The Big Nowhere Page 7

  Jackson spat bloody phlegm and a slice of his tongue. “I’m with Jack D. and the Seven-Seven, mother—”

  Danny held his gun at eye level. “I’m with Mickey and the County, so what? I asked you a question.”

  “I deal Hollywood, man! I know lots of gray-haired suckers!”

  “Name them, and name everyone else you know who unloads at the clubs on South Central.”

  “I’ll let you kill me first, sucker!”

  The jazz noise was coming back, soundtracking images: Coleman Healy fondling his sax, the reefer guy about to beg. Danny said, “One more time. I want skinny on a tall white man. Middle-aged, silver hair.”

  “An’ I told you—”

  Danny heard footsteps coming up the stairs, grunts and the unmistakable sound of revolvers being cocked. Otis Jackson smiled; Danny glommed the gist, holstered his piece and reached for his badge holder. Two big white men popped in the doorway aiming .38’s; Danny had his shield out and a peace offering ready. “Sheriff’s. I’m a Sheriff’s detective.”

  The men walked over, guns first. The taller of the two helped Otis Jackson to his feet; the other, a fat guy with curly red hair, took Danny’s ID buzzer, examined it and shook his head. “Bad enough you guys get in bed with Mickey Kike, now you gotta beat up my favorite snitch. Otis, you are one lucky nigger. Deputy Upshaw, you are one stupid white man.”

  The tall cop helped Otis Jackson into the bathroom. Danny stood up and grabbed his badge holder. The fat redhead said, “Get the fuck back to the County and beat up your own niggers.”

  Chapter Five

  “…And the most pervasive aspect of Communism, its single most insidiously efficacious tool, is that it hides under a million banners, a million different flags, titles and combinations of initials, spreading its cancer under a million guises, all of them designed to pervert and corrupt in the name of compassion and goodness and social justice. UAES, SLDC, NAACP, AFL-CIO, League for Democratic Ideals and Concerned Americans Against Bigotry. All high-sounding organizations that all good Americans should be proud to belong to. All seditious, perverted, cancerous tentacles of the Communist Conspiracy.”

  Mal Considine had been sizing up Edmund J. Satterlee, ex-Fed, ex-Jesuit seminarian, for close to half an hour, taking occasional glances at the rest of the audience. Satterlee was a tall man, pearshaped, in his early forties; his verbal style was a cross between Harry Truman homespun and Pershing Square crackpot—and you never knew when he was going to shout or whisper. Dudley Smith, chain-smoking, seemed to be enjoying his pitch; Ellis Loew kept looking at his watch and at Dudley—probably afraid that he was going to drop ash all over his new living room carpet. Dr. Saul Lesnick, psychiatrist/longtime Fed informant, sat as far away from the Red Chaser as possible while remaining in the same room. He was a small, frail old man with bright blue eyes and a cough that he kept feeding with harsh European cigarettes; he had the look native to stool pigeons everywhere—loathing for the presence of his captors—even though he had allegedly volunteered his services.

  Satterlee was pacing now, gesticulating to them like they were four hundred, not four. Mal squirmed in his chair, reminding himself that this guy was his ticket to a captaincy and Chief DA’s Investigator.

  “…and in the early days of the war I worked with the Alien Squad relocating Japs. I gained my first insights into how anti-American sentiment breeds. The Japs who wanted to be good Americans offered to enlist in the armed forces, most were resentful and confused, and the subversive element—under the guise of patriotism—attempted to coerce them into treason by concerted, heavily intellectualized attacks on alleged American racial injustices. Under a banner of American concerns: liberty, justice and free enterprise, the seditious Japs portrayed this democracy as a land of lynched Negroes and limited opportunities for coloreds, even though the Nisei were emerging as middle-class merchants when the war broke out. After the war, when the Communist Conspiracy emerged as the number-one threat to America’s internal security, I saw how the same kind of thinking, of manipulation, was being used by the Reds to subvert our moral fiber. The entertainment industry and business were rife with fellow travelers, and I founded Red Crosscurrents to help weed out radicals and subversives. Organizations that want to keep themselves Red-free pay us a nominal fee to screen their employees and prospective employees for Commie associations, and we keep an exhaustive file on the Reds we uncover. This service also allows innocent people accused of being Pink to prove their innocence and gain employment that they might have been denied. Further—”

  Mal heard Dr. Saul Lesnick cough; he looked at the old man sidelong and saw that the eruption was half laughter. Satterlee paused; Ellis Loew said, “Ed, can we gloss the background and get down to business?”

