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.