And he knew he knew. And tomorrow they would all know.
Blackmail bait.
His name in sex files.
His name bandied in queer chitchat at the Chateau Marmont.
Machines that know.
Drugs that don’t let you lie.
Polygraph needles fluttering off the paper every time they asked him why he cared so much about a string of queer fag homo fruit snuffs.
No reprieve.
Danny unholstered his gun and stuck the barrel in his mouth. The taste of oil made him gag and he saw how it would look, the cops who found him making jokes about why he did it that way. He put the .45 down and walked to the kitchen.
Weapons galore.
Danny picked up a serrated-edged carving knife. He tested the heft, found it substantial and said goodbye to Mal and Jack and Doc. He apologized for the cars he stole and the guys he beat up who didn’t deserve it, who were just there when he wanted to hit something. He thought of his killer, thought that he murdered because someone made him what he himself was. He held the knife up and forgave him; he put the blade to his throat and slashed himself ear to ear, down to the windpipe in one clean stroke.
Part Three
Wolverine
Chapter Thirty-Two
A week later Buzz went by the grave, his fourth visit since LASD hustled the kid into the ground. The plot was a low-rent number in an East LA cemetery; the stone read:
Daniel Thomas Upshaw
1922–1950
No beloved whatever of.
No son of whoever.
No crucifix cut into the tablet and no RIP. Nothing juicy to catch a passerby’s interest, like “Cop Killer” or “Almost DA’s Bureau Brass.” Nothing to spell it out true to whoever read the half-column hush job on the kid’s accidental death—a slip off a chair, a nose dive onto a kitchen cutlery rack.
Fall Guy.
Buzz bent down and pulled out a clump of crabgrass; the butt of the gun he’d killed Gene Niles with dug into his side. He stood up and kicked the marker; he thought that “Free Ride” and “Gravy Train” and “Dumb Okie Luck” might look good too, followed by a soliloquy on Deputy Danny Upshaw’s last days, lots of details on a tombstone skyscraper high, like the ones voodoo nigger pimps bought for themselves. Because Deputy Danny Upshaw was voodooing him, little pins stuck in a fat little Buzz Meeks voodoo doll.
Mal had called him with the word. The rain dug up Niles’ body, LAPD grabbed Danny as a suspect, roughhoused him and cut him loose with orders to report for a lie detector test and sodium pentothal questioning the next day. When the kid didn’t show, City bulls hit his pad in force and found him dead on the living room floor, throat slashed, the pad trashed. Nort Layman, distraught, did the autopsy, dying to call it a 187; the evidence wouldn’t let him: fingerprints on the knife and the angle of the cut and fall said “self-inflicted,” case closed. Doc called the death wound “amazing”—no hesitation marks, Danny Upshaw wanted out bad and now.
LASD double-timed the kid graveside; four people attended the funeral: Layman, Mal, a County cop named Jack Shortell and himself. The homo investigation was immediately disbanded and Shortell took off for a vacation in the Montana boonies; LAPD closed the book on Gene Niles, Upshaw’s suicide their confession and trip to the gas chamber. City-County police relations were all-time bad—and he skated, thin-icing it, trying to fix an angle to save both their asses, no luck, too late to do the kid any good.
Free Ride.
What kept nagging at him was that he fixed Audrey’s skim spree first. Petey Skouras paid Mickey back the dough the lioness bilked; Mickey was generous and let him off with a beating: Johnny Stomp and a little blackjack work on the kidneys. Petey took off for Frisco then—even though the Mick, impressed with his repentance, would have kept him on the payroll. Petey had played into his fix by skedaddling; Mickey, Mr. Effusiveness, had upped his payoff on the dope summit guard gig to a grand, telling him the charming Lieutenant Dudley Smith would also be standing trigger. More cash in his pocket—while Danny Upshaw climbed the gallows.
Dumb Okie Luck.
