to his LAPD pal, the interagency gig he asked for?

No contest. Danny drove to Hollywood, to Tamarind Street.

The block was business as usual, warmer than two days ago, foot traffic on the sidewalk, people sitting on front porches, mowing lawns and trimming shrubs. Danny parked and canvassed, straight zero into mid-afternoon: no strange occurrences in the neighborhood, no strange vehicles, no info on Marty Goines, nothing unusual going on at 2307 Tamarind, garage apartment rear. No loiterers, no strange noises, zero — and nobody mentioned his tan Chevy parked streetside. He was starting to feel cocky about his maneuvering when an old lady walking a miniature schnauzer responded to his lead question with a yes.

Three nights ago, around 10:00, she’d been strolling Wursti and saw a tall man with beautiful silver hair walking back toward the garage at 2307, a “weaving drunk” on either side of him. No, she had not seen any of the three men before; no, no strange noises from the garage apartment followed; no, she didn’t know the woman who owned the front house; no, the men did not talk to each other, and she doubted she would be able to ID the silver-haired man if she saw him again.

Danny let the woman go, went back to his car, hunkered down to keep a fix on 2307. Instincts hit him hard:

Yes, the killer staked out the pad to see if cops showed up. Yes, he had the Griffith Park dump site already planned. Goines’ name never made the papers, he was simply a vagrant, the killer knew his murder spot wasn’t compromised by Goines’ publicity. The only known Goines associates who knew of Mad Marty’s demise were the jazzmen he had questioned, which eliminated jazzbos as suspects — with Goines ID’d by the law, no smart killer would bring future victims to the man’s apartment. Which meant that if no heat appeared in force on Tamarind Street, the killer might bring other victims here. Hold the lead safe from LAPD, stay staked out, pray the killer didn’t witness his or Bordoni’s break-in and today’s canvassing, sit tight and he just might waltz right into your life with number four on his arm.

Danny held, eyes on the house, rear-view adjusted to frame the driveway. Time stretched; a wrong-looking man strolled by, then two old ladies pushing shopping carts and a gaggle of boys wearing Hollywood High letter jackets. A siren whirred, getting closer; Danny thought of code three trouble down on the Boulevard.

Then everything went very fast.

An old lady opened the 2307 front house door; an unmarked prowler jammed into the driveway. Sergeant Gene Niles got out, looked across the street and saw him — a sitting duck in the car he’d had at Griffith Park yesterday morning. Niles started to head over; the old woman intercepted him, pointing toward the garage apartment. Niles stopped; the woman grabbed at his coat sleeves; Danny flailed for lies. Niles let himself be led down the driveway. Danny got bad heebie-jeebies — and drove to the Station to lay some cover.

Dietrich was standing by the squadroom entrance, wolfing a cigarette; Danny took his arm and steered him to the privacy of his own office. Dietrich went with it, swinging around as Danny shut the door. “Lieutenant Poulson just called me. Gene Niles just called him, because he caught a call from Martin Goines’ land-lady. Blood and bloody clothes all over Goines’ apartment, a mile from Griffith Park. Our one and LAPD’s two were obviously snuffed there, you were seen staking the place out and rabbited. Why? Make it good so I don’t have to suspend you.”

Danny had his answer down pat. “A man from Lexington State called me at home this morning and told me he’d gotten a letter from Marty Goines, addressed to another patient. The return address was 2307 North Tamarind. I thought about that talk we had, greasing things with Poulson, us being cooperative even though Niles was pulling a snit. But I didn’t trust LAPD to canvass properly, so I did it myself. I was taking a breather in my car when Niles saw me.”

Dietrich picked up an ashtray and stubbed out his smoke. “And you didn’t call me? On a lead that hot?”

“I jumped the gun, sir. I’m sorry.”

Dietrich said, “I’m not sure I buy your story. Why didn’t you talk to the landlady before you canvassed? Poulson said Niles told him the woman was cherry — she was the one who discovered the mess.”

Danny shrugged, trying to belittle the question. “I knocked early on, but the old girl probably didn’t hear it.”

“Poulson said she sounded like an alert old dame. Danny, were you in the neighborhood knocking off a matinee?”

The question didn’t register. “What do you mean, a movie?”

“No, pussy. Your bimbo’s got a place near that doughnut stand where you heard the squeal yesterday, and Tamarind is near there. Were you shacking on County time?”

Dietrich’s tone had softened; Danny got his lies straight. “I canvassed, then I shacked. I was resting in my car when Niles showed up.”

Dietrich smiled/grimaced; the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, said, “Yes, Norton, he’s here,” listened and added, “One question. Have you got jackets on the two men?”

A long stretch of silence. Danny fidgeted by the door; Karen Hiltscher nudged it open, dropped a sheaf of papers on the Captain’s desk and walked out, eyes lowered. Danny thought: don’t let the skipper tell her I’ve got a woman; don’t let her tell him she fielded the call from Lex. Dietrich said, “Hold on, Norton. I want to talk to him first,” placed a hand over the receiver and spoke to Danny. “There’s an ID on LAPD’s two bodies. They’re trash, so I’m telling you now: no interagency investigation, and you’ve got five more days on Goines before I yank you off. The Sun-Fax Market was held up this morning and if we don’t clear it by then, I want you on that. I’m letting you slide for not reporting Goines’ address, but I’m warning you: stay out of LAPD’s way. Tom Poulson is a close friend, we’ve stayed friends despite Mickey and Brenda, and I don’t want you fucking it up. Now here, Norton Layman wants to talk to you.”

