Kostenz said, “The time isn’t right, but pretty soon we’ll lower the boom”; Claire shushed him—a mere flicker of her zealot’s eyes. Danny horned in, Red Ted the pushy guy who’d step on anybody’s toes. “What ‘boom’? What are you talking about?”
Claire played with her lighter. “Norm has a precipitate streak, and for a boxing fan he’s read a lot of Gandhi. Ted, he’s impatient and I’m impatient. There was a grand jury investigation forming up, sort of a baby HUAC, but now it looks like it went bust. That’s still scary. And I listened to the radio on the ride over. There was another attempt on Mickey Cohen’s life. Sooner or later, he’ll go crazy and sic his goons on the picket line at us. We’ll have to have cameras there to catch it.”
She hadn’t really answered his question, and the passive resistance spiel sounded like subterfuge. Danny got ready to deliver a flirt line; the waitress returning stopped him. Claire said, “Just two glasses, please”; Norm Kostenz said, “I’m on the wagon,” and left with a wave. Claire poured two all ones; Danny hoisted his glass and toasted, “To the cause.” Claire said, “To all things good.”
Danny drank, making an ugh face, a nonboozer notching points with a juicehead woman; Claire sipped and said, “Car thief, revolutionary, ladies’ man. I am suitably impressed.”
Cut her slack, let her move, reel her in. “Don’t be, because it’s all phony.”
“Oh? Meaning?”
“Meaning I was a punk kid revolutionary and a scared car thief.”
“And the ladies’ man?”
The hook baited. “Let’s just say I was trying to recapture an image.”
“Did you ever succeed?”
“No.”
“Because she’s that special?”
Danny took a long drink, booze on top of no sleep making him misty. “She was.”
“Was?”
Danny knew she’d gotten the story from Kostenz, but played along. “Yeah, was. I’m a HUAC widower, Claire. The other women were just not…”
Claire said, “Not her.”
“Right, not her. Not strong, not committed, not…”
“Not her.”
Danny laughed. “Yeah, not her. Shit, I feel like a broken record.”
Claire laughed. “I’d give you a snappy rejoinder about broken hearts, but you’d hit me.”
“I only beat up fascists.”
“No rough stuff with women?”
“Not my style.”
“It’s mine occasionally.”
“I’m shocked.”
“I doubt that.”
Danny killed the drink. “Claire, I want to work for the union, more than just lubing old biddies for money.”
“You’ll get your chance. And they’re not old biddies—unless you think women my age are old.”
A prime opening. “How old are you? Thirty-one, thirty-two?”
Claire laughed the compliment out. “Diplomat. How old are you?”
Danny reached for Ted Krugman’s age, coming up with it maybe a beat too slow. “I’m twenty-six.”
“Well, I’m too old for boys and too young for gigolos. How’s that for an answer?”
“Evasive.”
Claire laughed and fondled her ashtray. “I’ll be forty in May. So thanks for the subtraction.”
“It was sincere.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
Hook her now, get to the station early. “Claire, do I have political credibility with you?”
“Yes, you do.”
“Then let’s try this on the other. I’d like to see you outside our work for the union.”
Claire’s whole face softened; Danny got an urge to slap the bitch silly so she’d get mad and be a fit enemy. He said, “I mean it,” Joe Clean Cut Sincere, Commie version.
Claire said, “Ted, I’m engaged”; Danny said, “I don’t care.” Claire reached into her purse, pulled out a scented calling card and placed it on the table. “We should at least get better acquainted. Some of us in the union are meeting at my house tonight. Why don’t you come for the end of the meeting and say hello to everybody. Then, if you feel like it, we can take a drive and talk.”
Danny palmed the card and stood up. “What time?”
“8:30.”
He’d be there early; pure cop, pure work. “I look forward to it.”
Claire De Haven had gotten herself back together, her face set and dignified. “So do I.”
* * *
Krugman back to Upshaw.
Danny drove to Hollywood Station, parked three blocks away and walked over. Mike Breuning met him in the muster room doorway, grinning. “You owe me one, Deputy.”
“What for?”
“Those guys on your list are now being tailed. Dudley authorized it, so you owe him one, too.”
Danny smiled. “Fucking A. Who are they? Did you give them my number?”
