The Big Nowhere Read online

  Dr. Katz said, “Get out of here, Deputy Upshaw.”

  Danny said, “Happy New Year.”

  Ralph Carty said, “It’s the truth, Doc—if I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.”

  Danny packed up his evidence kit, wavering on a destination: canvassing Allegro Street or home, sleep and dreams: Kathy Hudgens, Buddy Jastrow, the blood house on a Kern County back road. Walking out to the loading dock, he looked back. Ralph Carty was splitting his bribe money with the doctor in the rhinestone party hat.

  Chapter Two

  Lieutenant Mal Considine was looking at a photograph of his wife and son, trying not to think of Buchenwald.

  It was just after 8:00 A.M.; Mal was in his cubicle at the DA’s Criminal Investigation Bureau, coming off a fitful sleep fueled by too much Scotch. His trouser legs were covered with confetti; the roundheeled squadroom steno had smeared kisses on his door, bracketing EXECUTIVE OFFICER in Max Factor’s Crimson Decadence. The City Hall sixth floor looked like a trampled parade ground; Ellis Loew had just awakened him with a phone call: meet him and “someone else” at the Pacific Dining Car in half an hour. And he’d left Celeste and Stefan at home alone to ring in 1950—because he knew his wife would turn the occasion into a war.

  Mal picked up the phone and dialed the house. Celeste answered on the third ring—“Yes? Who is this that is calling?”—her bum phrasing a giveaway that she’d been speaking Czech to Stefan.

  “It’s me. I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be a few more hours.”

  “The blonde is making demands, Herr Lieutenant?”

  “There’s no blonde, Celeste. You know there’s no blonde, and you know I always sleep at the Hall after the New Year’s—”

  “How do you say in English—rotkopf? Redhead? Kleine rot-kopf scheisser schtupper—”

  “Speak English, goddamn it! Don’t pull this with me!”

  Celeste laughed: the stage chortles that cut through her foreign-language routine and always made him crazy. “Put my son on, goddamn it!”

  Silence, then Celeste Heisteke Considine’s standard punch line: “He’s not your son, Malcolm. His father was Jan Heisteke, and Stefan knows it. You are my benefactor and my husband, and the boy is eleven and must know that his heritage is not amerikanisch police talk and baseball and—”

  “Put my son on, goddamn you.”

  Celeste laughed softly. Mal knew she was acknowledging match point—him using his cop voice. The line went silent; in the background he could hear Celeste cooing Stefan out of sleep, singsong words in Czech. Then the boy was there—smack in the middle of them. “Dad—Malcolm?”

  “Yeah. Happy New Year.”

  “We saw the fireworks. We went on the roof and held umb-umb—”

  “You held umbrellas?”

  “Yes. We saw the City Hall light up, then the fireworks went, then they…fissured?”

  Mal said, “They fizzled, Stefan. F-i-z-z-l-e-d. A fissure is a kind of hole in the ground.”

  Stefan tried the new word. “F-i-s-u-r-e?”

  “Two s’s. We’ll have a lesson when I get home, maybe take a drive by Westlake Park and feed the ducks.”

  “Did you see the fireworks? Did you look out the window to see?”

  He had been parrying Penny Diskant’s offer of a cloakroom quickie then, breasts and legs grinding him, wishing he could do it. “Yeah, it was pretty. Son, I have to go now. Work. You go back to sleep so you’ll be sharp for our lesson.”

  “Yes. Do you want to speak to Mutti?”

  “No. Goodbye, Stefan.”

  “Goodbye, D-D-Dad.”

  Mal put down the phone. His hands were shaking and his eyes held a film of tears.

  * * *

  Downtown LA was shut down tight, like it was sleeping off a drunk. The only citizens in view were winos lining up for doughnuts and coffee outside the Union Rescue Mission; cars were erratically parked—snouts to smashed fenders—in front of the hot-sheet hotels on South Main. Sodden confetti hung out of windows and littered the sidewalk, and the sun that was looming above the eastern basin had the feel of heat, steam and bad hangovers. Mal drove to the Pacific Dining Car wishing the first day of the new decade an early death.

  The restaurant was packed with camera-toting tourists wolfing the “Rose Bowl Special”—hangtown fry, flapjacks, Bloody Marys and coffee. The headwaiter told Mal that Mr. Loew and another gentleman were waiting for him in the Gold Rush Room—a private nook favored by the downtown legal crowd. Mal walked back and rapped on the door; it was opened a split second later, and the “other gentleman” stood there beaming. “Knock, knock, who’s there? Dudley Smith, so Reds beware. Please come in, Lieutenant. This is an auspicious assemblage of police brain power, and we should mark the occasion with proper amenities.”

