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.”
Part Two
Upshaw, Considine, Meeks
Chapter Seventeen
He was a cop again, bought and paid for, in with major leaguers playing for keeps. Howard’s bonus had him out of hock with Leotis Dineen, and if the grand jury succeeded in booting the UAES from the studios he’d be minor-league rich. He had a set of keys to Ellis Loew’s house and the use of the City clerks who’d be typing and filing there. He had a “target list” of Pinkos untouched by previous grand juries. And he had the big list: UAES top dogs to glom criminal dirt on, no direct approaches now that they were deep in subterfuge, with newspaper pieces planted that said their investigation was dead. An hour ago he’d had his secretary place query calls to his local Fed contact, City/County DMV/R&I and the criminal records bureaus of California, Nevada, Arizona and Oregon States, requesting arrest report information on Claire De Haven, Morton Ziffkin, Chaz Minear, Reynolds Loftis and three unholy-sounding pachucos: Mondo Lopez, Sammy Benavides and Juan Duarte, asterisks after their names denoting them “known youth gang members.” The gang squad boss at Hollenbeck Station had been his only call back; he said that the three were bad apples—members of a zooter mob in the early ’40s before they cleaned up and “got political.” East LA would be his first stop—once his secretary logged in the rest of her responses to his call-outs.
Buzz looked around his office for something to kill time with, saw the morning Mirror on the doormat and picked it up. He flipped through to the editorial page and got bingo! under Victor Reisel’s by-line, less than twenty-four hours after cuckold Mal told Loew his plan.
The title was “Reds 1—City of Los Angeles 0. 3 Outs, No Witnesses on Base.” Buzz read:
It all came down to money—the great equalizer and common denominator. A grand jury was in the works, an important grand jury that would have been as far-reaching as the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. Once again, Communist encroachment in the motion picture industry was to be delved into—this time within the context of labor trouble in the City of the Angels.
The United Alliance of Extras and Stagehands is currently under contract with a number of Hollywood studios. The union is rife with Communists and fellow travelers. The UAES is making exorbitant contract renegotiation demands, and a Teamster local which would like the opportunity to reach an amicable accord with the studios and step in to work UAES’s job for reasonable wages and benefits is picketing against them. Money. The UAES implicitly advocates the end of the capitalist system and wants more of it. The nonideologically involved Teamsters want to prove their on-the-job mettle by working for wages that anticapitalists spurn. Hollywood, show biz: it’s a crazy world.
Crazy Item #1: The glut of pro-Russian movies made during the early 1940’s were largely scripted by members of the so-called UAES Brain trust.
Crazy Item #2: UAES Brain trust members belong to a total of 41 organizations that have been classified as Commie fronts by the State Attorney General’s Office.
Crazy Item #3: The UAES wants more of that filthy capitalist lucre; the Teamsters want jobs for their people; a number of patriotic men in the LA District Attorney’s Office had been slated to gather evidence for a prospective grand jury to delve into just how deep those green-loving UAESers’ influence in the movie biz went. Let’s face it: Hollywood is an unsurpassed tool for disseminating propaganda, and the Commies are the subtlest, most cruelly intelligent foe America has ever faced. Given access to the motion picture medium and its pervasiveness in our daily life, there is no end to the cancerous seeds of treason that well-placed movie Reds could plant—subtle satires and attacks on America, subliminally planted so that the public and right-thinking movie people would have no idea they were being brainwashed. The DA’s men had made approaches to several subversives, and were attempting to get them to admit to the error of their ways and appear as witnesses when money—the great equalizer and common denominator—reared its head to give aid and comfort to the enemy.
Lieutenant Malcolm Considine, of the DA’s Bureau of Investigations, said: “The City had promised us budget money, then withdrew. We’re understaffed and now unfunded, with a backlog of criminal matters clogging up potential grand jury docket time. We might be able to begin gathering evidence again in fiscal ’51 or ’52, but how many inroads will the Communists have made into our culture by then?”
