Lenny Rolff hit the grass on his knees. Dudley knelt beside him and coaxed out a barely audible string of names. The last name, sobbed, was “Nate Eisler.” Mal double-timed it to the car, looking back once. Dudley was watching his friendly witness hurl typewriter and manuscript, table and chairs helter-skelter.
* * *
Dudley drove Mal back to his motel, no talk the whole time, Mal keeping the radio glued to a classical station: bombastic stuff played loud. Dudley’s goodbye was, “You’ve more stomach for this work than I expected”; Mal went inside and spent an hour in the shower, until the hot water for the entire dump was used up and the manager came knocking on the door to complain. Mal calmed him down with his badge and a ten-spot, put on his last clean suit and drove downtown to see his lawyer.
Jake Kellerman’s office was in the Oviatt Tower at Sixth and Olive. Mal arrived five minutes early, scanning the bare-bones reception room, wondering if Jake sacrificed a secretary for rental freight in one of LA’s ritziest buildings. Their first confab had been overview; this one had to be meat and potatoes.
Kellerman opened his inner office door at 3:00 on the dot; Mal walked in and sat down in a plain brown leather chair. Kellerman shook his hand, then stood behind a plain brown wooden desk. He said, “Preliminary day after tomorrow, Civil Court 32. Greenberg’s on vacation, and we’ve got some goyishe stiff named Hardesty. I’m sorry about that, Mal. I wanted to get you a Jew who’d be impressed by your MP work overseas.”
Mal shrugged, thinking of Eisler and Rolff; Kellerman smiled. “Care to enlighten me on a rumor?”
“Sure.”
“I heard you coldcocked some Nazi bastard in Poland.”
“That’s true.”
“You killed him?”
The bare little office was getting stuffy. “Yes.”
Kellerman said, “Mazel tov,” checked his court calendar and some papers on the desk. “At preliminary I’ll start stalling for continuances and try to work out an angle to get you switched to Greenberg’s docket. He’ll fucking love you. How’s the grand jury gig going?”
“It’s going well.”
“Then why are you looking so glum? Look, is there any chance you’ll get your promotion before the grand jury convenes?”
Mal said, “No. Jake, what’s your strategy past the continuances?”
Kellerman hooked two thumbs in his vest pockets. “Mal, it’s a hatchet job on Celeste. She deserted the boy—”
“She didn’t desert him, the fucking Nazis picked up her and her husband and threw them in fucking Buchenwald.”
“Sssh. Easy, pal. You told me the boy was molested as a direct result of being deserted by his mother. She peddled it inside to stay alive. Your MP battalion has got her liberation interview pictures—she looks like Betty Grable compared to the other women who came out alive. I’ll kill her in court with that—Greenberg or no Greenberg.”
Mal took off his jacket and loosened his tie. “Jake, I don’t want Stefan to hear that stuff. I want you to get a writ barring him from hearing testimony. An exclusion order. You can do it.”
Kellerman laughed. “No wonder you dropped out of law school. Writs excluding minor children from overhearing testimony in custody cases cannot be legally sanctioned unless the counsel of both parents approve it—which Celeste’s lawyer will never go for. If I break her down in court—and I will—he’ll want Stefan there on the off-chance he runs to mommy, not daddy. It’s out of our hands.”
Mal saw Stefan Heisteke, Prague ’45, coming off a three-year jag of canned dog food and rape. “You swing it, or you find stuff that happened after the war to hit Celeste with.”
“Like her dutifully schooling Stefan in Czech? Mal, she doesn’t drink or sleep around or hit the boy. You don’t wrest custody from the natural mother because the woman lives in the past.”
Mal got up, his head throbbing. “Then you make me the biggest fucking hero since Lucky Lindy. You make me look so fucking good I make motherhood look like shit.”
Jake Kellerman pointed to the door. “Go get me a big load of Commies and I’ll do my best.”
* * *
Mal rolled to the Pacific Dining Car. The general idea was a feast to pamper himself away from Eisler, Rolff and Dudley Smith—the purging that an hour of scalding hot water didn’t accomplish. But as soon as his food arrived he lost interest, grabbed Eisler’s diary and flipped to 1938–1939, the writer’s time with Claire De Haven.
No explicitness, just analysis.