  Mal shook the man’s hand, recognizing his name, his style, his often imitated tenor brogue. Lieutenant Dudley Smith, LAPD Homicide. Tall, beefside broad and red-faced; Dublin born, LA raised, Jesuit college trained. Priority case hatchet man for every LA chief of police dating back to Strongarm Dick Steckel. Killed seven men in the line of duty, wore custom-made club-figured ties: 7’s, handcuff ratchets and LAPD shields stitched in concentric circles. Rumored to carry an Army .45 loaded with garlic-coated dumdums and a spring-loaded toad stabber.

  “Lieutenant, a pleasure.”

  “Call me Dudley. We’re of equal rank. I’m older, but you’re far better looking. I can tell we’re going to be grand partners. Wouldn’t you say so, Ellis?”

  Mal looked past Dudley Smith to Ellis Loew. The head of the DA’s Criminal Division was seated in a thronelike leather chair, picking the oysters and bacon out of his hangtown fry. “I would indeed. Sit down, Mal. Are you interested in breakfast?”

  Mal took a seat across from Loew; Dudley Smith sat down between them. The two were dressed in vested tweed suits—Loew’s gray, Smith’s brown. Both men sported regalia: Phi Beta Kappa key for the lawyer, lodge pins dotting the cop’s lapels. Mal adjusted the crease in his rumpled flannels and thought that Smith and Loew looked like two mean pups out of the same litter. “No thanks, counselor.”

  Loew pointed to a silver coffeepot. “Java?”

  “No thanks.”

  Smith laughed and slapped his knees. “How about an explanation for this early morning intrusion on your peaceful family life?”

  Mal said, “I’ll guess. Ellis wants to be DA, I want to be Chief DA’s Investigator and you want to take over the Homicide Bureau when Jack Tierney retires next month. We’ve got venue on some hot little snuff that I haven’t heard about, the two of us as investigators, Ellis as prosecuting attorney. It’s a career maker. Good guess?”

  Dudley let out a whooping laugh; Loew said, “I’m glad you didn’t finish law school, Malcolm. I wouldn’t have relished facing you in court.”

  “I hit it, then?”

  Loew forked an oyster and dipped it in egg juice. “No. We’ve got our tickets to those positions you mentioned, though. Pure and simple. Dudley volunteered for his own—”

  Smith interrupted: “I volunteered out of a sense of patriotism. I hate the Red filth worse than Satan.”

  Mal watched Ellis take one bite of bacon, one of oyster, one of egg. Dudley lit a cigarette and watched him; Mal could see brass knuckles sticking out of his waistband. “Why am I thinking grand jury job?”

  Loew leaned back and stretched; Mal knew he was reaching for his courtroom persona. “Because you’re smart. Have you been keeping abreast of the local news?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, there’s a great deal of labor trouble going on, with the Hollywood movie studios in particular. The Teamsters have been picketing against the UAES—the United Alliance of Extras and Stagehands. They’ve got a long-term contract with RKO and the cheapie studios on Gower. They’re picketing for more money and profit points, but they’re not striking, and—”

  Dudley Smith slammed the tabletop with two flattened palms. “Subversive, mother-hating Pinks, every o
ne of them.”

  Loew did a slow burn; Mal sized up the Irishman’s huge hands as neck snappers, ear gougers, confession makers. He made a quick jump, pegged Ellis as being afraid of Smith, Smith hating Loew on general principles: as a sharpster Jew lawyer son of a bitch. “Ellis, are we talking about a political job?”

  Loew fondled his Phi Beta Kappa key and smiled. “We are talking about an extensive grand jury investigation into Communist influence in Hollywood, you and Dudley as my chief investigators. The investigation will center around the UAES. The union is rife with subversives, and they have a so-called brain trust that runs things: one woman and a half dozen men—all heavily connected to fellow travelers who went to jail for pleading the Fifth before HUAC in ’47. Collectively, UAES members have worked on a number of movies that espouse the Commie line, and they’re connected to a veritable Dun and Bradstreet of other subversives. Communism is like a spider’s web. One thread leads to a nest, another thread leads to a whole colony. The threads are names, and the names become witnesses and name more names. And you and Dudley are going to get me all those names.”

