The Big Nowhere Page 4

  Sifakis spat a thick wad of blood and “F-f-fuck you”; Buzz whacked him across the knees. The Greek shrieked gobbledygook; Buzz said, “I was gonna give you and Lucy another chance to work things out, but now I think I’m gonna advise her to find more suitable lodging. You feel like apologizin’ to her?”

  “F-f-f-y-y-you.”

  Buzz drew out a long sigh, just like he did playing a homesteader who’d taken enough shit in an old Monogram serial. “Son, here’s my last offer. You apologize to Lucy, or I tell Johnny you snitched him, Mickey C. you’re extortin’ his girlfriend’s pal and Donny Maslow and Chick Pardell you snitched them to Narco. Deal?”

  Sifakis tried to extend a smashed middle finger; Buzz stroked his baton, catching a sidelong view of Audrey Anders and Lucy Whitehall in the doorway, jaws wide. The Greek lolled his head on the pavement and rasped, “I p-pologize.”

  Buzz saw flashes of Lucy and her canine co-star, Sol Gelfman botching her career with grade Z turkeys, the girl crawling back to the Greek for rough sex. He said, “Good boy,” popped the baton into Sifakis’ gut and walked over to the women.

  Lucy Whitehall was shrinking back into the living room; Audrey Anders was blocking the doorway, barefoot. She pointed to Buzz’s lapel. “It’s a phony.”

  Buzz caught the South in her voice; remembered locker room talk: the Va Va Voom Girl could twirl her pastie tassels in opposite directions at the same time. “Wheaties. You from New Orleans? Atlanta?”

  Audrey looked at Tommy Sifakis, belly-crawling over to the curb. “Mobile. Did Mickey send you to do that?”

  “No. I was wonderin’ why you didn’t seem surprised. Now I know.”

  “You care to tell me about it?”

  “No.”

  “But you’ve done work for Mickey?”

  Buzz saw Lucy Whitehall sit down on the couch and grab a stolen radio for something to hold. Her face was blotchy red and rivers of mascara were running down her cheeks. “I certainly have. Mickey disapprove of Mr. Sifakis there?”

  Audrey laughed. “He knows trash when he sees it, I’ll give him that. What’s your name?”

  “Turner Meeks.”

  “Buzz Meeks?”

  “That’s right. Miss Anders, have you got a place for Miss Whitehall to stay?”

  “Yes. But what—”

  “Mickey still hang out New Year’s at Breneman’s Ham ’n’ Eggs?”

  “Yes”

  “You get Lucy to pack a grip, then. I’ll run you over there.”

  Audrey flushed. Buzz wondered how much of her smarts Mickey put up with before he jerked the chain; if she ever did the tassel trick for him. She went over and knelt beside Lucy Whitehall, smoothing her hair, prying the radio out of her grasp. Buzz got his car and backed it up on the gravel front yard, one eye on the Greek, still moaning low. Neighbor people were peering out their windows, spread venetian blinds all around the cul-de-sac. Audrey led Lucy out of the house a few minutes later, one arm around her shoulders, one hand carrying a cardboard suitcase. On the way to the car, she stopped to give Tommy Sifakis a kick in the balls.

  * * *

  Buzz took Laurel Canyon back to Hollywood—more time to figure out the play if Johnny Stompanato turned up at his boss’s side. Lucy Whitehall mumbled litanies on Tommy Sifakis as a nice guy with rough edges, Audrey cooing “There, there,” feeding her cigarettes to shut her up.

  It was coming on as a three-horse parlay: a grand from Gelfman, whatever Mickey slipped him if he got sentimental over Lucy and a shakedown or favor pried out of Johnny Stomp. Play it soft with the Mick—he hadn’t seen him since he quit the Department and their percentage deal. Since then the man had survived a pipe bomb explosion, two IRS audits, his right-hand goon Hooky Rothman stubbing his face on the business end of an Ithaca .12 gauge and the shootout outside Sherry’s—chalk that one up to Jack Dragna or shooters from the LAPD, revenge for the cop heads that rolled over the Brenda Allen job. Mickey had half of bookmaking, loan-sharking, the race wire and the dope action in LA; he owned the West Hollywood Sheriff’s and the few City high brass who didn’t want to see him crucified. And Johnny Stomp had stuck with him through all of it: guinea factotum to a Jew prince. Play them both very soft.

