The Big Nowhere Read online

  “He volunteered?”

  “He’s got a pipeline to McPherson, and he knew about the job before I got the go-ahead. Do you think you can keep him on a tight leash?”

  The question was like a road map to all the old rumors. Ellis Loew had him down straight as a Nazi killer and probably believed that he was behind the botched snuff attempt on Buzz Meeks. They had to blow the Ad Vice and 77th Street stories out of the water. Dudley Smith knew better. “I don’t see any problem, counselor.”

  “Good. How’s things with Celeste and Stefan?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Loew smiled. “Cheer up, then. Good things are coming our way.”

  Chapter Three

  Turner “Buzz” Meeks watched rental cops patrol the grounds of Hughes Aircraft, laying four to one that Howard hired the ineffectual bastards because he liked their uniforms, two to one he designed the threads himself. Which meant that the Mighty Man Agency was an RKO Pictures/Hughes Aircraft/Tool Company “Stray Dog”—the big guy’s tag for tax-write-off operations that he bought and meddled in out of whim. Hughes owned a brassiere factory in San Ysidro—100 percent wetback-run; he owned a plant that manufactured electroplate trophies; he owned four strategically located snack stands—essential to the maintenance of his all-cheeseburger/chili dog diet. Buzz stood in his office doorway, noticed pleated flaps on the pockets of the Mighty Man standing by the hangar across from him, made the style as identical to a blouse Howard designed to spotlight Jane Russell’s tits, and called the odds off. And for the three trillionth time in his life, he wondered why he always cut bets when he was bored.

  He was now very bored.

  It was shortly after 10:00 New Year’s morning. Buzz, in his capacity as Head of Security at Hughes Aircraft, had been up all night directing Mighty Men in what Howard Hughes called “Perimeter Patrol.” The plant’s regular guards were given the night off; boozehound specters had been crisscrossing the grounds since yesterday evening. The high point of their tour was Big Howard’s New Year’s bonus—a flatbed truck loaded with hot dogs and Cokes arriving just as 1949 became 1950—compliments of the burger write-off in Culver City. Buzz had put down his sheet of bookie calculations to watch the Mighty Men eat; he laid six to one that Howard would hit the roof if he saw their custom-embroidered uniforms dotted with mustard and sauerkraut.

  Buzz checked his watch—10:14—he could go home and sleep at noon. He slumped into a chair, scanned the walls and studied the framed photos that lined them. Each one made him figure odds for and against himself, made him think of how perfect his figurehead job and what he really did were.

  There was himself—short, broad, running to fat, standing next to Howard Hughes, tall and handsome in a chalk stripe suit—an Oklahoma shitkicker and a millionaire eccentric giving each other the cuckold’s horns. Buzz saw the photo as the two sides of a scratchy hillbilly record: one side about a sheriff corrupted by women and money, the flip a lament for the boss man who bought him out. Next was a collection of police shots—Buzz trim and fit as an LAPD rookie in ’34; getting fatter and better dressed as the pictures jumped forward in time: tours with Bunco, Robbery and Narcotics divisions; cashmere and camel’s hair blazers, the slightly nervous look in his eyes indigenous to bagmen everywhere. Then Detective Sergeant Turner Meeks in a bed at Queen of Angels, high brass hovering around him, pointing to the wounds he survived—while he wondered if it was a fellow cop who’d set him up. A string of civilian pics on the wall above his desk: a fatter, grayer Buzz with Mayor Bowron, ex-DA Buron Fitts, Errol Flynn, Mickey Cohen, producers he’d pimped for, starlets he’d gotten out of litigation and into abortions, dope cure doctors grateful for his referrals. Fixer, errand boy, hatchet wielder.

  Stony broke.

  Buzz sat down at his desk and jotted credits and debits. He owned fourteen acres of Ventura County farmland; parched and worthless, he’d bought it for his parents to retire to—but they foiled him by kicking in a typhus epidemic in ’44. The real estate man he’d been talking to said thirty bucks an acre tops—better to hold on to it—it couldn’t go much lower. He owned a mint green ’48 Eldo coupé—identical to Mickey C.’s, but without the bullet-proof plating. He had a shitload of suits from Oviatt’s and the London Shop, the trousers all too tight in the gut—if Mickey bought secondhand threads he was home free—he and the flashy little hebe were exactly the same size. But the Mick threw away shirts he’d worn twice, and the debit list was running off the page and onto his blotter.