Danny grabbed the phone. “Yeah, Doc.”

“It’s your friendly City pipeline. Got a pencil?”

Danny fished pad and pen from his pockets. “Shoot.”

“The taller man is George William Wiltsie, DOB 9/14/13. Two male prostitution arrests, booted out of the Navy in ’43 for moral turpitude. The other man is address-verified as Wiltsie’s known associate, maybe his brunser. Duane no middle name Lindenaur, DOB 12/5/16. One arrest for extortion — June, 1941. The beef did not go to court — the complainant dropped charges. There’s no employment listed for Wiltsie; Lindenaur worked as a dialogue rewrite man at Variety International Pictures. Both men lived at 11768 Ventura Boulevard, the Leafy Glade Motel. LAPD is rolling there now, so stay clear. Does this make you happy?”

Danny counted lies. “I don’t know, Doc.”

From his cubicle, Danny called R&I and the DMV and got complete records readouts on victims two and three. George Wiltsie was arrested for soliciting indecent acts at cocktail lounges in ’40 and ’41; the DA dropped charges both times for lack of evidence, and the man possessed a lengthy list of traffic violations. Duane Lindenaur was DMV-clean, and had only the one dropped extortion beef Doc Layman mentioned. Danny had the R&I clerk break down the victims’ arrests by location; Wiltsie’s rousts were in City jurisdiction, Lindenaur’s was in the southeastern part of the County patrolled by Firestone Division. A request for a check of Lindenaur’s package got him the arresting officer’s name — Sergeant Frank Skakel.

Danny called Sheriff’s Personnel and learned that Skakel was still working Firestone swingwatch. He buzzed him there, got the switchboard and was put through to the squadroom.

“Skakel. Speak.”

“Sergeant, this is Deputy Upshaw, West Hollywood.”

“Yeah, Deputy.”

“I’m working a homicide tied in to two City 187’s, and you arrested one of the victims back in ’41. Duane Lindenaur. Do you remember him?”

Skakel said, “Yeah. He was working a queer squeeze on a rich lawyer named Hartshorn. I always remember the money jobs. Lindenaur got bumped, huh?”

“Yes. Do you remember the case?”

“Pretty well. The complainant’s name was Charles Hartshorn. He liked boys, but he was married and he had a daughter he doted on. Lindenaur met Hartshorn through some fruit introduction service, perved with him and threatened to snitch Hartshorn’s queerness to the daughter. Hartshorn called us in, we rousted Lindenaur, then Hartshorn got cold feet about testifying in court and dropped the charges.”

“Sergeant, was Hartshorn tall and gray-haired?”

Skakel laughed. “No. Short and bald as a beagle. What’s with the job? You got leads?”

“Lindenaur’s on the City end, and there’s no real leads yet. What was your take on Hartshorn?”

“He’s no killer, Upshaw. He’s rich, he’s got influence and he won’t give you the time of day. Besides, pansy jobs ain’t worth it, and Lindenaur was a punk. I say c’est la vie, let sleeping queers lie.”

Back to the City, kid gloves this time, nothing to spawn more lies and trouble. Danny drove to Variety International Pictures, hoping Gene Niles would spend a decent amount of time at the Leafy Glade Motel. With the Goines end stalemated, victims two and three were the hot stuff, and Lindenaur as a studio scribe/extortionist felt hotter than Wiltsie as a male whore.

Rival union factions were picketing by the front gate; Danny parked across the street, put an “Official Police Vehicle” board on the windshield, ducked his head and weaved through a maze of bodies waving banners. The gate guard was reading a scandal tabloid featuring a lurid column on his three killings — gory details leaked by a “reliable source” at the LA morgue. Danny scanned half a page while he got out his badge, the guard engrossed, chewing a cigar. The two cases were now connected in print — if only by the LA Tattler — and that meant the possibility of more ink, radio and television news, phony confessions, phony leads and scads of bullshit.

Danny rapped on the wall; the cigar chewer put down his paper and looked at the badge held up. “Yeah? Who you here for?”

“I want to talk to the people who worked with Duane Lindenaur.”

The guard didn’t flinch at the name; Lindenaur’s monicker hadn’t yet made the tabloid. He checked a sheet on a clipboard, said, “Set 23, the office next to the Tomahawk Massacre interior,” hit a button and pointed. The gate opened; Danny threaded his way down a long stretch of blacktop filled with costumed players. The door to Set 23 was wide open; just inside it, three Mexican men were wiping war paint off their faces. They gave Danny bored looks; he saw a door marked REWRITE, went over and knocked on it.

A voice called, “It’s open”; Danny walked in. A lanky young man in tweeds and horn rims was stuffing pages in a briefcase. He said, “Are you the guy replacing Duane? He hasn’t showed up in three days and the director needs additional dialogue quicks-ville.”

