* * *
Buzz drove Niles’ car to the Hollywood Hills. He found gardening tools in the back seat, a level patch of hardscrabble off the access road to the Hollywood Sign and buried Mickey Cohen’s would-be assassin in a plot about 4 by 4 by 4, working with an earth spade and grub hoe. He packed the dirt hard and tight so coyotes wouldn’t smell flesh rot and get hungry; he put branches atop the spot and pissed on it: an epitaph for a fellow bad cop who’d put him in the biggest trouble of his trouble-prone life. He buried Niles’ gun under a thornbush, drove the car out to the Valley, wiped it down, yanked the distributor and left it in an abandoned garage atop Suicide Hill—a youth gang fuck turf near the Sepulveda VA Hospital. Undrivable, the Vicky would be spare parts inside twenty-four hours.
It was 4:30 A.M.
Buzz walked down to Victory Boulevard, caught a cab to Hollywood and Vermont, walked the remaining half mile to Melbourne Avenue. He found a pay phone, glommed “Eugene Niles” from the White Pages, dialed the number and let it ring twenty times—no answer. He located 3987—the bottom left apartment of a pink stucco four-flat—and let himself in with Niles’ keys, set to prowl for one thing: evidence that other men were in on the Mickey hit.
It was a typical bachelor flop: sitting/sleeping room with Murphy bed, bathroom, kitchenette. There was a desk facing a boarded-up window; Buzz went straight for it, handling everything he touched with his shirttails. Ten minutes in, he had solid circumstantial evidence:
A certificate from the U.S. Army Demolition School, Camp Polk, Louisiana, stating that Corporal Eugene Niles successfully completed explosives training in December 1931—make the fucker for the bomb under Mickey’s house.
Letters from Niles’ ex-wife, condemning him for trucking with Brenda Allen’s hookers. She’d read the grand jury transcript and knew her husband did his share of porking in the Hollywood Station felony tank—Niles’ motive to want Mickey dead.
An address book that included the names and phone numbers of four ranking Jack Dragna strongarms, listings for three other Dragna bagmen—cops he knew when he was LAPD—and a weird listing: “Karen Hiltscher, W. Hollywood Sheriff’s,” with “!!!!” in bright red doodles. That aside, more verification of Niles hating Mickey before the truce with Jack D. All told, it looked like a poorly planned single-o play, Niles desperate when his bomb didn’t blow the Mick to shit.
Buzz killed the lights and wiped both sides of the doorknob on his way out. He walked to Sunset and Vermont, dropped Niles’ house and car keys down a sewer grate and started laughing, wildly, stitches in his side. He’d just saved the life of the most dangerous, most generous man he’d ever met, and there was no way in the world he could tell him. The laughter got worse, until he doubled over and had to sit down on a bus bench. He laughed until the punch line sucker-punched him—then he froze.
Danny Upshaw beat up Gene Niles. The City cops hated the County cops. When Niles was tagged as missing, LAPD would be like flies over shit on a green kid already in shit up to his knees.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Danny was trying to get Felix Gordean alone.
He’d begun his stakeout in the Chateau Marmont parking lot; Gordean foiled him by driving to his office with Pretty Boy Christopher in tow. Rain had been pouring down the whole three hours he’d been eyeing the agency’s front door; no cars had hit the carport, the street was flooded and he was parked in a towaway zone with his ID, badge and .45 at home because he was really Red Ted Krugman. Ted’s leather jacket and Considine’s sanction kept him warm and dry with the window cracked; Danny decided that if Gordean didn’t leave the office by 1:00, he’d lean on him then and there.
At 12:35, the door opened. Gordean walked out, popped an umbrella and skipped across Sunset. Danny turned on his wiper blades and watched him duck into Cyrano’s, the doorman fussing over him like he was the joint’s most popular customer. He gave Gordean thirty seconds to get seated, turned up his collar and ran over, ducking rain.
The doorman looked at him funny, but let him in; Danny blinked water, saw gilt and red velvet walls, a long oak bar and Felix Gordean sipping a martini at a side table. He threaded his way past a clutch of businessman types and sat down across from him; Gordean almost swallowed the toothpick he was nibbling.
Danny said, “I want to know what you know. I want you to tell me everything about the men you’ve brought out, and I want a report on all your customers and clients. I want it now.”