  Satterlee flushed, picked up his briefcase and took out a stack of papers, four individually clipped sheafs. He handed one each to Mal, Loew and Dudley Smith; Dr. Lesnick declined his with a shake of the head. Mal skimmed the top sheet. It was a deposition detailing picket line scuttlebutt: members of the United Alliance of Extras and Stagehands mouthing Pinko platitudes overheard by counter-pickets from the Teamsters. Mal checked the signees’ names, recognizing Morris Jahelka, Davey Goldman and Fritzie “Icepick” Kupferman—known Mickey Cohen strongarms.

  Satterlee resumed his position in front of them; Mal thought he looked like a man who would kill for a lectern—or any resting place for his long, gangly arms. “These pieces of paper are our first wave of ammunition. I have worked with a score of municipal grand juries nationwide, and the sworn statements of patriotic citizens always have a salutary effect on Grand Jury members. I think we have a great chance for a successful one here in Los Angeles now—the labor infighting between the Teamsters and the UAES is a great impetus, a shot at the limelight that will probably not come again. Communist influence in Hollywood is a broad topic, and the picket line trouble and UAES’s fomenting of subversion within both contexts is a good device to get the public interested. Let me quote from the deposition of Mr. Morris Jahelka: ‘While picketing outside Variety International Pictures on the morning of November 29, 1949, I heard a UAES member, a woman named “Claire,” tell another UAES member: “With the UAES in the studios we can advance the cause better than the entire Red Guard. Movies are the new opiate of the people. They’ll believe anything we can get on the screen.” ’ Gentlemen, Claire is Claire Katherine De Haven, a consort of Hollywood 10 traitors and a known member of no fewer than fourteen organizations that have been classified as Communist Fronts by the California State Attorney General’s Office. Is that not impressive?”

  Mal raised his hand. Edmund J. Satterlee said, “Yes, Lieutenant Considine? A question?”

  “No, a statement. Morris Jahelka has two convictions for felony statch rape. Your patriotic citizen screws twelve-year-old girls.”

  Ellis Loew said, “Goddamnit, Malcolm.”

  Satterlee tried a smile, faltered at it and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I see. Anything else on Mr. Jahelka?”

  “Yes. He also likes little boys, but he’s never been caught at it.”

  Dudley Smith laughed. “Politics makes for strange bedfellows, which doesn’t negate the fact that in this case Mr. Jahelka is on the side of the angels. Besides, lad, we’ll be damn sure his jacket is sealed, and the goddamn Pinks probably won’t bring in lawyers for redirect questioning.”

  Mal concentrated on keeping his voice calm. “Is that true, Ellis?”

  Loew fanned away plumes of Doc Lesnick’s cigarette smoke. “Essentially, yes. We’re trying to get as many UAESers as possible to volunteer as witnesses, and hostile witnesses—subpoenaed ones—tend to try to assert their innocence by not retaining counsel. Also, the studios have a clause in their contract with UAES, stating that they can terminate the contract if certain areas of malfeasance can be proven against the contractee. Before the grand jury convenes—if our evidence is strong enough—I’m going to the studio heads to get UAES ousted on that clause—which should make
the bastards hopping mad and rabid when they hit the witness stand. An angry witness is an ineffectual witness. You know that, Mal.”

  Cohen and his Teamsters in; UAES out. Mal wondered if Mickey C. was a contributor to Loew’s six-figure slush fund—which should hit the half million mark by the time of the ’52 primaries. “You’re good, counselor.”

  “So are you, Captain. Down to brass tacks, Ed. I’m due in court at noon.”