Danny went in fast. “Duane’s dead, his friend George Wiltsie too. Murdered.”

The young man dropped his briefcase; his hands twitched up and adjusted his glasses. “Mm-mm-murdered?”

“That’s right.”

“And y-y-you’re a policeman?”

“Deputy Sheriff. Did you know Lindenaur well?”

The youth picked up his briefcase and slumped into a chair. “N-no, not well. Just here at work, just superficially.”

“Did you see him outside the studio?”

“No.”

“Did you know George Wiltsie?”

“No. I knew he and Duane lived together, because Duane told me.”

Danny swallowed. “Were they lovers?”

“I wouldn’t dream of speculating on their relationship. All I know is that Duane was quiet, that he was a good rewrite man and that he worked cheap, which is a big plus at this slave labor camp.”

A footstep scraped outside the door. Danny turned and saw a shadow retreating. Looking out, he caught a back view of a man fast-walking over to a bank of cameras and lighting fixtures. He followed; the man stood there, hands in his pockets, the classic “I’ve got nothing to hide” routine.

Danny braced him, disappointed that he was young and midsized, no burn scars on his face, at best a conduit for second-hand dope. “What were you doing listening outside that door?”

The man was closer to a boy — skinny, acned, a high voice with a trace of a lisp. “I work here. I’m a set dresser.”

“So that gives you the right to eavesdrop on official police business?”

The kid primped his hair. Danny said, “I asked you a question.”

“No, that doesn’t give me—”

“Then why did you?”

“I heard you say Duaney and George were dead, and I knew them. Do you know—”

“No, I don’t know who killed them, or I wouldn’t be here. How well did you know them?”

The boy played with his pompadour. “I shared lunch with Duaney — Duane — and I knew George to say hi to when he picked Duane up.”

“I guess the three of you had a lot in common, right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you associate with Lindenaur and Wiltsie outside of here?”

“No.”

“But you talked, because the three of you had so goddamn much in common. Is that right?”

The boy eyed the floor, one foot drawing lazy figure eights. “Yes, sir.”

“Then you tell me about what they had going and who else they had going, because if anyone around here would know, you would. Isn’t that right?”

The boy braced himself against a spotlight, his back to Danny. “They’d been together for a long time, but they liked to party with other guys. Georgie was rough trade, and he mostly lived off Duane, but sometimes he turned tricks for this fancy escort service. I don’t know anything else, so can I please go now?”

Danny thought of his call to Firestone Station — Lindenaur meeting the man he blackmailed through a “fruit introduction service.” “No. What was the name of the escort service?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who else did Wiltsie and Lindenaur party with? Give me some names.”

“I don’t know and I don’t have any names!”

“Don’t whine. What about a tall, gray-haired man, middle-aged. Did either Lindenaur or Wiltsie mention a man like that?”

“No.”

“Is there a man working here who fits that description?”

“There’s a million men in LA who fit that description, so will you please—”

Danny clamped the boy’s wrist, saw what he was doing and let go. “Don’t raise your voice to me, just answer. Lindenaur, Wiltsie, a tall, gray-haired man.”

The kid turned and rubbed his wrist. “I don’t know of any men like that, but Duane liked older guys, and he told me he dug gray hair. Now are you satisfied?”

Danny couldn’t meet his stare. “Did Duane and George like jazz?”

“I don’t know, we never discussed music.”

“Did they ever talk about burglary or a man in his late twenties with burn scars on his face?”

“No.”

“Were either of them hipped on animals?”

“No, just other guys.”

Danny said, “Get out of here,” then moved himself, the kid still staring. The blacktop was deserted now, dusk coming on. He walked to the front gate; a voice from the guard hut stopped him. “Say, Officer. You got a minute?”

Danny halted. A bald man in a polo shirt and golf slacks stepped out and extended his hand. “I’m Herman Gerstein. I run this place.”

City turf. Danny gave Gerstein a shake. “My name’s Upshaw. I’m a Sheriff’s detective.”

Gerstein said, “I heard you were looking for the guys some script hack works with. That true?”

“Duane Lindenaur. He was murdered.”

“That’s too bad. I don’t like it when my people check out without telling me. What’s the matter, Upshaw? You ain’t laughing.”

“It wasn’t funny.”

Gerstein cleared his throat. “To each his own, and I don’t have to beg for laughs, I’ve got comedians for that. Before you go, I want to inform you of something. I’m cooperating with a grand jury investigation into Commie influence in Hollywood, and I don’t like the idea of extraneous cops asking questions around here. You dig? National security outranks a dead script hack.”

Danny threw out a tweak on general principles. “A dead queer script hack.”

Gerstein looked him over. “Now that really ain’t funny, because I would never let a known homo work at my shop under any conditions. Ever. Is that clear?”

“Vividly.”

Gerstein whipped three long cigars out of his slacks and stuck them in Danny’s shirt pocket. “Develop a sense of humor and you might go places. And if you have to come on the lot again, see me first. You understand?”