  The phone rang; Buzz grabbed it. “Security. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Sol Gelfman, Buzz. You remember me?”

  The old geez at MGM with the car thief grandson, a nice boy who clouted convertibles out of Restaurant Row parking lots, raced Mulholland with them and always left his calling card—a big pile of shit—in the back seat. He’d bought off the arresting officer, who altered his report to show two—not twenty-seven—counts of GTA, along with no mention of the turd drop MO. The judge had let the kid off with probation, citing his good family and youthful verve. “Sure. What can I do for you, Mr. Gelfman?”

  “Well, Howard said I should call you. I’ve got a little problem, and Howard said you could help.”

  “Your grandson back to his old tricks?”

  “No, God forbid. There’s a girl in my new picture who needs help. These goniffs have got some smut pictures of her, from before I bought her contract. I gave them some money to be nice, but they’re persisting.”

  Buzz groaned—it was shaping up as a muscle job. “What kind of pictures?”

  “Nasty. Animal stuff. Lucy and this Great Dane with a schlong like King Kong. I should have such a schlong.”

  Buzz grabbed a pen and turned over his debit list to the blank side. “Who’s the girl and what have you got on the blackmailers?”

  “On the pickup men I got bubkis—I sent my production assistant over with the money to meet them. The girl is Lucy Whitehall, and listen, I got a private detective to trace the calls. The boss of the setup is this Greek she’s shacking with—Tommy Sifakis. Is that chutzpah? He’s blackmailing his own girlfriend, calling in his demands from their cute little love nest. He’s got pals to do the pickups and Lucy don’t even know she’s being had. Can you feature that chutzpah?”

  Buzz thought of price tags; Gelfman continued his spiel. “Buzz, this is worth half a grand to me, and I’m doing you a favor, ’cause Lucy used to strip with Audrey Anders, Mickey Cohen’s squeeze. I coulda gone to Mickey, but you did me solid once, so I’m giving you the job. Howard said you’d know what to do.”

  Buzz saw his old billy club hanging by a thong from the bathroom doorknob and wondered if he still had the touch. “The price is a grand, Mr. Gelfman.”

  “What! That’s highway robbery!”

  “No, it’s felony extortion settled out of court. You got an address for Sifakis?”

  “Mickey would do it for free!”

  “Mickey would go batshit and get you a homicide conspiracy beef. What’s Sifakis’ address?”

  Gelfman breathed out slowly. “You goddamn okie lowlife. It’s 1187 Vista View Court in Studio City, and for a grand I want this thing wiped up clean.”

  Buzz said, “Like shit in the back seat,” and hung up. He grabbed his LAPD-issue equalizer and headed for the Cahuenga Pass.

  * * *

  The run to the Valley took him an hour; the search for Vista View Court another twenty minutes of prowling housing developments: stucco cubes arrayed in semicircles gouged out of the Hollywood Hills. 1187 was a peach-colored prefab, the paint already fading, the aluminum siding streaked with rust. Identically built pads flanked it—lemon yellow, lavender, turquoise, salmon and hot pink alternating down the hillside, ending at a sign proclaiming, VISTA VIEW GARDENS! CALIFORNIA LIVING AT ITS FINEST! NO $ DOWN FOR VETS! Buzz parked in front of the yellow dive, thinking of gumballs tossed in a ditch.

  Little kids were racing tricycles across gravel front yards; no adults were taking the sun
. Buzz pinned a cereal-box badge to his lapel, got out and rang the buzzer of 1187. Ten seconds passed—no answer. Looking around, he stuck a bobby pin in the keyhole and gave the knob a jiggle. The lock popped; he pushed the door open and entered the house.

  Sunlight leaking through gauze curtains gave him a shot at the living room: cheapsky furniture, movie pinups on the walls, stacks of Philco table radios next to the sofa—obvious proceeds from a warehouse job. Buzz pulled the billy club from his waistband and walked through a grease-spattered kitchen-dinette to the bedroom.

  More glossies on the walls—strippers in g-strings and pasties. Buzz recognized Audrey Anders, the “Va Va Voom Girl,” alleged to have a master’s degree from some Podunk college; next to her, a slender blonde took up space. Buzz flicked on a floor lamp for a better look; he saw tame publicity stills: “Juicy Lucy” in a spangly one-piece bathing suit, the address of a downtown talent agency rubber-stamped on the bottom. Squinting, he noticed that the girl had unfocused eyes and a slaphappy grin—probably jacked on some kind of hop.