  Satterlee handed Mal and Dudley mimeographed sheets. “My thoughts on the interrogation of subversives,” he said. “Guilt by association is a strong lever on these people—they’re all connected up—everyone on the far left knows everyone else to one degree or another. In with your depositions I’ve got lists of Commie front meetings cross-filed with donation lists, which are excellent levers to procure information and get Reds to inform on other Reds to save their own damn skin. The donations also mean bank records that can be subpoenaed as evidence. Proffering surveillance photos to potential witnesses is my personal favorite technique—being shown at a subversive meeting puts the fear of God into the most Godless Pinks, and they’ll inform on their own mother to stay out of jail. I may be able to get us some extremely damaging photos from a friend who works for Red Channels—some extremely good pictures of Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee picnics. In fact, I’ve been told the photos are the Rembrandts of Federal surveillance—actual CP bigwigs and Hollywood stars along with our friends in UAES. Mr. Loew?”

  Loew said, “Thank you, Ed,” and gave his standard one finger up, indicating everybody stand. Dudley Smith practically leaped to his feet; Mal stood and saw Doc Lesnick walking to the bathroom holding his chest. Awful wet coughs echoed from the hallway; he pictured Lesnick retching blood. Satterlee, Smith and Loew broke up their circle of handshaking; the Red Chaser went out the door with the DA kneading his shoulders.

  Dudley Smith said, “Zealots are always tiresome. Ed’s good at what he does, but he doesn’t know when to quit performing. Five hundred dollars a lecture he gets. Capitalist exploitation of Communism, wouldn’t you say so, Captain?”

  “I’m not a captain yet, Lieutenant.”

  “Ha! And a grand wit you have, too, to go with your rank.”

  Mal studied the Irishman, less scared than he was yesterday morning at the restaurant. “What’s in this for you? You’re a case man, you don’t want Jack Tierney’s job.”

  “Maybe I just want to get next to you, lad. You’re odds on for Chief of Police or County Sheriff somewhere down the line, all that grand work you did in Europe, liberating our persecuted Jewish brethren. Speaking of which, here comes the Hebrew contingent now.”

  Ellis Loew was leading Lesnick into the living room and settling him into an easy chair by the fireplace. The old man arranged a pack of Gauloises, a lighter and ashtray on his lap, crossing one stick leg over the other to hold them in place. Loew pulled up chairs around him in a semicircle; Smith winked and sat down. Mal saw cardboard boxes packed with folders filling up the dining alcove, four typewriters stacked in one corner to accommodate the grand jury team’s paperwork. Ellis Loew was preparing for war, his ranch house as headquarters.

  Mal took the leftover chair. Doc Lesnick lit a cigarette, coughed and started talking. His voice was highbrow New York Jew working with one lung; Mal made his pitch as processed, spieled to a load of other cops and DAs.

  “Mr. Satterlee did you a disservice by not going back further in his rather threadbare history of subversive elements in America. He neglected to mention the Depression, starvation and desperate people, concerned people, who wanted to change terrible conditions.” Lesnick paused, got breath and stubbed out his Gauloise. Mal saw a bony chest heaving, nailed the old man as gravebait and sensed that he was wavering: the pain of speech versus a chance to justify his fink duty. Finally he sucked in a huge draft of air and kept going, some kind of fervor lighting up his eyes.

  “I was one of those people, twenty years ago. I signed petitions, wrote letters and went to labor meetings that accomplished nothing. The Communist Party, despite its evil connotations, was the only organization that did not seem ineffectual. Its reputation gave it a certain panache, a cachet, and the self-righteous hypocrites who condemned it in a blanket manner made me want to belong to it in order to assert my defiance of them.

  “It was an injudicious decision, one that I came to regret. Being a psychiatrist, I was designated the official CP analyst here in Los Angeles. Marxism and Freudian analysis were very much in the intellectual vogue, and a number of people whom I later realized were conspirators against this country told me their…secrets, so to speak, emotional and political. Many were Hollywood people, writers and actors and their satellites—working-class people as deluded as I was regarding Communism, people who wanted to get close to the Hollywood people because of their movie connections. Just before the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact I became disillusioned with the Party. In ’39, during the California State HUAC probe, I volunteered to serve the FBI as an undercover informant. I have served in that capacity for over ten years, while concurrently acting as CP analyst. I secretly made my private files available to the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee probers, and I am doing the same for this grand jury probe now. The files are for UAES members essential to your probe, and should you require assistance in interpreting them, I would be happy to be of service.”