Danny dropped the cigars on the ground, stepped on them and walked out the gate.

A check of the local papers and more phone work were next.

Danny drove to Hollywood and Vine, bought all four LA dailies, parked in a no-parking zone and read. The Times and Daily News had nothing on his case; the Mirror and Herald gave it a back page brush-off, “Mangled Bodies Found in Griffith Park,” and “Dead Derelicts Discovered at Dawn” their respective taglines. Sanitized descriptions of the mutilations followed; Gene Niles blasted his horn about the job’s random nature. There was no mention of ID on the victims and nothing pertaining to the death of Marty Goines.

A pay phone stood next to the newsstand. Danny called Karen Hiltscher and got what he expected — her dental lab queries were going very slowly, ten negatives since he gave her the job; her calls to other LASD stations and the Detective Bureau for checks on burglars with dental tech backgrounds got a total zero — no such men existed. Trial calls to two taxidermists yielded the fact that all stuffed animals wore plastic teeth; real animal teeth did not show up in dentures, only in the mouths of creatures still on the hoof. Danny urged Karen to keep plugging, said his goodbyes accompanied by kissy sounds and dialed the Moonglow Lounge.

Janice Modine was not waitressing that night, but John Lembeck was drinking at the bar. Danny made nice with the man he’d spared a beating; the car thief/pimp made nice back. Danny knew he was good for some free information and asked him for scoop on homosexual pimps and escort services. Lembeck said the only queer service he knew of was ritzy, hush-hush and run by a man named Felix Gordean, a legit talent agent with an office on the Strip and a suite at the Chateau Marmont. Gordean wasn’t fruit himself, but provided boys to the Hollywood elite and old money LA.

Danny admonished Lembeck to stay frosty and took his Gordean dope to R&I and the DMV night line. Two calls, two squeaky-clean records and three plush addresses: 9817 Sunset for his office, the Chateau Marmont down the Strip at 7941 for his apartment, a beach house in Malibu: 16822 Pacific Coast Highway.

With one dime and one nickel left in his pocket, Danny played a hunch. He called Firestone Station, got Sergeant Frank Skakel and asked him the name of the “fruit introduction service” where extortionist Duane Lindenaur met extortionee Charles Harts-horn. Skakel grumbled and said he’d ring Danny at his pay phone; ten minutes later he called back and said he’d dug up the original complaint report. Lindenaur met Hartshorn at a party thrown by a man who owned an escort service — Felix Gordean. Skakel ended with his admonition: while he was digging through the files, a buddy on the squad gave him some lowdown: Gordean was paying heavy operation kickbacks to Sheriff’s Central Vice.

Danny drove to the Chateau Marmont, an apartment house-hotel done up like a swank Renaissance fortress. The main building was festooned with turrets and parapets, and there was an inner courtyard of similarly adorned bungalows connected by pathways — high, perfectly trimmed hedges surrounding them. Gaslights at the end of wrought-iron poles illuminated address plates; Danny followed a winding string of numbers to 7941, heard dance music wafting behind the hedge and started for the path to the door. Then a gust of wind scudded clouds across the sky and moonlight caught two men in evening clothes kissing, swaying together in the dark porch enclosure.

Danny watched; the moon was eclipsed by more cloud cover; the door opened and admitted the men — laughter, a jump crescendo and a few seconds’ worth of brightness easing them inside. Danny went pins and needles, squeezed between the hedge and the front wall and scissor-walked over to a large picture window covered by velvet drapes. There was a narrow space where the two furls of purple were drawn apart, with a strip of light giving access to tuxedos swirling across parquet, wall tapestries, the sparkle of glasses hoisted. Danny pressed his face to the window and looked in.

That close, he got distortion blur, Man Camera malfunctions. He pulled back so that his eyes could capture a larger frame, saw tuxedos entwined in movement, cheek-to-cheek tangos, all male. The faces were up against each other so that they couldn’t be distinguished individually; Danny zoomed out, in, out, in, until he was pressed into the window glass with the pins and needles localized between his legs, his eyes honing for mid-shots, closeups, faces.

More blur, blips of arms, legs, a cart being pushed and a man in white carrying a punch bowl. Out, in, out, better focus, no faces, then Tim and Coleman the alto together, swaying to hard jazz. The pins and needles hurting; Tim gone, replaced by a blond ingenu. Then shadows killing his vision, his lens cleared by a step backward — and a perfectly framed view of two fat, ugly wall-flowers tongue-kissing, all oily skin and razor burn and hair pomade glistening.

Danny bolted home, seeing San Berdoo ’39 and Tim giving him the fisheye when he wouldn’t take seconds on Roxie. He found his spare I.W. Harper, knocked down his standard four shots and saw it worse, Tim reproachful, saying, yeah it was just horseplay, but you really liked it. Two more shots, the Chateau Marmont in Technicolor, all pretty ones that he knew had Timmy’s body.

He went straight to the bottle then, quality sourmash burning like rotgut, Man-Cameraing women, women, women. Karen Hiltscher, Janice Modine, strippers he’d questioned about a stickup at the Club Largo, tits and cunt on display in the dressing room, inured to men looking at their stuff. Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, the hat check girl at Dave’s Blue Room, his mother stepping out of the bathtub before she got fat and became a Jehovah’s Witness. All ugly and wrong, just like the two wall-flowers at the Marmont.