The woman hated her father, screwed Mexicans to earn his wrath, had a crush on her father and got her white lefty consorts to dress stuffed-shirt traditional like him—so she could tear off their clothes and make a game out of humiliating paternal surrogates. She hated her father’s money and political connections, raped his bank accounts to lavish gifts on men whose politics the old man despised; she went to tether’s end on booze, opiates and sex, found causes to do penance with and fashioned herself into an exemplary leftist Joan of Arc: organizing, planning, recruiting, financing with her own money and donations often secured with her own body. The woman’s political efficacy was so formidable that she was never dismissed as a camp follower or dilettante; at worst, only her psyche and motives were viewed as spurious. Eisler’s fascination with Claire continued after their affair ended; he remained her friend through-out her liaisons with pachuco thugs, dryouts at Terry Lux’s clinic, her big penance number over Sleepy Lagoon: a Mex boyfriend beat up in the zoot riots, a boilout at Doc Terry’s and then a full social season, stone cold sober, with the SLDC. Impressive. Dudley’s Smith’s lunatic fixation aside, the seventeen kids accused of snuffing José Diaz were by all accounts innocent. And Claire Katherine De Haven—Commie rich girl slut—was a major force behind getting them sprung.
Mal leafed through the journal; the De Haven entries dwindled as he hit ’44 and ’45. He picked at his food and backtracked through a glut of pages that made Eisler look intelligent, analytical, a do-goodnik led down the primrose path by Pinko college professors and the spectre of Hitler looming over Germany. So far, zero hard evidence—if the diary were introduced to the grand jury it would actually make Eisler appear oddly heroic. Remembering the man as a Reynolds Loftis friend/Chaz Minear co-worker, Mal scanned pages for them.
Minear came off as weak, the nance of the two, the clinging vine. Mal read through accounts of Chaz and Eisler scripting Eastern Front and Storm Over Leningrad together circa 1942–1943, Eisler pissed at Minear’s sloppy work habits, pissed at his mooning over Loftis, pissed at himself for despising his friends’ homosexuality—tolerable in Reynolds because at least he wasn’t a swish. You could see Minear’s impotent rage building back in the Sleepy Lagoon days—his crying on Eisler’s shoulder over some fling Loftis was having—“My God, Nate, he’s just a boy, and he’s been disfigured”—then refusing to go any further on the topic. Hindsight: in ’47, Chaz Minear hit back at his faithless lover—the snitch to HUAC that got Reynolds Loftis blacklisted. Mal made a mental note: if Danny Upshaw couldn’t infiltrate the UAES braintrust, then Chaz Minear, homosexual weak sister, might be ripe for overt bracing—exposure of his snitch duty the lever to get him to snitch again.
The rest of the diary was a bore: meetings, committees, gatherings and names for Buzz Meeks to check out along with the names Dudley coerced from Lenny Rolff. Mal killed it off while his steak got cold and his salad wilted in the bowl; he realized that he liked Nathan Eisler. And that with the journal checked out and dinner attempted, he had no place to go except back to the Shangri-Lodge Motel and nothing he wanted to do except talk to Stefan—a direct violation of Jake Kellerman’s orders. All the motel had to offer was women’s names scrawled on the bathroom door, and if he called Stefan he’d probably get Celeste, their first amenities since he reworked her face. Restless, he paid the check, drove up into the Pasadena foothills and parked in the middle of a totally dark box canyon: “Cordite Alley,” the spot where his generation of LAPD rookies got fried on kickback booze
, shot the shit and target practiced, tall clumps of sagebrush to simulate bad guys.
The ground held a thick layer of spent shells; dousing his headbeams, Mal saw that the other cop generations had blasted the sagebrushes to smithereens and had gone to work on the scrub pines: the trees were stripped of bark and covered with entry holes. He got out of the car, drew his service revolver and squeezed off six rounds into the darkness; the echo hurt his ears and the cordite stink smelled good. He reloaded and emptied the .38 again; over the hill in South Pasadena skid other guns went off, like a chain of dogs barking at the moon. Mal reloaded, fired, reloaded and fired until his box of Remingtons was empty; he heard cheers, howls, shrieks and then nothing.