  Silver captain’s bars danced in Mal’s head; he stared at Loew and ticked off objections, devil’s advocate against his own cause. “Why me instead of Captain Bledsoe? He’s Chief DA’s Investigator, he’s Mr. Toastmaster for the whole goddamn city and he’s everybody’s favorite uncle—which is important, since you come across like a shark. I’m a detective specializing in collecting homicide evidence. Dudley is Homicide brass flat out. Why us? And why now—at nine A.M. New Year’s morning?”

  Loew counted rebuttal points on his fingers, the nails coated with clear polish and buffed to a gloss. “One, I was up late last night with the District Attorney. The Bureau’s final fiscal 1950 budget has to be submitted to the City Council tomorrow, and I convinced him that the odd forty-two thousand dollars we had left over should be used to fight the Red Menace. Two, Deputy DA Gifford of the Grand Jury Division and I have agreed to switch jobs. He wants criminal prosecution experience, and you know what I want. Three, Captain Bledsoe is going senile. Two nights ago he gave a speech to the Greater Los Angeles Kiwanis Club and lapsed into a string of obscenities. He created quite a stir when he announced his intention to ‘pour the pork’ to Rita Hayworth, to ‘hose her till she bleeds.’ The DA checked with Bledsoe’s doctor, and learned that our dear Captain has had a series of small strokes that he’s kept under wraps. He will be retiring on April fifth—his twentieth anniversary with the Bureau—and he is strictly a figurehead until then. Fourth, you and Dudley are damn good, damn smart detectives, and an intriguing contrast in styles. Fifth—”

  Mal hit the tabletop à la Dudley Smith. “Fifth, we both know the DA wants an outside man for Chief Investigator. He’ll go to the Feds or fish around the LAPD before he takes me.”

  Ellis Loew leaned forward. “Mal, he’s agreed to give it to you. Chief Investigator and a captaincy. You’re thirty-eight?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “A mere infant. Do well at the job and within five years you’ll be fending off police chief offers with a stick. And I’ll be District Attorney and McPherson will be Lieutenant Governor. Are you in?”

  Ellis Loew’s right hand was resting flat on the table; Dudley Smith covered it with his and smiled, all blarney. Mal reviewed his caseload: a hooker snuff in Chinatown, two unsolved shine killings in Watts, a stickup and ADW at a coon whorehouse frequented by LAPD brass. Low priority, no priority. He put his hand on the pile and said, “I’m in.”

  The pile dispersed; Dudley Smith winked at Mal. “Grand partners in a grand crusade.” Ellis Loew stood up beside his chair. “First, I’ll tell you what we have, then I’ll tell you what we need.

  “We have sworn depositions from Teamster members, stating Red encroachment within the UAES. We’ve got Commie front membership lists cross-filed with a UAES membership list—with a lot of matching names. We’ve got prints of pro-Soviet films made during the war—pure Red propaganda—that UAES members worked on. We’ve got the heavy artillery that I’ll mention in a minute and I’m working on getting a batch of Fed surveillance photos: UAES brain trusters hobnobbing with known Communist Party members and HUAC indictees at Sleepy Lagoon protest activities back in ’43 and ’44. Good ammo, right from the gate.”

  Mal said, “The Sleepy Lagoon stuff might backfire. The kids that were convicted were innocent, they never got the real killer and the cause was too popular. Republicans signed the protest petition. You might want to rethink that approach.”

  Dudley Smith doused his cigarette in the remains of his coffee. “They were guilty, lad. All seventeen. I know that case. They beat José Diaz half to death, dragged him out to the Lagoon and ran him down with an old jalopy. A pachuco passion job, pure and simple. Diaz was sticking it to somebody’s cousin’s brother’s sister. You know how those taco benders intermarry and breed. Mongoloid idiots, all of them.”

  Mal sighed. “It was a railroad, Lieutenant. It was right before the zoot suit riots, and everyone was cuckoo about the mexes. And a Republican governor pardoned those kids, not the Commies.”

  Smith looked at Loew. “Our friend here takes the word of the fourth estate over the word of a brother officer. Next he’ll be telling us the Department was responsible for all our pooooor Latin brethren hurt during the riot. A popular Pinko interpretation, I might add.”

  Mal reached for a plate of rolls—keeping his voice steady to show the big Irishman he wasn’t afraid of him. “No, a popular LAPD one. I was on the Department then, and the men I worked with tagged the job as horseshit, pure and simple. Besides—”

  Loew raised his voice—just as Mal heard his own voice start to quiver. “Gentlemen, please.”