Danny drank standing up until his legs went. Going down, he managed to throw the bottle at the wall. It hit a pinup of the blood patterns at 2307 Tamarind.

Chapter Sixteen

Mal got his lies straight on the doorstep and rang the bell. Heels over hardwood echoed inside the house; he pulled his vest down to cover his slack waistband — too many meals forgotten. The door opened and the Red Queen was standing there, perfectly coiffed, elegantly dressed in silk and tweed — at 9:30 in the morning.

“Yes? Are you a salesman? There’s a Beverly Hills ordinance against soliciting, you know.”

Mal knew she knew otherwise. “I’m with the District Attorney’s Office.”

“Beverly Hills?”

“The City of Los Angeles.”

Claire De Haven smiled — movie star quality. “My accumulation of jaywalking tickets?”

Cop-quality dissembling — Mal knew she had him pegged as the nice guy in the Lopez/Duarte/Benavides questioning. “The City needs your help.”

The woman chuckled — elegantly — and held the door open. “Come in and tell me about it, Mr....?”

“Considine.”

Claire repeated the name and stood aside; Mal walked into a large living room furnished in a floral motif: gardenia-patterned divans, tufted orchid chairs, little tables and bookstands inlaid with wooden daisies. The walls were solid movie posters — anti-Nazi pictures popular in the late ’30s and early ’40s. Mal strolled up to a garish job ballyhooing Dawn of the Righteous — a noble Russki facing off a drooling blackshirt brandishing a Luger. Sun-shine haloed the good guy; the German was shadowed in darkness. With Claire De Haven watching him, he counterpunched. “Subtle.”

Claire laughed. “Artful. Are you an attorney, Mr. Considine?”

Mal turned around. The Red Queen was holding a glass filled with clear liquid and ice. He couldn’t smell gin and bet vodka — more elegant, no booze breath. “No, I’m an investigator with the Grand Jury Division. May I sit down?”

Claire pointed to two chairs facing each other across a chess table. “I’m warming to this. Would you like coffee or a drink?”

Mal said, “No,” and sat down. The chair was upholstered in leather; the orchids were embroidered silk. Claire De Haven took the opposite seat and crossed her legs. “You’re crazy to think I’d ever inform. I won’t, my friends won’t, and we’ll have the best legal talent money can buy.”

Mal played off the three Mexicans. “Miss De Haven, this is a mop-up interview at best. My partner and I approached your friends at Variety International the wrong way, our boss is very angry and our funding has been cut. When we got our initial paperwork on the UAES — old HUAC stuff — we didn’t find your name mentioned, and all your friends seemed... well... rather doctrinaire. I decided to play a hunch and present my case to you, hoping you’d keep an open mind and find aspects of what I’m going to tell you reasonable.”

Claire De Haven smiled and sipped her drink. “You speak very well for a policeman.”

Mal thought: and you blast vodka in the morning and fuck pachuco hoodlums. “I went to Stanford, and I was a major with the MPs in Europe. I was involved in processing evidence to convict Nazi war criminals, so you see I’m not entirely unsympathetic to those posters on your walls.”

“You display empathy well, too. And now you’ve been employed by the studios, because it’s easier to see Red than pay decent wages. You’ll divide, conquer, get people to inform and bring in specialists. And you’ll cause nothing but grief.”

From banter to cool outrage in a half second flat. Mal tried to look hangdog, thinking he could take the woman if he gave her a tough fight, but let her win. “Miss De Haven, why doesn’t the UAES strike in order to achieve its contract demands?”

Claire took a slow drink. “The Teamsters would get in and stay in on a temporary payroll stipulation.”

A good opening; a last chance to play nice guy before they pulled back, planted newspaper dope and went decoy. “I’m glad you mentioned the Teamsters, because they worry me. Should this grand jury succeed — and I doubt that it will — a racketeering force against the Teamsters would be a logical next step. They are very heavily infiltrated with criminal elements, much the way the American left is infiltrated by Communists.”

Claire De Haven sat still, not taking the bait. She looked at Mal, eyes lingering on the automatic strapped to his belt. “You’re an intelligent man, so state your case. Thesis sentence style, like you learned in your freshman comp class at Stanford.”

Mal thought of Celeste — juice for some indignation. “Miss De Haven, I saw Buchenwald, and I know what Stalin is doing is just as bad. We want to get to the bottom of totalitarian Communist influence in the movie industry and inside the UAES, end it, prevent the Teamsters from kicking the shit out of you on the picket line and establish through testimony some sort of demarcation line between hard Communist propaganda aggression and legitimate leftist political activity.” A pause, a shrug, hands raised in mock frustration. “Miss De Haven, I’m a policeman. I collect evidence to put robbers and killers away. I don’t like this job, but I think it needs to be done and I’m damn well going to do it as best I can. Can’t you see my point?”