“No. They’re what you might wanta call Dudley’s boys. You know, Homicide Bureau guys Dudley’s brought up from rookies. They’re smart guys, but they’ll only report to Dud.”
“Breuning, this is my investigation.”
“Upshaw, I know. But you’re damn lucky to have the men you’ve got, and Dudley’s working the grand jury job too, so he wants to keep you happy. Have some goddamn gratitude. You’ve got no rank and you’re running seven full-time men. When I was your age, I was rousting piss bums on skid row.”
Danny moved past Breuning into the muster room, knowing he was right, pissed anyway. Plainclothesmen and bluesuits were milling around, chuckling over something on the notice board. He looked over their shoulders and saw a new cartoon, worse than the one Jack Shortell ripped down.
Mickey Cohen, fangs, skullcap and a giant hard-on, pouring it up the ass of a guy in an LASD uniform. The deputy’s pockets were spilling greenbacks; Cohen’s speech balloon said: “Smile, sweetie! Mickey C. gives it kosher!”
Danny shoved a line of blues aside and pulled the obscenity off the wall; he pivoted around, faced a full contingent of enemy cops and tore the piece of cardboard to shreds. The LAPD men gawked, simmered and plain stared; Gene Niles pushed through them and faced Danny down. He said, “I talked to a guy named Leo Bordoni. He wouldn’t blab outright, but I could tell he’d been questioned before. I think you rousted him, and I think it was inside Goines’ pad. When I described the place it was like he’d already fucking been there.”
Except for Niles, the room was a blur. Danny said, “Not now, Sergeant,” brass, the voice of authority.
“Up your ass, not now. I think you B&E’d in my jurisdiction. I know you didn’t catch that squeal at the doughnut stand, and I’ve got a damn good lead where you did get it. If I can prove it, you’re—”
“Niles not now.”
“Up your ass, not now. I had a good robbery case going until you came along with your crazy homo shit. You’ve got a queer fix, you’re cuckoo on it and maybe you are a fucking queer!”
Danny lashed out, quick lefts and rights, short speed punches that caught Niles flush, ripped his face but didn’t move his body back one inch. The enemy cops dispersed; Danny launched a hook to the gut; Niles feinted and came in with a hard uppercut, slamming Danny into the wall. He hung there, a stationary target, pretending to be gone; Niles telegraphed a huge right hand at his midsection. Danny slid away just before contact; Niles’ fist hit the wall; he screeched into the sound of bones crunching. Danny sidestepped, swung Niles around and rolled sets at his stomach; Niles doubled over; Danny felt the enemy cops moving in. Somebody yelled, “Stop it!”; strong arms bear-hugged and picked him up. Jack Shortell materialized, whispering, “Easy, easy,” in the bear hugger’s ear; the arms let go; another somebody yelled “Watch Commander walking!” Danny went limp and let the old-timer cop lead him out a side exit.
* * *
Krugman to Upshaw to Krugman.
Shortell got Danny back to his car, extracting a promise that he’d try to sleep. Danny drove home, woozy one second, all jitters the next. Finally pure exhau
stion hit him and he employed Ted-Claire repartee to stay awake. The banter saw him straight to bed, a pass on Mal Considine’s bottle. With the Krugman leather jacket as his blanket, he fell asleep immediately.
And was joined by odd women and HIM.
The San Berdoo High senior hop, 1939. Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey on the PA system, Susan Leffert leading him out of the gym and into the boys’ locker room, a Mason jar of schnapps as bait. Inside, she fumbles at his shirt buttons, licking his chest, biting the hair. He tries to drum up enthusiasm by staring at his body in the dressing mirror, but keeps thinking of Tim; that feels good, but hurts, and finally having it both ways is just bad. He tells Susan he met an older woman he wants to be loyal to, she reminds him of Suicide Donna who bought him his nice bombardier jacket, a real war hero number. Susan says, “What war?”; the action fades because he knows something’s off, Pearl Harbor is still two years away. Then this tall, faceless man, silver-haired, naked, is there, all around him in a circle, and squinting to see his face makes him go soft in Susan’s mouth.
Then a whole corridor of mirrors, him chasing HIM, Karen Hiltscher, Roxy Beausoleil, Janice Modine and a bevy of Sunset Strip gash swooping down while he hurls excuses.
“I can’t today, I have to study.”
“I don’t dance, it makes me self-conscious.”