  Laurel Canyon ended just north of the Strip; Buzz took side streets over to Hollywood and Vine, dawdling at stoplights. He could feel Audrey Anders eyeing him from the back seat, probably trying to get a take on him and the Mick. Pulling up in front of Breneman’s, he said, “You and Lucy stay here. I got to talk to Mickey in private.”

  Lucy dry-sobbed and fumbled with her pack of cigarettes; Audrey reached for the door handle. “I’m going, too.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Audrey flushed; Buzz turned to Lucy. “Sweetheart, this is about them pictures of you and that big old dog. Tommy was tryin’ to squeeze Mr. Gelfman, and if you go inside looking distraught, Mickey just might kill him and get all of us in heaps of trouble. Tommy’s got them rough edges, but the two of you just might be able to work things—”

  Lucy bawled and made him stop; Audrey’s look said he was lower than the dog. Buzz headed into Breneman’s at a trot. The restaurant was crowded, the radio crew for “Tom Breneman’s Breakfast in Hollywood” packing up equipment and hustling it toward a side exit. Mickey Cohen was sitting in a wraparound booth, Johnny Stompanato and another muscle boy sandwiching him. A third man sat alone at an adjoining table, eyes constantly circling, a newspaper folded open on the seat beside him—obviously camouflaging a monster piece.

  Buzz walked over; the gunman’s hand slid under his morning Herald. Mickey stood up, smiling; Johnny Stomp and the other guy pasted identical grins on their faces and slid over to let him into the booth. Buzz stuck out his hand; Cohen ignored it, grabbed the back of his head and kissed him on both cheeks, scraping him with razor stubble. “Big fellow, it has been too long!”

  Buzz recoiled from a blast of cologne. “Much too long, big fellow. How’s business?”

  Cohen laughed. “The haberdashery? I got a florist’s shop and an ice cream parlor now, too.”

  Buzz saw that Mickey was giving him a shrewd once-over; that he’d caught his frayed shirt cuffs and home manicure. “No. Business.”

  Cohen nudged the man on his left, a bony guy with wide blue eyes and a jailhouse pallor. “Davey, business he wants. Tell him.”

  Davey said, “Men got to gamble and borrow money and schtup women. The shvartzes got to fly to cloud nine on white powder airlines. Business is good.”

  Mickey howled with laughter. Buzz chuckled, faked a coughing attack, turned to Johnny Stompanato and whispered, “Sifakis and Lucy Whitehall. Keep your fucking mouth shut.”

  Mickey pounded his back and held up a glass of water; Buzz kept coughing, enjoying the look on Stompanato’s face—a guinea Adonis turned into a busted schoolboy, his perfectly oiled pompadour about to wilt from fright. Cohen’s back slaps got harder; Buzz took a gulp of water and pretended to catch his breath. “Davey, you’re a funny man.”

  Davey half smiled. “Best in the West. I write all Mr. Cohen’s routines for the smokers at the Friar’s Club. Ask him, ”How’s the wife?’ ”

  Buzz saluted Davey with his glass. “Mickey, how’s the wife?”

  Mickey Cohen smoothed his lapels and sniffed the carnation in the buttonhole. “Some women you want to see, my wife you want to flee. These two Dragna humps were staking out my house after the Sherry’s job, my wife brought them milk and cookies, told them to shoot low, she ain’t had it from me since Lucky Lindy crossed the Atlantic, she don’t want nobody else getting it either. My wife is so cold that the maid calls our bedroom the polar icecap. People come up to me and ask, ‘Mickey, are you getting any?,’ and I pull a thermometer out of my jockey shorts, it says twenty-five below. People say, ‘Mickey, you’re popular with the ladies, you must get reamed, steamed and dry-cleaned regularly.’ I say, ”You don’t know my wife—hog-tied, fried and swept to the side is more like it.’ Some women you got to see, some you
got to flee. Oops—here she comes now!”

  Mickey ended his schtick with a broad grab for his hat. Davey the gagster collapsed on the table, convulsed with laughter. Buzz tried to drum up chortles and couldn’t; he was thinking that Meyer Harris Cohen had killed eleven men that he knew of and had to rake in at least ten million a year tax free. Shaking his head, he said, “Mickey, you’re a pisser.”

  A group of squarejohns at the next table was giving the routine a round of applause; Mickey tipped his hat to them. “Yeah? Then why ain’t you laughing? Davey, Johnny, go sit someplace.”

  Stompanato and the gagster slid silently out of the booth. Cohen said, “You need work or a touch, am I right?”

  “Nix.”

  “Howard treating you right?”

  “He treats me fine.”