The canyon rustled with a warm wind. Mal leaned against the car and thought about Ad Vice, operations, turning down the Hat Squad, where you went in the door gun first and cops like Dudley Smith respected you. In Ad Vice he busted a string of Chinatown whorehouses deemed inoperable—sending in fresh-scrubbed recruits for blow jobs, followed five minutes later by door-kicking harness bulls and lab techs with cameras. The girls were all straight off the boat and living at home with mama-san and papa-san, who thought they were working double shifts at the Shun-Wong Shirt Factory; he had a cordon of muscle cops accompany him to the storefront office of Uncle Ace Kwan, LA’s number-one boss chink pimp. He informed Uncle Ace that unless he took his whores over the line to the County, he would show the pictures to the papa-sans—many of them Tong-connected—and inform them that Kwan-san was getting fat off daughter-san’s diet of Caucasian dick. Uncle Ace bowed, said, yes, complied and always sent him a candied duck and thoughtful card at Christmastime, and he always thought about passing the greeting on to his brother—while he was still on speaking terms with him.
Him.
Desmond.
Big Des.
Desmond Confrey Considine, who coerced him into dark houses and made him a cop, an operator.
Three years older. Three inches taller. An athlete, good at faking piety to impress the Reverend. The Reverend caught him boosting a pack of gum at the local Pig and Whistle and flayed his ass so bad that Big Des popped a bunch of tendons trying to get free of his bonds and was sidelined for the rest of the football season, a first-string linebacker with a third-string brain and a first-class case of kleptomania that he was now terrified to run with: no legs and no balls, courtesy of Liam Considine, first-string Calvinist.
So Desmond recruited his gangly kid brother, figuring his whippet thinness would get him inside the places he was now afraid to B&E, get him the things he wanted: Joe Stinson’s tennis racquet, Jimmy Harris’s crystal radio set, Dan Klein’s elk’s teeth on a string and all the other good stuff he couldn’t stand to see other kids enjoying. Little Malcolm, who couldn’t stop blaspheming even though the Reverend told him that now that he was fourteen the penalty was a whipping—not the dinner of pine tar soap and castor oil he was used to. Little Mally would become his stealer, or the Reverend would get an earful of Jesus doing it with Rex the Wonder Dog and Mary Magdalene jumping Willy, the old coon who delivered ice to their block on a swayback nag—stuff the Reverend knew Des didn’t have the imagination to come up with.
So he stole, afraid of Desmond, afraid of the Reverend, afraid to confide in Mother for fear she’d tell her husband and he’d kill Des, then go to the gallows and leave them to the mercy of the cheapshit Presbyterian Charity Board. Six feet and barely one-ten, he became the San Francisco Phantom, shinnying up drainpipes and popping window latches, stealing Desmond sporting junk that he was too afraid to use, books he was too stupid to read, clothes he was too big to wear. He knew that as long as Des kept the stuff he had the goods on him—but he kept playing the game.
Because Joe Stinson had a snazzy sister named Cloris, and he liked being alone in her room. Because Dan Klein had a parrot who’d eat crackers out of your mouth. Because Jimmy Harris’ roundheels sister caught him raiding the pantry on his way out, took his cherry and said his thing was big. Because en route to swipe Biff Rice’s National Geographics he found Biff’s baby brother out of his crib, chewing on an electrical cord—and he put him back, fed him condensed milk and maybe saved his life, pretending it was his kid brother and he was saving him from Des and the Reverend. Because being the San Francisco Phantom was a respite from being a stick-thin, scaredy-cat school grind with a crackpot father, doormat mother and idiot brother.
Until October 1, 1924.
Desmond had sent him on a second run to Jimmy Harris’ place; he squeezed in through the woodbox opening, knowing round-heels Annie was there. She was there, but not alone: a cop with his blue serge trousers down to his ankles was on the living room carpet pumping her. He gasped, tripped and fell; the cop beat him silly, signet rings lacerating his face to shreds. He cleansed his wounds himself, tried to get up the guts to break into Biff Rice’s place to see if the baby was okay, but couldn’t get up the nerve; he went home, hid Desmond’s burglary stash and told him the tables were turned: ripped tendons or not, the ringleader had to steal for the thief or he’d spill the beans to the Reverend. There was only one thing he wanted, and then they’d be quits—one of Annie Harris’ negligees—and he’d tell him when to pull the job.