Claire took cigarettes and a lighter from the table and lit up. She smoked while Mal darted his eyes around the room, mock chagrin at blowing his calm. Finally she said, “You’re either a very good actor or in way over your head with some very bad men. Which is it? I honestly don’t know.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“All right, I’m not.”

Mal got up and paced the room, advance man for his decoy. He noticed a bookcase lined with picture frames, examined a shelf of them and saw a string of handsome young men. About half were Latin lover types — but Lopez, Duarte and Benavides were absent. He remembered Lopez’ comment to Lesnick: Claire was the only gringa he’d met who’d suck him, and he felt guilty about it because only whores did that, and she was his Communista madonna. On a shelf by itself was a picture of Reynolds Loftis, his Anglo-Saxon rectitude incongruous. Mal turned and looked at Claire. “Your conquests, Miss De Haven?”

“My past and future. Wild oats lumped together and my fiancé all by himself.”

Chaz Minear had gotten explicit on Loftis — what they did, the feel of his weight downstairs. Mal wondered how much the woman knew about them, if she even guessed Minear finked her future husband to HUAC. “He’s a lucky man.”

“Thank you.”

“Isn’t he an actor? I think I took my son to a movie he was in.”

Claire stubbed out her cigarette, lit another one and smoothed her skirt. “Yes, Reynolds is an actor. When did you and your son see the movie?”

Mal sat down, juggling blacklist dates. “Right after the war, I think. Why?”

“A point that I’d like to make, as long as we’re talking in a civil manner. I doubt that you’re as sensitive as you portray yourself, but if you are I’d like to illustrate an example of the hurt men like you cause.”

Mal hooked a thumb back at Loftis’ picture. “With your fiancé?”

“Yes. You see, you probably saw the movie at a revival house. Reynolds was a very successful character actor in the ’30s, but the California State Un-American Activities Committee hurt him when he refused to testify back in ’40. Many studios wouldn’t touch him because of his politics, and the only work he could get was on Poverty Row — toadying to an awful man named Herman Gerstein.”

Mal played dumb. “It could have been worse. People were blacklisted outright by HUAC in ’47. Your fiancé could have been.”

Claire shouted, “He was blacklisted, and I bet you know it!”

Mal jerked back in his chair; he thought he’d had her convinced he wasn’t wise to Loftis. Claire lowered her voice. “Maybe you knew it. Reynolds Loftis, Mr. Considine. Surely you know that he’s in the UAES.”

Mal shrugged, smokescreening a lie. “When you said Reynolds, I guessed that it was Loftis. I knew he was an actor, but I’ve never seen his photograph. Look, I’ll tell you why I was surprised. An old lefty told my partner and me that Loftis was a homosexual. Now you tell me he’s your fiancé.”

Claire’s eyes narrowed; for a half second she looked like a shrew in waiting. “Who told you that?”

Mal shrugged again. “Some guy who used to hang out and chase girls at the Sleepy Lagoon Committee picnics. I forget his name.”

Shrew in waiting to nervous wreck; Claire’s hands shaking, her legs twitching, grazing the table. Mal homed in on her eyes and thought he saw them pinning, like she was mixing pharmacy stuff with her vodka. Seconds dragged; Claire became calm again. “I’m sorry. Hearing Reynolds described as that upset me.”

Mal thought: no it didn’t — it was Sleepy Lagoon. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said it.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because he’s a lucky man.”

The Red Queen smiled. “And not just because of me. Will you let me finish that point I wanted to make?”

“Sure.”

Claire said, “In ’47 someone informed on Reynolds to the House Committee — hearsay and innuendo — and he was black-listed outright. He went to Europe and found work acting in experimental art films directed by a Belgian man he’d met in LA during the war. The actors all wore masks, the films created quite a stir, and Reynolds eked out a living acting in them. He even won the French version of the Oscar in ’48, and got mainstream work in Europe. Now the real Hollywood studios are offering him real work for real money, which will end if Reynolds is hauled before another committee or grand jury or kangaroo court or whatever you people call them.”

Mal stood up and looked at the door. Claire said, “Reynolds will never name names, I’ll never name names. Don’t ruin the good life he’s starting to have again. Don’t ruin me.”

She even begged with elegance. Mal made a gesture that took in leather upholstery, brocade curtains and a small fortune in embroidered silk. “How can you preach the Commie line and justify all this?”

The Red Queen smiled, beggar to muse. “The good work I do allows me a dispensation for nice things.”

A stellar exit line.

Mal walked back to his car and found a note stuck under the wiper blades: “Captain — greetings! Herman Gerstein called Ellis with a complaint: a Sheriff’s dick is making waves at Variety International (pansy homicide). Ellis spoke to his CO (Capt. Al Dietrich) about it — and we’re supposed to tell the lad to desist. West Hollywood Substation when you finish with C.D.H., please — D.S.”

Mal drove to the station, pissed at a stupid errand when he should be orchestrating the team’s next move: radio and newspaper spots to convince UAES the grand jury was kaput. He saw Dudley Smith’s Ford in the lot, left his car next to it and walked in the front door. Dudley was standing by the dispatching alcove, talking to a Sheriff’s captain in uniform. A girl behind the switchboard was flagrantly eavesdropping, toying with the headset on her neck.