Mal took it hard, going on a two-day drunk, sobering up with a direct frontal attack on the Red Menace. A strongarmed lefty told Dudley Smith that Claire De Haven made “Ted Krugman” as a cop; Mal was enraged, but the consensus of the team was that they now had enough snitch testimony to take UAES down without Upshaw’s covert dirt. Docket time was being set up; if all went well, the grand jury would convene in two weeks. Mal had gone off the deep end, crucifying Reds to perk his juice for his court battle. He’d turned Nathan Eisler’s diary upside down for names, turning out snitches from four of the men Claire De Haven serviced to start her union. His flop at the Shangri-Lodge Motel now looked like Ellis Loew’s living room: graphs, charts and cross-referenced hearsay, Mal’s ode to Danny Upshaw, all of it proving one thing: that Commies were long on talk. And when the grand jury heard that talk, they probably wouldn’t have the brains to think it out one step further: that the sad, deluded fuckers talked because they didn’t have the balls to do anything else.
Buzz kicked the gravestone again; he thought that Captain Mal Considine almost had himself convinced that UAES was a hot damn threat to America’s internal security—that he had to believe it so he could keep his son and still call himself a good guy. Odds on the Hollywood Commies subverting the country with their cornball propaganda turkeys, rallies and picket line highjinks: thirty trillion to one against, a longshot from Mars. The entire deal was a duck shoot, a play to save the studios money and make Ellis Loew District Attorney and Governor of California.
Bagman.
Fixer.
He’d been skating since the moment Mal called him with the news. Ellis told him to run background checks on the names in Eisler’s diary; he called R&I, got their dope and let it go at that. Mal told him to conduct phone interviews with HUAC snitches back east; he gave a third of the numbers cursory calls, asked half the questions he was supposed to and edited the answers down to two pages per man, easy stuff for his secretary to type up. His big job was to locate Dr. Saul Lesnick, the grand jury’s boss fink; he’d skated entirely on that gig—and kept skating in general. And always in the same direction—toward Danny Upshaw.
When he knew the hush was in, he drove up to San Bernardino for a look-see at the kid’s past. He talked to his widowed mother, a faded ginch living on Social Security; she told him she didn’t attend the funeral because Danny had been curt with her on his last several visits and she disapproved of his drinking. He got her talking; she painted a picture of Danny the child as smart and cold, a youngster who read, studied and kept to himself. When his father died, he expressed no grief; he liked cars and fix-it things and science books; he never chased girls and always kept his room spotless. Since he became a policeman, he visited her only on Christmas and her birthday, never more, never less. He got straight B’s in high school and straight A’s in junior college. He ignored the floozies who chased after him; he tinkered with hot rods. He had one close friend: a boy named Tim Bergstrom, now a phys ed teacher at San Berdoo High.
Buzz drove to the school and badged Bergstrom. The man had seen the newspaper plant on Upshaw’s death, said Danny was born to die young and elaborated over beers in a nearby bar. He said that Danny liked to figure things like motors and engines and arithmetic out, that he stole cars because he loved the danger, that he was always trying to prove himself, but kept quiet about it. You could tell he was crazy inside, but you couldn’t figure out how or why; you could tell he was really smart, but you didn’t know what he’d end up doing with his brains. Girls liked him because he was mysterious and played hard to get; he was a terrific street fighter. Years ago, drunk, Danny told him a story about witnessing a murder; that was when he got hipped on being a cop, hipped on scientific forensic stuff. He was a cold drunk: booze just made him more inside, more mysterious and persistent, and sooner or later you knew he’d persist with the wrong guy and get himself shot—what sur
prised him was that Danny died accidentally. Buzz let that one go and said, “Was Danny a queer?” Bergstrom flushed, twitched, sputtered into his beer and said, “Hell, no”—and two seconds later was whipping out pictures of his wife and kids.
Buzz drove back to LA, called a County pal, learned that Danny Upshaw’s Personnel file had been yanked and that for all intents and purposes the kid was never a member of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He took a trip by the West Hollywood Substation, talked to the guys on the squad, learned that Danny never accepted bribes or trade pussy; he never moved on his snitch Janice Modine or on switchboard Karen Hiltscher—both of whom were dying to give it to him. Upshaw’s fellow deputies either respected his brains or wrote him off as an idealistic fool with a mean streak; Captain Al Dietrich was rumored to like him because he was methodical, hard-working and ambitious. Buzz thought of him as a kid graduating from machines to people at the wrong time, fishing for WHY? in a river of shit, getting the worst answer two bad cases had to give and ending up dead because he couldn’t lie to himself.