He staked the Harris house out, learning that Annie serviced Officer John Rokkas every Tuesday afternoon when the rest of the family worked at the Harris’ produce stall in Oakland. On a cold November Tuesday, he picked the lock for Des; Des went in and came out twenty minutes later, beaten to a pulp. He stole Desmond’s booty and secreted it in a safe deposit box, establishing a parity of fear between the two Considine brothers. Desmond flunked out of Union Theological Seminary and became a big shot in the used-car racket. Mal went to Stanford, graduated and lollygagged through a year of law school, dreaming of back-alley adventure, prowling for loose women and never really enjoying the capture. When law school became excruciatingly boring, he joined the Los Angeles Police Department, not knowing how long he’d last as a cop—or if he even could last. Then he went home for Christmas, twenty-three years old and a rookie running scared in LA niggertown. He wore his uniform to Christmas dinner: Sam Browne belt, silver-plated whistle, .38 revolver. Car king Desmond, still bearing the scars of Officer John Rokkas’ beating, was terrified of his new persona. He knew he’d be a policeman until the day he died.
Mal segued from his brother to Danny Upshaw, the black box canyon surrounding him, spent ammunition sliding under his feet. How good was he? What would he see? Would what he saw be worth today multiplied fifty times—Ellis Loew stalking grand jury chambers wrapped in the American flag?
“You’ve more stomach for this work than I expected.”
Dudley was right.
Mal picked up a handful of empty shells, hurled them at nothing and drove home to the Shangri-Lodge Motel.
Chapter Twenty
Mickey Cohen’s hideaway was SRO.
The Mick and Davey Goldman were working on a new nightclub routine, a .12 gauge pump substituting for a floor mike. Johnny Stompanato was playing rummy with Morris Jahelka, going over plans for the Cohen-Dragna dope summit between hands. And Buzz was interviewing Mickey’s Teamster goons, taking down picket line scuttlebutt, a last-minute precaution before Mal Considine sent in his operative.
So far, boring Commie jive:
The De Haven cooze and Mort Ziffkin traded clichés about overthrowing the “studio autocracy”; Fritzie “Icepick” Kupfer-man had a Teamster file clerk tagged as a UAES plant—they’d been spoon-feeding him only what they wanted him to hear for weeks now, letting him run the lunch truck across from the Variety International line. Mo Jahelka had a hinky feeling: UAES pickets weren’t fighting back when shoved or verbally provoked—they seemed smug, like they were biding their time, even old lefty headbashers maintaining their frost. Moey seemed to think UAES had something up its sleeve. Buzz had padded the statements so Ellis Loew would think he was working harder than he was, feeling like a nice, tasty Christian in a lion’s den, waiting for
the lion to get hungry and notice him.
Johnny Stomp Lion.
Mickey Lion.
Johnny had been giving him the fisheye ever since he walked in the door, ten days since he kiboshed the squeeze on Lucy Whitehall and bought the guinea sharpster off with five Mickey C-notes. “Hi, Buzz,” “Hi, Johnny,” nothing else. He’d been with Audrey three times now, the one all-nighter at his place, two quick shots at Howard’s fuck pad in the Hollywood Hills. If Mickey had any kind of surveillance on Audrey it was Johnny; if he got wise, it was mortgage his life to the fucker or kill him, no middle ground. If Mickey got wise, it was the Big Adios, when crossed, the little guy got vicious: he’d found the trigger who bumped Hooky Rothman, gave him two hollow points in the kneecaps, an evening of agony with a Fritzie Kupferman coup de grace: an icepick in the ear, Fritzie making like Toscanini conducting Beethoven, little dips and swirls with his baton before he speared the poor bastard’s brain.
Mickey Lion, this bamboo bungalow his den.
Buzz put away his notepad, taking a last look at the four names Dudley Smith had called him with earlier: Reds to be back-ground-checked, more shitwork, probably more padding. Mickey Lion and Johnny Lion were schmoozing by the fireplace now, a picture of Audrey Lioness in pasties and panties on the wall above them. The Mick hooked a finger at him; he walked over.
The comedian had some schtick ready. “A guy comes up and asks me, ‘Mickey, how’s business?’ I tell him, ‘Pal, it’s like show business, there is no business.’ I make a pass at this ginch, she says, ‘I don’t lay for every Tom, Dick and Harry.’ I say, ‘What about me? I’m Mickey!’ ”
Buzz laughed and pointed to the picture of Audrey, eyes hard on Johnny Stomp. “You should put her in your routine. Beauty and the Beast. You’ll bring the house down.”