Dudley saw him and hooked a finger; Mal went over and offered the brass his hand. “Mal Considine, Captain.”

The man gave him a bonecrusher shake. “Al Dietrich. Good to meet a couple of City boys who come off as human beings, and I was just telling Lieutenant Smith here not to judge Deputy Upshaw too harshly. He’s got a lot of newfangled ideas about procedure and the like, and he’s a bit of a hothead, but basically he’s a damn good cop. Twenty-seven years old and already a detective must tell you something, right?”

Dudley boomed tenor laughter. “Smarts and naivete are a potent combination in young men. Malcolm, our friend is working on a County homo snuff tied to two City jobs. He seems to be obsessed as only a young idealist cop can be. Shall we give the lad a gentle lesson in police etiquette and priorities?”

Mal said, “A brief one,” and turned to Dietrich. “Captain, where’s Upshaw now?”

“In an interrogation room down the hall. Two of my men captured a robbery suspect this morning, and Danny’s sweating him. Come on, I’ll show you — but let him finish up first.”

Dietrich led them through the muster room to a short corridor inset with cubicles fronted by one-way glass. Static was crackling out of a wall speaker above the last window on the left. The captain said, “Take a listen, the kid is good. And try to let him down easy, he’s got a bad temper and I like him.”

Mal strode ahead of Dudley to the one-way. Looking in, he saw a hood he’d rousted before the war. Vincent Scoppettone, a Jack Dragna trigger, was sitting at a table bolted to the floor, his hands cuffed to a welded-down chair. Deputy Upshaw had his back to the window and was drawing water from a wall cooler. Scoppettone squirmed in his chair, his County denims sweat-soaked at the legs and armpits.

Dudley caught up. “Ah, grand. Vinnie the guinea. I heard that lad found out a quail of his was distributing her favors elsewhere and stuck a .12 gauge up her love canal. It must have been messy, albeit quick. Do you know the difference between an Italian grandmother and an elephant? Twenty pounds and a black dress. Isn’t that grand?”

Mal ignored him. Scoppettone’s voice came over the speaker, synched a fraction of a second behind his lips. “Eyeball witnesses don’t mean shit. They got to be alive to testify. Understand?”

Deputy Upshaw turned around, holding a cup of water. Mal saw a medium-sized young man, even-featured with hard brown eyes, a dark brown crew cut and razor nicks on heavily shadowed pale skin. He looked lithe and muscular — and there was something about him reminiscent of Claire De Haven’s picture-pretty boys. His voice was an even baritone. “Down the hatch, Vincent. Communion. Confession. Requiescat en pace.”

Scoppettone gulped water, sputtered and licked his lips. “You a Catholic?”

Upshaw sat down in the opposite chair. “I’m nothing. My mother’s a Jehovah’s Witness and my father’s dead, which is what you’re gonna be when Jack D. finds out you’re clouting markets on your own. And as far as the eyeball witnesses go, they’ll testify. You’ll be no bail downtown and Jack’ll give you the go-by. You’re in dutch with Jack or you wouldn’t be pulling heists in the first place. Spill, Vincent. Feed me on your other jobs and the captain here will recommend honor farm.”

Scoppettone coughed; water dribbled off his chin. “Without them witnesses, you got no case.”

Upshaw leaned over the table; Mal wondered how much the speaker was distorting his voice. “You’re ixnay with Jack, Vinnie. At best, he lets you go on the Sun-Fax, at worst he has you whacked when you hit the penitentiary. And that’ll be Folsom. You’re a known mob associate, and that’s where they go. And the Sun-Fax is in Cohen territory. Mickey buys the gift baskets he greases judges with there, and he’ll make damn sure one of those judges hears your case. In my opinion, you are just too stupid to live. Only a stupid shit would knock off a joint in Cohen territory. Are you looking to start a fucking war? You think Jack wants Mickey coming after him over a chump-change stickup?”

Dudley nudged Mal. “That lad is very, very good.”

Mal said, “In spades.” He pushed Dudley’s elbow aside and concentrated on Upshaw and his verbal style — wondering if he could run Commie argot as well as he did gangsterese. Vincent Scoppettone coughed again; static hit the speaker, then died out into words. “There ain’t gonna be no war. Jack and Mickey been talkin’ about a truce, maybe going in on a piece of business together.”

Upshaw said, “You feel like talking about that?”

“You think I’m stupid?”

Upshaw laughed. Mal caught the phoniness, that Scoppettone didn’t interest him — that it was just a job. But it was a Class A phony laugh — and the kid knew how to squeeze his own tension into it.

“Vinnie, I already told you I think you’re stupid. You’ve got panic city written all over you, and I think you’re on the outs with Jack bad. Let me guess: you did something to piss Jack off, you got scared, you thought you’d hightail. You needed a stake, you heisted the Sun-Fax. Am I right?”

Scoppettone was sweating heavy now — it was rolling off his face. Upshaw said, “You know what else I think? One heist wouldn’t have done it. I think there’s other jobs we can make you for. I think I’m gonna check robbery reports all over the City and County, maybe Ventura County, maybe Orange and San Diego. I’ll bet if I wire your mugs around I’ll come up with some other eyeball witnesses. Am I right?”