  The interruption allowed Mal to swallow, dredge up a cold look and shoot it at Dudley Smith. The big man shot back a bland smile, said, “Enough contentiousness over a worthless dead spic,” and extended his hand. Mal shook it; Smith winked.

  Ellis Loew said, “That’s better, because guilty or not guilty isn’t germane to the issue here. The fact is that the Sleepy Lagoon case attracted a lot of subversives and they exploited it to their ends. That’s our focus. Now I know you both want to go home to your families, so I’ll wind this up for today.

  “Essentially, you two will be bringing in what the Feds call ‘friendly witnesses’—UAESers and other lefties willing to come clean on their Commie associations and name names. You’ve got to get admissions that the pro-Red movies UAES worked on were part of a conscious plot—propaganda to advance the Communist cause. You’ve got to get proof of venue—subversive activities within LA City proper. It also wouldn’t hurt to get some big names. It’s common knowledge that a lot of big Hollywood stars are fellow travelers. That would give us some…”

  Loew paused. Mal said, “Marquee value?”

  “Yes. Well put, if a bit cynical. I can tell that patriotic sentiment doesn’t come easy to you, Malcolm. You might try to dredge up some fervor for this assignment, though.”

  Mal thought of a rumor he’d heard: that Mickey Cohen bought a piece of the LA Teamsters off of their East Coast front man—an ex-syndicate trigger looking for money to invest in Havana casinos. “Mickey C. might be a good one to tap for a few bucks if the City funding runs low. I’ll bet he wouldn’t mind seeing the UAES out and his boys in. Lots of money to be made in Hollywood, you know.”

  Loew flushed. Dudley Smith tapped the table with a huge knuckle. “No dummy, our friend Malcolm. Yes, lad. Mickey would like the Teamsters in and the studios would like the UAES out. Which doesn’t negate the fact that the UAES is crawling with Pinks. Did you know, lad, that we were almost colleagues once before?”

  Mal knew: Thad Green offering him a transfer to the Hat Squad when his sergeantcy came through back in ’41. He turned it down, having no balls for armed robbery stakeouts, going in doors gun first, gunboat diplomacy police work: meeting the Quentin bus at the depot, pistol-whipping hard boys into a docile parole. Dudley Smith had kil
led four men working the job. “I wanted to work Ad Vice.”

  “I don’t blame you, lad. Less risk, more chance for advancement.”

  The old rumors: Patrolman/Sergeant/Lieutenant Mal Considine, LAPD/DA’s Bureau comer, didn’t like to get his hands dirty. Ran scared as a rookie working 77th Street Division—the heart of the Congo. Mal wondered if Dudley Smith knew about the gas man at Buchenwald. “That’s right. I never saw any percentage there.”

  “The squad was wicked fun, lad. You’d have fit right in. The others didn’t think so, but you’d have convinced them.”

  He’s got the old talk nailed. Mal looked at Ellis Loew and said, “Let’s wrap this up, okay? What’s the heavy ammo you mentioned?”

  Loew’s eyes moved back and forth between Mal and Dudley. “We’ve got two men assisting us. The first is an ex-Fed named Edmund J. Satterlee. He’s the head of a group called Red Crosscurrents. It’s on retainer to various corporations and what you might want to call ‘astute’ people in the entertainment industry. It screens prospective employees for Communist ties and helps weed out subversive elements that may have wormed their way in already. Ed’s an expert on Communism, and he’s going to give you a rundown on how to most effectively collate your evidence. The second man is a psychiatrist, Dr. Saul Lesnick. He’s been the ‘approved’ headshrinker for the LA Communist Party since the ’40s, and he’s been an FBI informer for years. We’ve got access to his complete file of psychiatric records—all the UAES bigwigs—their personal dirt going back to before the war. Heavy artillery.”

  Smith slapped the table and stood up. “A howitzer, a barrage weapon, maybe even an atom bomb. We’re meeting them at your house tomorrow, Ellis? Ten o’clock?”

  Loew cocked a finger at him. “Ten sharp.”

  Dudley aped the gesture to Mal. “Until then, partner. It’s not the Hats, but we’ll have fun nonetheless.”

  Mal nodded and watched the big man exit the room. Seconds passed; Loew said, “A rough piece of work. If I didn’t think the two of you would be great together, I wouldn’t have let him sign on.”