Gordean toyed with the toothpick. “Have Lieutenant Matthews call me. Perhaps he and I can effect a compromise.”
“Fuck Lieutenant Matthews. Are you going to tell me what I want to know? Now?”
“No, I am not.”
Danny smiled. “You’ve got forty-eight hours to change your mind.”
“Or?”
“Or I’m taking everything I know about you to the papers.”
Gordean snapped his fingers; a waiter came over; Danny walked out of the restaurant and into the rain. He remembered his promise to call Jack Shortell, hit the phone booth across from the agency, dialed the Hollywood Station squadroom and heard, “Yes?,” Shortell himself speaking, his voice strained.
“It’s Upshaw, Jack. What have you got on—”
“What we’ve got is another one. LAPD found him last night, on an embankment up from the LA River. Doc Layman’s doing him now, so—”
Danny left the receiver dangling and Shortell shouting, “Upshaw!”; he highballed it downtown, parked in front of the City Morgue loading dock and almost tripped over a stiff on a gurney running in. Jack Shortell was already there, sweating, his badge pinned to his coat front; he saw Danny, blocked the path to Layman’s examination room and said, “Brace yourself.”
Danny got his breath. “For what?”
Shortell said, “It’s Augie Luis Duarte, one of the guys on your tailing list. The bluesuits who found him ID’d him from his driver’s license. LAPD’s had the stiff since 12:30 last night—the squad guy who caught didn’t know about our team. Breuning was here and just left, and he was making noises that Duarte blew his tail last night. Danny, I know that’s horseshit. I was calling around last night looking for you, to tell you our car thief and zoot stick queries were bust. I talked to a clerk at Wilshire Station, and she told me Breuning was there all evening with Dudley Smith. I called back later, and the clerk said they were still there. Breuning said the other three men are still under surveillance, but I don’t believe him.”
Danny’s head boomed; morgue effluvia turned his stomach and stung his razor burns. He beelined for a door marked “Norton Layman MD,” pushed it open and saw the country’s premier forensic pathologist writing on a clipboard. A nude shape was slab-prone behind him; Layman stepped aside as if to say, “Feast your eyes.”
Augie Duarte, the handsome Mex who’d walked out the Gordean Agency door two nights ago, was supine on a stainless steel tray. He was blood-free; bite wounds extruding intestinal tubes covered his stomach; bite marks ran up his torso in a pattern free of overlaps. His cheeks were slashed down to the gums and jawbone and his penis had been cut off, inserted into the deepest of the cuts and hooked around so that the head extended out his mouth, teeth clamped on the foreskin, rigor mortis holding the obscenity intact. Danny blurted, “Oh God fuck no”; Layman said, “The rain drained the body and kept the cuts fresh. I found a tooth chip in one of them and made a wet cast of it. It’s unmistakably animal, and I had an attendant run it down to a forensic orthodontist at the Natural History Museum. It’s being examined now.”
Danny tore his eyes off the corpse; he walked out to the dock looking for Jack Shortell, gagging on the stench of formaldehyde, his lungs heaving for fresh air. A group of Mexicans with a bereaved-family look was standing by the loading ramp staring in; a pachuco type stared at him extra hard. Danny strained to see Shortell, then felt a hand on his shoulder.
It was Norton Layman. He said, “I just talked to the man at the Museum, and he identified my specimen. The killer wears wolverine te
eth.”
Danny saw a blood W on cheap wallpaper. He saw W’s in black and white, W’s burned into Felix Gordean’s face, W’s all over the rosary-clutching wetbacks huddled together grieving. He saw W’s until Jack Shortell walked up the dock and grabbed his arm and he heard himself say, “Get Breuning. I don’t trust myself on it.”
Then he saw plain blood.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A stakeout for his own son.
Mal sat on the steps outside Division 32, Los Angeles Civil Court. He was flanked by lawyers smoking; keeping his back to them kept light conversation away while he scanned for Stefan, Celeste and her shyster. When he saw them, it would be a quick men’s room confab: don’t believe the bad things you hear about me; when my man gets ugly about your mother, try not to listen.
Ten of the hour; no Stefan, Celeste and lawyer. Mal heard an animated burst of talk behind him.
“You know Charlie Hartshorn?”
“Sure. A nice guy, if a bit of a bleeding heart. He worked the Sleepy Lagoon defense for free.”