“Some other time, okay?”
“Sweetie, let’s keep this light. We work together.”
“I don’t want it.”
“No.”
“Claire, you’re the only real woman I’ve met since Donna.”
“Claire, I want to fuck you so bad just like I used to fuck Donna and all the others. They all loved it because I loved doing it so much.”
He was gaining ground on HIM, gaining focus on the gray man’s brick shithouse build. The apparition twirled around; he had no face, but Tim’s body and bigger stuff than Demon Don Eversall, who use to hang out in the shower, trap water in his jumbo foreskin, hold his thing out and croon, “Come drink from my cup of love.” Hard kissing; bodies mashed together, the two of them inside each other, Claire walking out of the mirror, saying, “That’s impossible.”
Then a gunshot, then another and another.
Danny jolted awake. He heard a fourth ring, saw that he’d sweated the bed sopping, felt like he had to piss and threw off the jacket to find his trousers wet. He fumbled over to the phone and blurted, “Yes?”
“Danny, it’s Jack.”
“Yeah, Jack.”
“Son, I cleared you with the assistant watch commander, this lieutenant named Poulson. He’s pals with Al Dietrich, and he’s reasonable about our Department.”
Danny thought: and Dietrich’s pals with Felix Gordean, who’s got LAPD and DA’s Bureau pals, and Niles is pals with God knows who on the Sheriff’s. “What about Niles?”
“He’s been yanked from our job. I told Poulson he’d been riding you, that he provoked the fight. I think you’ll be okay.” A pause, then, “Are you okay? Did you sleep?”
The dream was coming back; Danny stifled a shot of HIM. “Yeah, I slept. Jack, I don’t want Mal Considine to hear about what happened.”
“He’s your boss on the grand jury?”
“Right.”
“Well, I won’t tell him, but somebody probably will.”
Mike Breuning and Dudley Smith replaced HIM. “Jack, I have to do some work on the other job. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Shortell said, “One more thing. We got minor league lucky on our hot car queries—an Olds was snatched two blocks from La Paloma. Abandoned at the Samo Pier, no prints, but I’m adding ‘car thief’ to our records checks. And we’re a hundred and forty-one down on the dental queries. It’s going slow, but I have a hunch we’ll get him.”
HIM.
Danny laughed, yesterday’s wounds aching, new bone bruises firing up in his knuckles. “Yeah, we’ll get him.”
* * *
Danny segued back to Krugman with a shower and change of clothes, Red Ted the stud in Karen Hiltscher’s sports jacket, pegged flannels and a silk shirt from Considine’s disguise kit. He drove to Beverly Hills middle-lane slow, checking his rear-view every few seconds for cars riding his tail too close and a no-face man peering too intently, shining his headlights too bright because deep down he wanted to be caught, wanted everyone to know WHY. No likely suspects appeared in the mirror; twice his trawling almost got him into fender benders. He arrived at Claire De Haven’s house forty-five minutes early; he saw Caddies and Lincolns in the driveway, muted lights glowing behind curtained windows and one narrow side dormer cracked for air, screened and shade covered—but open. The dormer faced a stone footpath and tall shrubs separating the De Haven property from the neighboring house; Danny walked over, squatted down and listened.
Words came at him, filtered through coughs and garbled interruptions. He picked out a man’s shout: “Cohen and his farshtunkener lackeys have to go nutso first”; Claire’s “It’s all in knowing when to squeeze.” A soft, mid-Atlantic drawl: “We have to give the studios an out to save face with, that’s why knowing when is so important. It has to hit the fan just right.”
Danny kept checking his blind side for witnesses; he heard a long digression on the ’52 presidential election—who’d run, who wouldn’t—that degenerated into a childish shouting match, Claire finally dominating with her opinion of Stevenson and Taft, fascist minions of varying stripes. There was something about a movie director named Paul Doinelle and his “Cocteau-like” classics; then an almost complete duet: the soft-voiced man chuckling over “old flames,” a man with a stentorian Southern accent punch-lining, “But I got Claire.” Danny recalled the psychiatric files: Reynolds Loftis and Chaz Minear were lovers years ago; Considine told him that now Claire and Loftis were engaged to be married. He got stomach flip-flops and looked at his watch: 8:27, time to meet the enemy.