Daniel Thomas Upshaw, 1922–1950. Queer.
Turner Prescott Meeks, 1906–? Free ride because the kid couldn’t take it.
“It” couldn’t be anything else. Danny Upshaw didn’t kill Gene Niles. Mal said Thad Green and two hardnoses roughed him up; they probably recounted Niles calling him a queer and went over what Dudley Smith told Mal and Green: that Danny was seen shaking down Felix Gordean. With a poly test and silly syrup pending, Green let the kid go home with his gun, hoping he’d spare LAPD the grief of a trial and Niles as a Dragna bagman coming out. Danny had obliged—but for the wrong reason and not with his gun.
Scapegoat.
Who got some kind of last laugh.
He couldn’t sleep for shit; when he did put three or four hours together he dreamed of all the crappy stunts he’d pulled: farm girls coerced into Howard’s bed; heroin bootjacked and sold to Mickey, cash in his pocket, the junk sidetracked on its way to some hophead’s arm. Sleeping with Audrey was the only cure—she’d played her string since Niles like a trouper—and touching her and keeping her safe kept the kid away. But their four nights in a row at Howard’s place was dangerous too, and every time he left her he got scared and knew he had to do something about it.
Keeping his take on Danny away from Mal was one way. The cop couldn’t believe the kid killed Niles, and he was pretty shrewd in tagging Cohen gunmen for the job—he’d watched Danny question a Dragna hump named Vinnie Scoppettone, who spilled on the shooting at Sherry’s: LAPD shooters. But that was as far as his reconstruction went, and he still idealized Upshaw as a smart young cop headed for rank and glory. Keeping the kid’s secret was the beginning.
Buzz cocked a finger at the gravestone and made up his mind around two facts. One, when LAPD crashed Upshaw’s pad, they found it thoroughly trashed; Nort Layman did a forensic, came up with Danny’s prints on a shitload of tossed furniture and pegged him going crazy in the last moments of his life. LAPD’s property report—the contents of the apartment inventoried—carried no mention of the grand jury paperwork or the personal file Danny kept on his homicides. He broke into the place and tossed it extra good; no files were secreted anywhere inside the four rooms. Mal was there when the body was discovered; he said LAPD sealed the crib tight, with only Danny and the knife leaving the premises. Two, the night before he died, Danny called him: he was amazed that his two cases had crossed at the juncture of Charles Hartshorn and Reynolds Loftis.
“Deputy, are you tellin’ me Loftis is a suspect for your killin’s?”
“I’m telling you maybe. Maybe real strong. He fits the killer’s description…and he fits.”
No way was Danny Upshaw a murder victim. No way did the file thief wreck his apartment. Dudley Smith had a strange fix on the kid, but there was no reason for him to steal the files, and if he did he would have faked a burglary.
Person or persons unknown—a good starting point for some payback.
* * *
Buzz found Mal in Ellis Loew’s back yard, sitting on a sunbleached sofa, going over papers. He looked skinny beyond skinny, like he was starving himself to make the bantamweight limit. “Hey, boss.”
Mal nodded and kept working. Buzz said, “I want to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Not some Commie plot, that’s for damn sure.”
Mal connected a series of names with pencil lines. “I know you don’t take this seriously, but it is serious.”
“It’s a serious piece of gravy, I’ll give you that. And I sure want my share. It’s just that I’ve got some other boogeymen on my mind right now.”
“Like who?”
“Like Upshaw.”
Mal put his paper and pencil down. “He’s LAPD’s boogeyman, not yours.”
“I’m pretty sure he didn’t kill Niles, boss.”
“We’ve been over that, Buzz. It was Mickey or Jack, and we’d never be able to prove it in a million years.”
Buzz sat down on the couch—it stank of mildew and some Red chaser had burned the arms with cigarette butts. “Mal, you remember Upshaw tellin’ us about his file on the queer snuffs?”