How many indeed. Lieutenant Dudley Smith of the Los Angeles Police Department, Lieutenant Considine’s sadly short-lived partner in the DA Bureau’s sadly short-lived investigation, said, “Yes, it all came down to money. The City has precious little, and it would be immoral and illegal to seek outside funding. The Reds do not balk at exploiting the capitalist system, while we live by its rules, accepting the few inherent frailties in an otherwise just and humane philosophy. That’s the difference between them and us. They live by the law of the jungle, we are too peace-loving to stoop to it.”
Reds—1, the City of Los Angeles and the movie-going public—0.
It’s a crazy world.
Buzz put the paper down, thinking of crazy Dud circa ’38—brass-knuckling a nigger hophead half to death for drooling on a cashmere overcoat Ben Siegel greased him with. He hit the intercom. “Sweetheart, any results on those calls yet?”
“Still waiting, Mr. Meeks.”
“I’m going out to East LA. Leave my messages on my desk, would you, please?”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
The morning was cool, with rain threatening. Buzz took Olympic straight out, Hughes Aircraft to Boyle Heights with a minimum of red lights, no pretty scenery, time to think. The .38 he’d strapped on made his rolls of flab hang funny; his ID buzzer and the Racing Form weighted his pockets wrong, bum ballast that had him picking at his crotch to even things out. Benavides, Lopez and Duarte were either White Fence, 1st Flats or Apaches; the Mexes in the Heights were good people, anxious to suck up right and be good Americans. He’d get good information from them—and the idea bored him.
He knew why: he hadn’t been with a woman in years who wasn’t a whore or a starlet looking to get next to Howard. Audrey Anders had him running on her time, brainstorming on her so hard that even this sweetheart of a deal with the DA’s Office came a cropper. Betting with Leotis Dineen was plain stupid; chasing Audrey was stupid that meant something—a reason for him to quit gorging on porterhouse, au gratins and peach pie and lose a shitload of pounds so that his beaucoup wardrobe fit right—even though they’d never be able to go out in public together.<
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Downtown came and went; the woman stayed. Buzz tried concentrating on the job, turning north on Soto, heading into the terraced hillsides that formed Boyle Heights. The Jews had ceded the neighborhood to the Mexicans before the war; Brooklyn Avenue had gone from reeking of pastrami and chicken stock to reeking of cornmeal and deep-fried pork. The synagogue across from Hollenbeck Park was now a Catholic church; the old men with beanies who played chess under the pepper trees were replaced by pachucos in slit-bottom khakis—strutting, primping, walking the road camp walk, talking the jailhouse talk. Buzz circled the park, eyeing and tagging them: unemployed, mid-twenties, probably pushing fifty-cent reefers and collecting protection off the hebe merchants too poor to move to the new kosher canyon at Beverly and Fairfax. White Fence or 1st Flats or Apaches, with tattoos between their left thumbs and forefingers spelling it out. Dangerous when fired up on mescal, maryjane, goofballs and pussy; restless when bored.
Buzz parked and stuck his billy club down the back of his pants, throwing the fit off even worse. He approached a group of four young Mexicans; two saw him coming and took off, obviously to drop hot shit in the grass somewhere, reconnoiter and see what the fat puto cop wanted. The other two stood there watching a cockroach fight: two bugs in a shoebox placed on a bench, gladiators brawling for the right to devour a dead bug soaked in maple syrup. Buzz checked out the action while the pachucos pretended not to notice him; he saw a pile of dimes and quarters on the ground and dropped a five spot on it. “Finsky on the fucker with the spot on his back.”
The Mexicans did double-takes; Buzz did a quick size-up: White Fence tattoos on two sinewy right forearms; both vatos lean and mean at the welterweight limit; one dirty T-shirt, one clean. Four brown eyes sizing him up. “I mean it. That fucker’s got style. He’s a dancemaster like Billy Conn.”