  Cohen toyed with his glass, tapping it with the six-carat rock on his pinky. “I know you’re in hock to some handbooks. You should be with me, boychik. Good terms, no sweat on the payback.”

  “I like the risk the other way. It gets my juices goin’.”

  “You’re a crazy fuck. What do you want? Name it.”

  Buzz looked around the room, saw Stompanato at the bar belting a stiff one for guts and solid citizen types giving Mickey surreptitious glances, like he was a zoo gorilla who might bolt his cage. “I want you not to lean on a guy who’s about to make you real mad.”

  “What?”

  “You know Audrey’s friend Lucy Whitehall?”

  Mickey traced an hourglass figure in the air. “Sure. Solly Gelfman’s gonna use her in his next picture. He thinks she’s going places.”

  Buzz said, “Hell in a bucket maybe,” saw Mickey going into his patented low simmer—nostrils flaring, jaw grinding, eyes trawling for something to smash—and handed him the half-full Bloody Mary Johnny Stompanato left behind. Cohen took a gulp and licked lemon pulp off his lips. “Spill it. Now.”

  Buzz said, “Lucy’s shack job’s been squeezing Solly with some dirty pictures. I broke it up, strong-armed the boy a little. Lucy needs a safe place to flop, and I know for a fact that the Greek’s got pals on the West Hollywood Sheriff’s—your pals. I also know he used to push reefer in Dragna territory—which made old Jack D. real mad. Two damn good reasons for you to leave him alone.”

  Cohen was gripping his glass with sausage fingers clenched blue-white. “What…kind…of…pictures?”

  The big wrong question—Mickey might be talking to Sol Gelfman and get the true skinny. Buzz braced himself. “Lucy and a dog.”

  Mickey’s hand popped the glass, shards exploding all over the table, tomato juice and vodka spritzing Buzz. Mickey looked at his bloody palm and pressed it flat on the tabletop. When the white linen started to turn red, he said, “The Greek is fucking dead. He is fucking dog food.”

  Two waiters had approached; they stood around shuffling their feet. The squarejohns at the next table were making with shocked faces—one old lady with her jaw practically down to her soup. Buzz waved the waiters away, slid next to Cohen and put an arm around his twitching shoulders. “Mickey, you can’t, and you know it. You put out the word that anybody who bucks Jack D. is your friend, and the Greek did that—in spades. Audrey saw me work him over—and she’d know. And the Greek didn’t know how stand-up you are—that your woman’s friends are like kin to you. Mickey, you got to let it go. You got too much to lose. Fix Lucy up with a nice place to stay, someplace where the Greek can’t find her. Make it a mitzvah.”

  Cohen took his hand from the table, shook it free of glass slivers and licked lemon goo off his fingers. “Who was in it besides the Greek?”

  Buzz showed him his eyes, the loyal henchman who’d never lie; he came up with two gunsels he’d run out of town for crashing Lew the Jew Wershow’s handbook at Paramount. “Bruno Geyer and Steve Katzenbach. Fairies. You gonna find Lucy a place?”

  Cohen snapped his fingers; waiters materialized and stripped the table dervish fast. Buzz sensed wheels turning behind the Mick’s blank face—in his direction. He moved over to cut the man some slack; he stayed deadpan when Mickey said, “Mitzvah, huh? You fucking goyishe shitheel. Where’s Audrey and Lucy now?”

  “Out by my car.”

  “What’s Solly pay you?”

  “A grand.”

  Mickey dug in his pants pockets and pulled out a roll of hundreds. He peeled off ten, placed them in a row on the table and said, “That’s the only mitzvah you know from, you hump. But you saved me grief, so I’m matching. Buy yourself some clothes.”

  Buzz palmed the money and stood up. “Thanks, Mick.”

  “Fuck you. What do you call an elephant who moonlights as a prostitute?”

  “I don’t know. What?”

  Mickey cracked a big grin. “A two-ton pickup that lays for peanuts.”

  “That’s a riot, Mick.”

  “Then why ain’t you laughing? Send the girls in—now.”

  Buzz walked over to the bar, catching Johnny Stompanato working on another shot. Turning, he saw Cohen being glad-handed by Tom Breneman and the maitre d’, out of eyeshot. Johnny Stomp swiveled around; Buzz put five Mickey C-notes in his hand. “Sifakis snitched you, but I don’t want him touched. And I didn’t tell Mickey bubkis. You owe me.”

  Johnny smiled and pocketed the cash. “Thanks, pal.”