“Sure.”
“It was stolen from his apartment, and so was his copy of the grand jury package.”
“What?”
“I’m certain about it. You said LAPD sealed the pad and didn’t take nothin’, and I checked Upshaw’s desk at West Hollywood Station. Lots of old paperwork, but zilch on the 187’s and the grand jury. You been so absorbed chasin’ pinkers you probably didn’t even think about it.”
Mal tapped Buzz with his pencil. “You’re right, I didn’t, and where are you fishing? The kid’s dead and buried, he was in trouble over that B&E he pulled, he was probably finished as a cop. He could have been the best, and I miss him. But he dug his own grave.”
Buzz clamped down on Mal’s hand. “Boss, we dug his grave. You pushed him too hard on De Haven, and I…oh fuck it.”
Mal pulled his hand free. “You what?”
“The kid had a fix on Reynolds Loftis. We talked on the phone the night before he died. He’d read about Charles Hartshorn’s suicide, the paper made him as a Sleepy Lagoon lawyer and Upshaw had him as a lead on his homicides—Hartshorn was blackmailed by one of the victims. I told him Loftis was rousted with Hartshorn at a queer bar back in ’44, and the kid went nuts. He didn’t know Hartshorn was involved with Sleepy Lagoon, and that sure did seem to set him off. I asked him if Loftis was a suspect, and he said, ‘Maybe real strong.’ ”
Mal said, “Have you talked to that County man Shortell about this?”
“No, he’s in Montana on vacation.”
“Mike Breuning?”
“I don’t trust that boy to answer straight. Remember how Danny told us Breuning fluffed the job and was jerkin’ his chain?”
“Meeks, you sure took your time telling me this.”
“I’ve been thinkin’ it over, and it took me a while to figure out what I was gonna do.”
“Which is?”
Buzz smiled. “Maybe Loftis is a hot suspect, maybe he ain’t. Whatever, I’m gonna get me that queer slasher, whoever he is.”
Mal smiled. “And then what?”
“Then arrest him or kill him.”
Mal said, “You’re out of your mind.”
Buzz said, “I was sorta thinkin’ about askin’ you to join me. A captain out of his mind has got more juice than a loaner cop with a few loose.”
“I’ve got the grand jury, Meeks. And day after tomorrow’s the divorce trial.”
Buzz cracked his knuckles. “You in?”
“No. It’s crazy. And I don’t feature you as the dramatic gesture type, either.”
“I owe him. We owe him.”
“No, it’s wrong.”
“Think of the angles, skipper. Loftis as a psycho killer. You pop him for that before the grand jury convenes and UAES’ll go in the toilet so large they’ll hear it flush in Cle
veland.”
Mal laughed; Buzz laughed and said, “We’ll give it a week or so. We’ll put together what we can get out of the grand jury file and we’ll talk to Shortell and see what he’s got. We’ll brace Loftis, and if it goes bust, it goes bust.”
“There’s the grand jury, Meeks.”
“A Commie like Loftis popped for four 187’s makes you so large that no judge in this state would fuck you over on your custody case. Think of that.”
Mal broke his pencil in two. “I need a continuance, now, and I won’t frame Loftis.”
“That mean you’re in?”
“I don’t know.”
Buzz went for the kill. “Well, shit there, Captain. I thought appealin’ to your career would get you, but I guess I was wrong. Just think about Danny Upshaw and how bad he wanted it, and how you got your rocks off sendin’ him after Claire De Haven. Think how maybe her and Loftis played with that cherry kid right before he cut his fuckin’ throat. Then you—”
Mal slapped Buzz hard in the face.
Buzz sat on his hands so he wouldn’t hit back.
Mal threw his list of names on the grass and said, “I’m in. But if this fucks up my grand jury shot, it’s you and me for real. For keeps.”
Buzz smiled. “Yessir, Captain.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Claire De Haven said, “I take it this means all pretenses are off.”
A weak intro—he knew she had Upshaw made and the grand jury on track. Mal said, “This is about four murders.”