Scoppettone tried laughter — a long string of squeaky ha ha ha’s. Upshaw joined in and mimicked them until his prisoner shut up. Mal snapped: he’s wound tight as a steel spring on something else and shooting it to Vinnie because he’s the one here — and he probably doesn’t know he’s doing it.

Squirming his arms, Scoppettone said, “Let’s talk dealsky. I got something sweet.”

“Tell me.”

“Heroin. Heroin very large. That truce I told you about, Jack and Mickey partners. Quality Mex brown, twenty-five pounds. All for niggertown, cut-rate to lowball the independents down there. The God’s truth. If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.”

Upshaw aped Vinnie’s tone. “Then you’ve got wings stashed under your mattress, because the Mick and Dragna as partners is horseshit. Sherry’s was six months ago, Cohen lost a man and doesn’t forget stuff like that.”

“That wasn’t Jack, that was LAPD. Shooters out of Hollywood Station, a snuff kitty half the fuckin’ division kicked in for ’cause of fuckin’ Brenda. Mickey Kike knows Jack didn’t do it.”

Upshaw yawned — broadly. “I’m bored, Vinnie. Niggers geezing heroin and Jack and Mickey as partners is a fucking snore. By the way, you read the papers?”

Scoppettone shook his head, spraying sweat. “What?”

Upshaw pulled a rolled-up newspaper from his hip pocket. “This was in last Tuesday’s Herald. ‘Yesterday evening tragedy occurred at a convivial cocktail lounge in the Silverlake District. A gunman entered the friendly Moonmist Lounge, carrying a large-caliber pistol. He forced the bartender and three patrons to lie on the floor, ransacked the cash register and stole jewelry, wallets and purses belonging to his four victims. The bartender tried to apprehend the robber, and he pistol-whipped him senseless. The bartender died of head injuries this morning at Queen of Angels Hospital. The surviving robbery victims described the assailant as “an Italian-looking white man, late thirties, five-ten, one hundred and ninety pounds.” ’ Vinnie, that’s you.”

Scoppettone shrieked, “That ain’t me!” Mal craned his neck and squinted at the print on Upshaw’s newspaper, glomming a full page on last week’s fight card at the Olympic. He thought: pull out the stops, bluff him down, hit him once, don’t get carried away and you’re my boy—

“That ain’t fucking me!”

Upshaw leaned over the table, hard in Scoppettone’s face. “I don’t fucking care. You’re standing in a lineup tonight, and the three squarejohns from the Moonmist Lounge are gonna look you over. Three white bread types who think all wops are Al Capone. See, I don’t want you for the Sun-Fax, Vinnie, I want you for keeps.”

“I didn’t do it!”

“Prove it!”

“I can’t prove it!”

“Then you’ll take the fucking fall!”

Scoppettone was putting his whole body into his head, the only part of him not lashed down. He shook it; he twisted it; he thrust his chin back and forth like a ram trying to batter a fence. Mal got a flash: the kid had him nailed for a backup heist that night; the whole performance was orchestrated for the newspaper punch line. He elbowed Dudley and said, “Ours”; Dudley gave him the thumbs-up. Vinnie Scoppettone tried to jerk his chair off the floor; Danny Upshaw grabbed a handful of his hair and slapped his face — forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand — until he went limp and blubbered, “Deal. Deal. Deal.”

Upshaw whispered in Scoppettone’s ear; Vinnie drooled an answer. Mal stood on his tiptoes for a better shot at the speaker and heard only static. Dudley lit a cigarette and smiled; Upshaw hit a button under the table. Two uniformed deputies and a woman holding a steno pad double-timed down the corridor. They opened the interrogation room door and swooped on their live one; Danny Upshaw walked out and said, “Oh shit.”

Mal studied the reaction. “Good work, Deputy. You were damn good.”

Upshaw looked at him, then Dudley. “You’re City, right?”

Mal said, “Right, DA’s Bureau. My name’s Considine, this is Lieutenant Smith.”

“And it’s about?”

Dudley said, “Lad, we were going to reprimand you for rattling Mr. Herman Gerstein’s cage, but that’s water under the bridge now. Now we’re going to offer you a job.”

“What?”

Mal took Upshaw’s arm and steered him a few feet away. “It’s a decoy plant for a grand jury investigation into Communist activity in the movie studios. A very well-placed DA is running the show, and he’ll be able to square a temporary transfer with Captain Dietrich. The job is a career maker, and I think you should say yes.”

“No.”

“You can transfer to the Bureau clean after the investigation. You’ll be a lieutenant before you’re thirty.”

“No. I don’t want it.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to supervise the triple homicide case I’m working — for the County and the City.”

Mal thought of Ellis Loew balking, other City hotshots he could grease for the favor. “I think I can manage it.”

Dudley came over, clapped Upshaw on the back and winked. “There’s a woman you’ll have to get next to, lad. You might have to fuck the pants off of her.”

Deputy Danny Upshaw said, “I welcome the opportunity.”