“Well, he’s dead. Suicide. Hung himself at his house last night. Beautiful house, right off Wilshire and Rimpau. It was on the radio. I went to a party at that house once.”
“Poor Charlie. What a goddamn shame.”
Mal turned around; the two men were gone. He remembered Meeks telling him Reynolds Loftis was connected to Hartshorn via a queer-bar roust, but he didn’t mention the man being associated with the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee at all. There was no mention of Hartshorn in any of the psychiatric or other grand jury files, and Meeks had also said that the lawyer had turned up—as a non-suspect—in Danny Upshaw’s homicide investigation.
The Hartshorn coincidence simmered; Mal wondered how Meeks would take his suicide—he said he’d gut-shot the man with his queerness. Looking streetside, he saw Celeste, Stefan and a young guy with a briefcase get out of a cab; his boy glanced up, lit up and took off running.
Mal met him halfway down the steps, scooped him up laughing and pinwheeled him upside down and over. Stefan squealed; Celeste and briefcase double-timed; Mal whipped his son over his shoulder, quick-marched inside and turned hard into the men’s room. Out of breath, he put Stefan down and said, “Your dad’s a captain,” dug in his pockets and pulled out one of the insignia Buzz gave him. “You’re a captain, too. Remember that. Remember that if your mother’s lawyer starts talking me down.”
Stefan squeezed the silver bars; Mal saw that he had that bewildered fat-kid look he got when Celeste stuffed him with starchy Czech food. “How have you been? How’s your mother been treating you?”
Stefan spoke hesitantly, like he’d been force-fed old country talk since the breakup. “Mutti…wants that we should move out. She said we…we must move away before she decides to marry Rich-Richard.”
Richard.
“I—I don’t like Richard. He’s nice to Mutti, but he’s n-nasty to his d-d-dog.”
Mal put his arms around the boy. “I won’t let it happen. She’s a crazy woman, and I won’t let her take you away.”
“Malcolm—”
“Dad, Stefan.”
“Dad, please not to don’t hit Mutti again. Please.”
Mal held Stefan tighter, trying to squeeze the bad words out and make him say, “I love you.” The boy felt wrong, flabby, like he was too skinny wrong as a kid. “Sssh. I’ll never hit her again and I’ll never let her take you away from me. Sssh.”
The door opened behind them; Mal heard the voice of an old City bailiff who’d been working Division 32 forever. “Lieutenant Considine, court’s convening and I’m supposed to bring the boy into chambers.”
Mal gave Stefan a last hug. “I’m a captain now. Stefan, you go with this man and I’ll see you inside.”
Stefan hugged back—hard.
* * *
Court convened ten minutes later. Mal sat with Jake Kellerman at a table facing the judge’s bench; Celeste, her attorney and Stefan were seated in chairs stationed diagonally across from the witness stand. The old bailiff intoned, “Hear ye, hear ye, court is now in session, the Honorable Arthur F. Hardesty presiding.”
Mal stood up. Jake Kellerman whispered, “In a second the old fart’ll say, ‘Counsel will approach the bench.’ I’ll hit him for a first continuance for a month from now, citing your grand jury duties. Then, we’ll get another stay until the jury convenes and you’re gold. Then we’ll get you Greenberg.”
Mal gripped Kellerman’s arm. “Jake, make this happen.”
Kellerman whispered extra low, “It will. Just pray a rumor I heard isn’t true.”
Judge Arthur F. Hardesty banged his gavel. “Counsel will approach the bench.”
Jake Kellerman and Celeste’s lawyer approached, huddling around Hardesty; Mal strained to hear and picked up nothing but garbles—Jake sounding agitated. The huddle ended with a gavel slam; Kellerman walked back, fuming.
Hardesty said, “Mr. Considine, your counsel’s request for a one-month continuance has been denied. Despite your police duties, I’m sure you can find enough time to consult with Mr. Kellerman. All parties will meet here in my chambers ten days hence, Monday, January 22. Both contestants should be ready to testify. Mr. Kellerman, Mr. Castleberry, make sure your witnesses are informed of the date and bring whatever documents you wish to be considered as evidence. This preliminary is dismissed.”