Both pachucos pointed to the shoebox; Clean T-shirt said, “Billy muerto.” Buzz looked down and saw the spotted bug belly up, stuck to the cardboard in a pool of amber goo. Dirty Shirt giggled, scooped up the change and five-spot; Clean Shirt took an ice cream stick, lifted the winner out of the box and put him on the bark of a pepper tree next to the bench. The bug hung there licking his feelers; Buzz said, “Double or nothin’ on a trick I learned back in Oklahoma.”
Clean Shirt said, “This some goddamn cop trick?”
Buzz fished out his baton and dangled it by the thong. “Sort of. I got a few questions about some boys who used to live around here, and maybe you can help me. I pull off the trick, you talk to me. No snitch stuff, just a few questions. I don’t do the trick, you stroll. Comprende?”
The clean shirt vato started to walk away; Dirty Shirt stopped him and pointed to Buzz’s stick. “What’s that thing got to do with it?”
Buzz smiled and took three steps backward, eyes on the tree. “Son, you set that roach’s ass on fire and I’ll show you.”
Clean Shirt whipped out a lighter, flicked it on and held the flame under the victor bug. The bug scampered up the tree; Buzz got a bead and overhanded his baton. It hit and clattered to the ground; Dirty Shirt picked it up and fingered pulp off the tip. “That’s him. Holy fuck.”
Clean Shirt made the sign of the cross, pachuco version, his right hand stroking his balls; Dirty Shirt crossed the standard way. Buzz tossed his stick in the air, bounced it off the inside crook of his elbow, caught it and twirled it behind his back, let it hit the pavement, then brought it to parade rest with a jerk of the thong. The Mexicans were slack-jawed now; Buzz braced them while their mouths were still open. “Mondo Lopez, Juan Duarte and Sammy Benavides. They used to gangsterize around here. Spill nice and I’ll show you some more tricks.”
Dirty Shirt spat a string of obscenities in Spanish; Clean Shirt translated. “Javier hates 1st Flats like a dog. Like a fucking evil dog.”
Buzz was wondering if Audrey Anders would go for his stick routine. “So those boys ran with the Flats?”
Javier spat on the pavement—an eloquent lunger. “Traitors, man. Back maybe ’43, ’44, the Fence and Flats had a peace council. Lopez and Duarte was supposed to be in on it, but they joined the fuckin’ Sinarquista Nazi putos, then the fuckin’ Commie Sleepy Lagoon putos, when they shoulda been fightin’ with us. The fuckin’ Apaches cleaned the Flats’ and Fences’ fuckin’ clock, man. I lost my cousin Caldo.”
Buzz unclipped two more fivers. “What else have you got? Feel free to get ugly.”
“Benavides was ugly, man! He raped his own fuckin’ little sister!”
Buzz handed out the money. “Easy now. Give me some more on that, whatever else you got and some leads on family. Easy.”
Clean Shirt said, “It’s just a rumor on Benavides, and Duarte’s got a queer cousin, so maybe he’s queer, too. Queerness runs in families, I read it in Argosy magazine.”
Buzz tucked his billy club back in his pants. “What about families? Who’s got family still around here?”
Javier answered. “Lopez’ mother died, and I think maybe he got some cousins in Bakersfield. ’Cept for the maricón, mosta Duarte’s people moved back to Mexico, and I know that puto Benavides got parents livin’ on 4th and Evergreen.”
“A house? An apartment?”
Clean Shirt piped in: “Little shack with all these statues in front.” He twirled a finger and pointed to his head. “The mother is crazy. Loca grande.”
Buzz sighed. “That’s all I get for fifteen scoots and my show?”
Javier said, “Every vato in the Heights hates those cabróns, ask them.”
Clean Shirt said, “We could make up some shit, you could pay us for that.”
Buzz said, “Try to stay alive,” and drove to 4th and Evergreen.
* * *
The lawn was a shrine.