  The old man nearly choked on his last words. He reached for his cigarette pack; Ellis Loew, holding a glass of water, got to him first. Lesnick gulped, coughed, gulped; Dudley Smith walked into the dining alcove and tapped the filing boxes and typewriters with his spit-shined brogues—uncharacteristically idle footwork.

  A horn honked outside. Mal stood up to thank Lesnick and shake his hand. The old man looked away and pushed himself to his feet, almost not making it. The horn beeped again; Loew opened the door and gestured to the cab in the driveway. Lesnick shuffled out, gulping fresh morning air.

  The taxi drove away; Loew turned on a wall fan. Dudley Smith said, “How long does he have, Ellis? Will you be sending him an invitation to your victory celebration come ’52?”

  Loew scooped big handfuls of files off the floor and laid them out on the dining room table; he repeated the process until there were two stacks of paper halfway to the ceiling. “Long enough to suit our purposes.”

  Mal walked over and looked at their evidence: information extraction thumbscrews. “He won’t testify before the grand jury, though?”

  “No, never. He’s terrified of losing his credibility as a psychiatrist. Confidentiality, you know. It’s a good hiding place for lawyers, and doctors covet it too. Of course, it’s not legally binding for them. Lesnick would be kaput as a psychiatrist if he testified.”

  Dudley said, “You would think he would like to meet his maker as a good patriotic American, though. He did volunteer, and that should be a grand satisfaction for someone whose next life looms so imminently.”

  Loew laughed. “Dud, have you ever taken a step without spotting the angles?”

  “The last time you did, counselor. Captain Considine, yourself?”

  Mal said, “Sometime back in the Roaring Twenties,” thinking that mano a mano, brain to brain, he’d favor the Dublin street thug over the Harvard Phi Bete. “Ellis, when do we start approaching witnesses?”

  Loew tapped the file stacks. “Soon, after you’ve digested these. Based on what you learn here, you’ll be making your first approaches—on weak points—weak people—who’d seem most likely to cooperate. If we can build up an array of friendly witnesses fast, fine. But if we don’t get a fair amount of initial cooperation, we’ll have to put in a plant. Our friends on the Teamsters have heard picket line talk—that the UAES is planning strategy meetings aimed at coercing exorbitant contract demands out of the studios. If we get a string of balks right off the bat, I want to pull back and put a decoy into the UAES. I want both of you to think of smart, tough, idealistic-looking young cops we can use if it comes to that.”

&
nbsp; Chills grabbed Mal. Sending in decoys, operating, had made his rep at Ad Vice—it was what he was best at as a policeman. He said, “I’ll think on it. There’s just Dudley and me as investigators?”

  Loew made a gesture that took in his whole house. “Clerks from the City pool here to handle the paperwork, Ed Satterlee for the use of his contacts, Lesnick for our psychiatric edification. You two to interrogate. I might get us a third man to prowl for criminal stuff, rattle cages, that kind of thing.”

  Mal got itchy to read, think, operate. He said, “I’m going to clear up some loose ends at the Hall, go home and work.”

  Loew said, “I’m going to prosecute a real estate man for drunk driving on his son’s motorcycle.”

  Dudley Smith toasted his boss with an imaginary glass. “Have mercy. Most real estate men are good patriotic Republicans, and you might need his contribution one day.”

  * * *

  Back at City Hall, Mal made calls to satisfy his curiosity on his two new colleagues. Bob Cathcart, a savvy Criminal Division FBI man he’d worked with, gave him the scoop on Edmund J. Satterlee. Cathcart’s take: the man was a religious crackpot with a wild hair up his ass about Communism, so extreme in his views that Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s number-two man at the Bureau, repeatedly issued gag orders on him when he served as Agent in Charge at the Waco, Texas, field office. Satterlee was estimated to earn fifty thousand dollars a year in anti-Communist lecture fees; Red Crosscurrents was “a shakedown racket”—“They’d clear Karl Marx if the dough was right.” Satterlee was rumored to have been bounced off the Allen Squad for attempting a kickback operation: cash vouchers from interned Japanese prisoners in exchange for his safeguarding their confiscated property until they were released. Agent Cathcart’s summation: Ed Satterlee was a loony, albeit a rich and very efficient one—very adept at advancing conspiracy theories that stood up in court; very good at gathering evidence; very good at running outside interference for grand jury investigators.