  Buzz decided on five minutes to toss the pad, checked his watch and went to work. Scuffed drawers yielded male and female undergarments tangled up indiscriminately and a stash of marijuana cigarettes; an end cabinet held 78s and dime novels. The closet showed a woman on her way up, a man running second: dresses and skirts from Beverly Hills shops, mothball-reeking navy uniforms and slacks, dandruff-flecked jackets.

  With 3:20 down, Buzz turned to the bed: blue satin sheets, upholstered headboard embroidered with cupids and hearts. He ran a hand under the mattress, felt wood and metal, grabbed and pulled out a sawed-off pump shotgun, big black muzzle, probably a .10 gauge. Checking the breech, he saw that it was loaded—five rounds, double-aught buckshot. He removed the ammo and stuffed it in his pocket; played a hunch on Tommy Sifakis’ brain and looked under the pillow.

  A German Luger, loaded, one in the chamber.

  Buzz ejected the chambered round and emptied the clip, pissed that he didn’t have time to prowl for a safe, find the doggy stuff to shove in Lucy Whitehall’s face later, a jolt to scare her away from Greeks with dandruff and bedroom ordnance. He walked back to the living room, stopping when he saw an address book on the coffee table.

  He leafed through it, no familiar names until he hit the G’s and saw Sol Gelfman, his home and MGM numbers ringed with doodles; the M’s and P’s got him Donny Maslow and Chick Pardell, dinks he rousted working Narco, reefer pushers who hung out at studio commissaries—not the extortionist type. Then he hit S and got his lever to squeeze the Greek dry and maybe glom himself a few solids on the side:

  Johnny Stompanato, Crestview-6103. Mickey Cohen’s personal bodyguard. Rumored to have financed his way out of lowball duty with the Cleveland Combination via strongarm extortion schemes; rumored to front Mexican marijuana to local dealers for a 30 percent kickback.

  Handsome Johnny Stomp. His name ringed in dollar signs and question marks.

  Buzz went back to his car to wait. He turned the ignition key to Accessory, skimmed the radio dial across a half dozen stations, found Spade Cooley and his Cowboy Rhythm Hour and listened with the volume down low. The music was syrup on top of gravy—too sweet, too much. It made him think of the Oklahoma sticks, what it might have been like if he’d stayed. Then Spade went too far—warbling a tune about a man about to go to the state prison gallows for a crime he didn’t commit. That made him think of the price he paid to get out.

  In 1931 Lizard Ridge, Oklahoma, was a dying hick town in the lungs of the Dustbowl. It had one source of income: a factory that manufactured stuffed souvenir armadillos, armadillo purses and Gila monster wallets, then sold them to tourists blowing through on the highway. Locals and Indians off the reservation shot and skinned the reptiles and sold them to the factory piecework; sometimes they got carried away and shot each other. Then the ’31 dust storms closed down U.S. 1 for six months straight, the armadillos and Gilas went crazy, ate themselves diseased on jimson weed, crawled off to die or stormed Lizard Ridge’s main drag and got squashed by cars. Either way, their hides were too trashed and shriveled to make anyone a dime. Turner Meeks, ace Gila killer, capable of nailing the bastards with a .22 from thirty yards out—right on the spine where the factory cut its master stitches—knew it was time to leave town.

  So he moved to LA and got work in the movies—revolving cowboy extra—Paramount one day, Columbia the next, the Gower Gulch cut-rate outfits when things got tight. Any reasonably presentable white man who could twirl a rope and ride a horse for real was skilled labor in Depression Hollywood.

  But in ’34 the trend turned from westerns to musicals. Work got scarce. He was about to take a test offered by the LA Municipal Bus Company—three openings for an expected six hundred applicants—when Hollywood saved him again.

  Monogram Studio was being besieged by picketers: a combine of unions under the AFL banner. He was hired as a strike-breaker—five dollars a day, guaranteed extra work as a bonus once the strike was quelled.

  He broke heads for two weeks straight, so good with a billy club that an off-duty cop nicknamed him “Buzz” and introduced him to Captain James Culhane, the head of the LAPD’s Riot Squad. Culhane knew a born policeman when he saw one. Two weeks later he was walking a beat in downtown LA; a month later he was a rifle instructor at the Police Academy. Teaching Chief Steckel’s daughter to shoot a .22 and ride a horse earned him a sergeantcy, tours in Bunco, Robbery and the big enchilada—Narcotics.