Jesus statues were lined up facing the street; there was a stable made out of kid’s Lincoln Logs behind them, a dog turd reposing in baby J.C.’s manger. Buzz walked up to the porch and rang the bell; he saw the Virgin Mary on an end table. The front of her flowing white gown bore an inscription: “Fuck me.” Buzz made a snap deduction—Mr. and Mrs. Benavides couldn’t see too well.
An old woman opened the door. “Quién?”
Buzz said, “Police, ma’am. And I don’t speak Spanish.”
The ginch fingered a string of beads around her neck. “I speak Inglés. Is about Sammy?”
“Yes, ma’am. How’d you know that?”
The old girl pointed to the wall above a chipped brick fireplace. A devil had been drawn there—red suit, horns and trident. Buzz walked over and scoped him out. A photo of a Mex kid was glued where his face should be, and a line of Jesus statues was looking up from the ledge, giving him the evil eye. The woman said, “My son Sammy. Communisto. Devil incarnate.”
Buzz smiled. “It looks like you’re well protected, ma’am. You’ve got Jesus on the job.”
Mama Benavides grabbed a sheaf of papers off the mantel and handed them over. The top sheet was a State Justice Department publicity job—California-based Commie fronts in alphabetical order. The Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee was check-marked, with a line in brackets next to it: “Write P.O. Box 465, Sacramento, 14, California, for membership list.” The old woman snatched the pages, flipped through them and stabbed a finger at a column of names. Benavides, Samuel Tomás Ignacio, and De Haven, Claire Katherine, were starred in ink. “There. Is the truth, anti-Christ Communista y Communisto.”
The ginch had tears in her eyes. Buzz said, “Well, Sammy’s got his rough edges, but I wouldn’t exactly call him the devil.”
“Is true! Yo soy la madre del diablo! You arrest him! Communisto!”
Buzz pointed to Claire De Haven’s notation. “Mrs. Benavides, what have you got on this woman here? Give me some good scoop and I’ll beat that boogie man up with my stick.”
“Communista! Drug addict! Sammy took her to clinica for cure, and she—”
Buzz saw a prime opening. “Where is that clinic, ma’am? Tell me slow.”
“By ocean. Devil doctor! Commun
ista whore!”
Satan’s mother started bawling for real. Buzz blew East LA and headed for Malibu—a sea breeze, a doctor who owed him, no cockroach fights, no fuck me madonnas.
* * *
Pacific Sanitarium was in Malibu Canyon, a booze and dope dry-out farm nestled in foothills a half mile from the beach. The main building, lab and maintenance shacks were surrounded by electrified barbed wire; the price for kicking hooch, horse and drugstore hop was twelve hundred dollars a week; detoxification heroin was processed on the premises—per a gentleman’s agreement between Dr. Terence Lux, the clinic’s bossman, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors—the agreement based on the proviso that LA politicos in need of the place could boil out for free. Buzz drove up to the gate thinking of all the referrals he’d given Lux: RKO juicers and hopheads spared jail jolts and bum publicity because Dr. Terry, plastic surgeon to the stars, had given them shelter and him a 10 percent kickback. One still rankled: a girl who’d OD’d when Howard booted her out of his A list fuck pad and back to selling it in hotel bars. He almost burned the three hundred Lux shot him for the business.
Buzz beeped his horn; the gate watchman’s voice came over the squawk box: “Yes, sir?”
Buzz spoke to the receiver by the fence. “Turner Meeks to see Dr. Lux.”
The guard said, “One moment, sir”; Buzz waited. Then: “Sir, follow the road all the way down the left fork to the end. Dr. Lux is in the hatchery.”
The gate opened; Buzz cruised past the clinic and maintenance buildings and turned onto a road veering off into a scrub-covered miniature canyon. There was a shack at the end: low wire walls and a tin roof. Chickens squawked inside it; some of the birds were shrieking bloody murder.