He walked around and rang the bell. Claire opened the door and said, “Right on time”; Danny saw that her makeup and slacks suit tamped down her wrinkles and showed off her curves better than the powder job and dress at the restaurant. He said, “You look lovely, Claire.”
Claire whispered, “Save it for later,” took his arm and led him into the living room, subtle swank offset by framed movie posters: Pinko titles from the grand jury package. Three men were standing around holding drinks: a Semitic-looking guy in tweeds, a small, trim number wearing a tennis sweater and white ducks, and a dead ringer composite for HIM—a silver-maned man pushing fifty, topping six feet by at least two inches, as lanky as Mal Considine but ten times as handsome. Danny stared at his face, thinking something about the set of his eyes was familiar, then looked away—queer or ex-queer or whatever, he was just an image—a Commie, not a killer.
Claire made the introductions. “Gentlemen, Ted Krugman. Ted, left to right we have Mort Ziffkin, Chaz Minear and Reynolds Loftis.”
Danny shook their hands, getting, “Hey there, slugger,” from Ziffkin, “A pleasure,” from Minear and a wry smile out of Loftis, an implicit aside: I allow my fiancée to dally with younger guys. He gave the tall man his strongest grip, snapping hard into Ted K. “The pleasure’s all mine, and I’m looking forward to working with you.”
Minear smiled; Ziffkin said, “Attaboy”; Loftis said, “You and Claire have a good strategy talk, but get her home early, you hear?”—a Southern accent, but no syrup and another aside: he was sleeping with De Haven tonight.
Danny laughed, knowing he’d just memorized Loftis’ features; Claire sighed, “Let’s go, Ted. Strategy awaits.”
They walked outside. Danny thought of rolling tails and steered Claire to his car. She said, “Where do you want to strategize”; her aside, her parody on Loftis playing cute. Danny opened the passenger door, getting an idea: prowl darktown with the protective coloration of a woman in tow. It was nearly two weeks since he’d gone strongarming down there, he probably wouldn’t be recognized in his non-cop outfit and HE was near the Southside strip just yesterd
ay. “I like jazz. Do you?”
“I love it, and I know a great spot in Hollywood.”
“I know some places on South Central that really bop. What do you say?”
Claire hesitated, then said, “Sure, sounds like fun.”
* * *
East on Wilshire, south on Normandie. Danny drove fast, thinking of his midnight meeting and ways to chill Considine on the Niles ruckus; he kept checking the rear-view mock casual, gifting Claire with a smile each time so she’d think he was thinking of her. Nothing strange appeared in the mirror; Reynolds Loftis’ face stayed in his mind, a $$$ to make the face jump out and bite him. Claire chain-smoked and drummed her nails on the dashboard.
The silence played right, two idealists deep in thought. East on Slauson, south on Central, more mirror checks now that they were on HIS stomping ground. Danny pulled up in front of the Club Zombie; Claire said, “Ted, what are you afraid of?”
The question caught him checking his waistband for the sap he always packed on niggertown assignments; he stopped and grabbed the wheel, Red Ted the persecuted Negro’s buddy. “The Teamsters, I guess. I’m rusty.”
Claire put a hand on his cheek. “You’re tired and lonely and driven. You want to please and do the right thing so badly that it just about breaks my heart.”
Danny leaned into the caress, a catch in his throat like when he saw Considine’s bottle. Claire took her hand away and kissed the spot she’d touched. “I am such a sucker for strays. Come on, strong silent type. We’re going to listen to music and hold hands, and we’re not going to talk about politics.”
The catch stuck; the kiss was still warm. Danny walked ahead of Claire to the door; the bouncer from New Year’s Day was there and eyed him like he was just another white hepcat. Claire caught up just as the cold air got him back to normal: Krugman the Commie on a hot date, Upshaw the Homicide cop on overtime. He took her arm and led her inside.
The Zombie interior was just like two weeks before, with an even louder, more dissonant combo wailing on the bandstand. This time the clientele was all Negro: a sea of black faces offset by colored lighting, a flickering canvas where a white/gray face would stand out and scream, “Me!” Danny slipped the maitre d’ a five-spot and requested a wall table with a floor view; the man led them to seats near the back exit, took their order for a double bonded and a dry martini, bowed and motioned for a waitress. Danny settled Claire into the chair closest to the bandstand; he grabbed the one facing the bar and the audience.