The judge banged his gavel; Castleberry led Celeste and Stefan outside. The boy turned around and waved; Mal flashed him the V for victory sign, tried to smile and couldn’t. His son was gone in a breath; Kellerman said, “I heard Castleberry heard about your promotion and went batshit. I heard he leaked the hospital pictures to one of Hardesty’s clerks, who told the judge. Mal, I’m sorry and I’m angry. I’m going to tell Ellis what Castleberry did and make sure that punk gets reamed for it.”
Mal stared at the spot where his son waved goodbye. “Ream her. Pull out all the stops. If Stefan has to hear, he has to hear. Just fucking take her down.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Looking around Ellis Loew’s living room, Buzz set odds:
Twenty to one the grand jury handed down beaucoup UAES indictments; twenty to one the studios booted them on the treason clause prior to the official word, with the Teamsters signing to take their place inside twenty-four hours. If he convinced Mickey to make book on the proceedings, he could lay a bundle down and get well on top of Howard’s bonus. Because the action in Loew’s little command post said the Pinkos were buying one-way tickets for the Big Fungoo.
Except for tables and chairs set aside for clerks, all the furniture had been removed and dumped in the back yard. Filing cabinets filled with friendly witness depositions covered the fireplace; a corkboard was nailed to the front window, space for reports from the team’s four investigators: M. Considine, D. Smith, T. Meeks and D. Upshaw. Captain Mal’s stack of interrogation forms—questions tailored to individual lefties, delivered and notarized by City Marshals—was thick; Dudley’s field summaries stacked out at five times their width—he had now turned fourteen hostiles into groveling snitch friendlies, picking up dirt on over a hundred snitchees in the process. His own reports comprised six pages: Sammy Benavides porking his sister, Claire De Haven skin-popping H and Reynolds Loftis as a homo bar hopper, the rest padding, all of it snoozeville compared to Mal’s and Dudley’s contributions. Danny Upshaw’s stuff ran two pages—eavesdrop speculation and necking with Pinko Claire—him and the kid were not exactly burning down barns in their effort to destroy the Communist Conspiracy. There were tables with “In” and “Out” baskets for the exchange of information, tables for the photographic evidence Crazy Ed Satterlee was accumulating, a huge cardboard box filled with cross-referenced names, dates, political organizations and documented admissions: Commies, pinkers and fellow travelers embracing Mother Russia and calling for the end of the U.S.A. by means fair and foul. And—across the broadest stretch of bare wall—Ed Satterlee’s conspiracy graph, his grand jury thumbscr
ew.
In one horizontal column, the UAES brain trust; in another, the names of the Communist front organizations they belonged to; in a vertical column atop the graph the names of friendly witnesses and their “accusation power” rated by stars, with lines running down to intersect with the brainers and the fronts. Each star was Satterlee’s assessment of the number of days’ testimony a friendly was worth, based on the sheer power of time, place and hearsay: which Pinko attended where, said what, and which recanted Red was there to listen—a brain-frying, mind-boggling, super-stupendous and absolutely amazing glut of information impossible to disprove.
And he kept seeing Danny Upshaw smack in the middle of it, treading shit, even though the kid was on the side of the angels.
Buzz walked out to the back porch. He’d been brainstorming escape routes under the guise of writing reports for hours; three phone calls had fixed Audrey’s skimming spree. One was to Mickey, handing him a convoluted epic on how a bettor skimmed an unnamed runner who was screwing the bettor’s sister and couldn’t turn him in, but finally made him cough up the six grand he’d welched—the exact amount Audrey had grifted off the Mick. The second was to Petey Skouras, a tight-lipped runner who agreed to play the lovesick fool who finally made good to his boss for a cool grand—knowing Johnny Stompanato would come snouting around for the name Buzz wouldn’t give on, find him acting hinky and pound a confession out of him—the returned cash his assurance that that was his only punishment. The third was to an indy shylock: seven thousand dollars at 20 percent, $8,400 due April 10—his woman out of trouble, his gift for her grief: Gene Niles with his face blown off on her bed. Seven come eleven, thank God for the Commie gravy train. If they didn’t succumb to the hots for each other, he and his lioness would probably survive.
The kid was still the wild card he didn’t know how to play.
It was twelve hours since he’d prowled Niles’ pad. Should he go back and make it look like Niles hightailed it? Should he have planted some incriminating shit? When the fucker was missed, would LAPD fix on him as a Dragna bad apple and let it lie? Would they make him for the bomb job and press Mickey? Would they assume a snuff and go hog-wild to find the killer?