  Buzz said, “I ain’t your pal, you wop cocksucker,” and walked outside, stuffing the remaining hundreds in his shirt pocket, spitting on his necktie and using it to daub the tomato juice stains on his best Oviatt’s worsted. Audrey Anders was standing on the sidewalk watching him. She said, “Nice life you’ve got, Meeks.”

  Chapter Four

  Part of him knew it was just a dream—that it was 1950, not 1941; that the story would run its course while part of him grasped for new details and part tried to be dead still so as not to disrupt the unraveling.

  He was speeding south on 101, wheeling a hot La Salle sedan. Highway Patrol sirens were closing the gap; Kern County scrubland loomed all around him. He saw a series of dirt roads snaking off the highway and hit the one on the far left, figuring the prowl cars would pursue straight ahead or down the middle. The road wound past farmhouses and fruit pickers’ shacks into a box canyon; he heard sirens to his left and right, behind him and in front of him. Knowing any roadway was capture, he down-shifted and plowed across furrowed dirt, gaining distance on the wheeirr, wheeirr, wheeirr. He saw stationary lights up ahead and made them for a farmhouse; a fence materialized; he down-shifted, swung around in slow second gear and got a perfect view of a brightly lit picture window:

  Two men swinging axes at a young blonde woman pressed into a doorway. A half-second flash of an arm severed off. A wide-open mouth smeared with orange lipstick screaming mute.

  The dream speeded up.

  He made it to Bakersfield; unloaded the La Salle; got paid. Back to San Berdoo, biology classes at JC, nightmares about the mouth and the arm. Pearl Harbor, 4F from a punctured eardrum. No amount of study, cash GTAs or anything can push the girl away. Months pass, and he returns to find out how and why.

  It takes a while, but he comes up with a triangle: a missing local girl named Kathy Hudgens, her spurned lover Marty Sidwell—dead on Saipan—questioned by the cops and let go because no body was found. The number-two man most likely Buddy Jastrow, Folsom parolee, known for his love of torturing dogs and cats. Also missing—last seen two days after he tore across the dry cabbage field. The dream dissolving into typescript—criminology texts filled with forensic gore shots. Joining the LASD in ’44 to know WHY; advancing through jail and patrol duty; other deputies hooting at him for his perpetual all-points want on Harlan “Buddy” Jastrow.

  A noise went off. Danny Upshaw snapped awake, thinking it was a siren kicking over. Then he saw the stucco swirls on his bedroom ceiling and knew it was the phone.

  He picked it up. “Skipper?”

  “Yeah,” Captain Al Dietrich said. “How’d you know?”

  “You’re the only one who calls me.
”

  Dietrich snorted. “Anyone ever call you an ascetic?”

  “Yeah, you.”

  Dietrich laughed. “I like your luck. One night as acting watch commander and you get floods, two accident deaths and a homicide. Want to fill me in on that?”

  Danny thought of the corpse: bite marks, the missing eyes. “It’s as bad as anything I’ve seen. Did you talk to Henderson and Deffry?”

  “They left canvassing reports—nothing hot. Bad, huh?”

  “The worst I’ve seen.”

  Dietrich sighed. “Danny, you’re a rookie squadroom dick, and you’ve never worked a job like this. You’ve only seen it in your books—in black and white.”

  Kathy Hudgens’ mouth and arm were superimposed against the ceiling—in Technicolor. Danny held on to his temper. “Right, Skipper. It was bad, though. I went down to the morgue and…watched the prep. It got worse. Then I went back to help Deffry and Hender—”

  “They told me. They also said you got bossy. Shitcan that, or you’ll get a rep as a prima donna.”

  Danny swallowed dry. “Right, Captain. Any ID on the body?”

  “Not yet, but I think we’ve got the car it was transported in. It’s a ’47 Buick Super, green, abandoned a half block up from the building site. White upholstery with what looks like bloodstains. It was reported stolen at ten this morning, clouted outside a jazz club on South Central. The owner was still drunk when he called in—you call him for details.”

  “Print man dusting it?”

  “Being done now.”

  “Is SID going over the lot?”

  “No. The print man was all I could wangle downtown.”

  “Shit. Captain, I want this one.”

  “You can have it. No publicity, though. I don’t want another Black Dahlia mess.”

  “What about another man to work with me?”

  Dietrich sighed—long and slow. “If the victim warrants it. For now, it’s just you. We’ve only got four detectives, Danny. If this John Doe was trash, I don’t want to waste another man.”