  Narco duty carried with it an unwritten ethos: you roust the lowest forms of humanity, you walk your tour knee-deep in shit, you get a dispensation. If you play the duty straight, you don’t rat on those who don’t. If you don’t, you lay off a percentage of what you confiscate direct to the coloreds or the syndicate boys who sell to shines only: Jack Dragna, Benny Siegel, Mickey C. And you watch the straight arrows in other divisions—the guys who want you out so they can get your job.

  When he came on Narco in ’44, he struck his deal with Mickey Cohen, then the dark horse in the LA rackets, the hungry guy coming up. Jack Dragna hated Mickey; Mickey hated Jack; Buzz shook down Jack’s niggertown pushers, skimmed five grams on the ounce and sold it to Mickey, who loved him for giving Jack grief. Mickey took him to Hollywood parties, introduced him to people who needed police favors and were willing to pay; fixed him up with a roundheeled blonde whose cop husband was serving with the MPs in Europe. He met Howard Hughes and started bird-dogging for him, picking up star-struck farm girls, ensconcing them in the fuck pads the big guy had set up all over LA. It was going aces on all fronts: the duty, the money, the affair with Laura Considine. Until June 21, 1946, when an anonymous tip on a storefront operation at 68th and Slauson led him into an alleyway ambush: two in the shoulder, one in the arm, one through the left cheek of his ass. And a speedy wound ticket out of the LAPD, full pension, into the arms of Howard Hughes, who just happened to need a man…

  And he still didn’t know who the shooters were. The slugs they took out of him indicated two men; he had two suspects: Dragna triggers or contract boys hired by Mal Considine, Laura’s husband, the Administrative Vice sergeant back from the war. He had Considine checked out within the Department, heard that he turned tail from bar brawls in Watts, that he got his jollies sending in rookies to operate whores when he ran the night watch in Ad Vice, that he brought a Czech woman and her son back from Buchenwald and was planning to divorce Laura. Nothing concrete—one way or the other.

  The only thing he had down for sure was that Considine knew about the deal with his soon-to-be ex and hated him. He’d taken a retirement tour of the Detective Bureau, a chance to say goodbye and pick up his courtesy badge, a chance to get a take on the man he cuckolded. He walked by Considine’s desk in the Ad Vice squadroom, saw a tall guy who looked more like a lawyer than a cop and stuck out his hand. Considine gave him a slow eyeball, said, “Laura always did have a thing for pimps,” and looked away.

  Even odds: Considine or Dragna, take your pick. r />
  Buzz saw a late-model Pontiac ragtop pull up in front of 1187. Two women in crinoline party dresses got out and rocked toward the door on high high heels; a big Greek in a too-tight suitcoat and too-short trousers followed them. The taller of the skirts caught her stiletto spike in a pavement crack and went down on one knee; Buzz recognized Audrey Anders, hair in a pageboy, twice as beautiful as her picture. The other girl—“Juicy Lucy” from the publicity stills—helped her up and into the house, the big man right behind them. Buzz laid three to one that Tommy Sifakis wouldn’t respond to the subtle approach, grabbed his billy club and walked up to the Pontiac.

  His first shot sheared off the Indian-head hood ornament; his second smashed the windshield. Three, four, five and six were a Spade Cooley refrain that dented the grille into the radiator, causing steam clouds to billow all around him. Seven was a blind swing at the driver’s side window, the crash followed by a loud “What the fuck!” and a familiar metal-on-metal noise: a shotgun slide jacking a shell into the chamber.

  Buzz turned and saw Tommy Sifakis striding down the walkway, the sawed-off held in trembling hands. Four to one the Greek was too mad to notice the weapon’s light weight; two to one he didn’t have time to grab his box of shells and reload. Bluff bet, straight across.

  His baton at port arms, Buzz charged. When they were within heavy damage range, the Greek pulled the trigger and got a tiny little click. Buzz countered, swinging at a hairy left hand frantically trying to pump in ammo that wasn’t there. Tommy Sifakis screamed and dropped the shotgun; Buzz brought him down with a forehand/backhand to the rib cage. The Greek spat blood and tried to curl into a ball, cradling his wounded parts. Buzz knelt beside him and spoke softly, accentuating his okie drawl. “Son, let’s let bygones be bygones. You rip up them pictures and shitcan the negatives and I won’t tell Johnny Stomp you fingered him on the squeeze. Deal?”