The Big Nowhere (19 page)

The ginch had tears in her eyes. Buzz said, “Well, Sammy’s got his rough edges, but I wouldn’t exactly call him the devil.”

“Is true! Yo soy la madre del diablo! You arrest him! Communisto!”

Buzz pointed to Claire De Haven’s notation. “Mrs. Benavides, what have you got on this woman here? Give me some good scoop and I’ll beat that boogie man up with my stick.”

“Communista! Drug addict! Sammy took her to clinica for cure, and she—”

Buzz saw a prime opening. “Where is that clinic, ma’am? Tell me slow.”

“By ocean. Devil doctor! Communista whore!”

Satan’s mother started bawling for real. Buzz blew East LA and headed for Malibu—a sea breeze, a doctor who owed him, no cockroach fights, no fuck me madonnas.

Pacific Sanitarium was in Malibu Canyon, a booze and dope dry-out farm nestled in foothills a half mile from the beach. The main building, lab and maintenance shacks were surrounded by electrified barbed wire; the price for kicking hooch, horse and drugstore hop was twelve hundred dollars a week; detoxification heroin was processed on the premises—per a gentleman’s agreement between Dr. Terence Lux, the clinic’s bossman, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors—the agreement based on the proviso that LA politicos in need of the place could boil out for free. Buzz drove up to the gate thinking of all the referrals he’d given Lux: RKO juicers and hopheads spared jail jolts and bum publicity because Dr. Terry, plastic surgeon to the stars, had given them shelter and him a 10 percent kickback. One still rankled: a girl who’d OD’d when Howard booted her out of his A list fuck pad and back to selling it in hotel bars. He almost burned the three hundred Lux shot him for the business.

Buzz beeped his horn; the gate watchman’s voice came over the squawk box: “Yes, sir?”

Buzz spoke to the receiver by the fence. “Turner Meeks to see Dr. Lux.”

The guard said, “One moment, sir”; Buzz waited. Then: “Sir, follow the road all the way down the left fork to the end. Dr. Lux is in the hatchery.”

The gate opened; Buzz cruised past the clinic and maintenance buildings and turned onto a road veering off into a scrub-covered miniature canyon. There was a shack at the end: low wire walls and a tin roof. Chickens squawked inside it; some of the birds were shrieking bloody murder.

Buzz parked, got out and peered through the wire. Two men in hipboots and khaki smocks were slaughtering chickens, hacking them with razor-bladed two-by-four’s—the zoot sticks Riot Squad bulls used to pack back in the early ’40s, emasculating Mex hoodlums by slashing their threads. The stick wielders were good: single neck shots, on to the next one. The few remaining birds were trying to run and fly away; their panic had them scudding into the walls, the roof and the zoot men. Buzz thought: no chicken marsala at the Derby tonight, and heard a voice behind him.

“Two birds with one stone. A bad pun, good business.”

Buzz turned. Terry Lux was standing there—all rangy gray handsomeness, like a dictionary definition of “physician”. “Hello, Doc.”

“You know I prefer Doctor or Terry, but I’ve always made allowances for your homespun style. Is this business?”

“Not exactly. What’s
that
? You doin’ your own catering?”

Lux pointed to the slaughterhouse, silent now, the stick men tossing dead chickens in sacks. “Two birds, one stone. Years ago I read a study that asserted a heavy chicken diet is beneficial to people with low blood sugar, which most alcoholics and drug addicts have. Stone one. Stone two is my special cure for narcotics users. My technicians drain out all their existing contaminated blood and rotate in fresh, healthy blood filled with vitamins, minerals and animal hormones. So, I have a hatchery and a slaughterhouse. It’s all very cost-effective and beneficial to my patients. What is it, Buzz? If it isn’t business, then it’s a favor. How can I help you?”

The smell of blood and feathers was making him gag. Buzz noticed a pulley system linking the maintenance huts to the clinic, a tram car stationed on a landing dock about ten yards in back of the chicken shack. “Let’s go up to your office. I’ve got some questions about a woman who I’m pretty damn sure was a patient of yours.”

Lux frowned and cleaned his nails with a scalpel. “I never divulge confidential patient information. You know that. It’s a prime reason why Mr. Hughes and yourself use my services exclusively.”

“Just a few questions, Terry.”

“I suppose money instead is out of the question?”

“I don’t need money, I need information.”

“And if I don’t proffer this information you’ll take your business elsewhere?”

Buzz nodded toward the tram car. “No tickee, no washee. Be nice to me, Terry. I’m in with the City of Los Angeles these days, and I just might get the urge to spill about that dope you manufacture here.”

Lux scratched his neck with the scalpel. “For medical purposes only, and politically approved.”

“Doc, you tellin’ me you don’t trade the skim to Mickey C. for
his
referrals? The City hates Mickey, you know.”

Lux bowed in the direction of the car; Buzz walked ahead and got in. The doctor hit a switch; sparks burst from the cables; they moved slowly up and docked on an overhang adjacent to a portico with a spectacular ocean view. Lux led Buzz down a series of antiseptic white hallways to a small room crammed with filing cabinets. Medical posters lined the walls: a picture primer for plastic surgeons, facial reconstruction in the style of Thomas Hart Benton. Buzz said, “Claire Katherine De Haven. She’s some kind of Commie.”

Lux opened a cabinet, leafed through folders, plucked one and read from the top page: “Claire Katherine De Haven, date of birth May 5, 1910. Chronic controlled alcoholic, sporadically addicted to phenobarbital, occasional Benzedrine use, occasional heroin skin-popper. She took my special cure I told you about three times—in ’39, ’43, and ’47. That’s it.”

Buzz said, “Nix, I want more. That file of yours list any details? Any good dirt?”

Lux held up the folder. “It’s mostly medical charts and financial accountings. You can read them if you like.”

“No thanks. You remember her good, Terry. I can tell. So feed me.”

Lux put the file back and slid the cabinet shut. “She seduced a few of her fellow patients while she was here the first time. It caused an upheaval, so in ’43 I kept her isolated. She was on remorseful both times, and on her second go-round I gave her a little psychiatric counseling.”

“You a headshrinker?”

Lux laughed. “No, but I enjoy getting people to tell me things. In ’43 De Haven told me she wanted to reform because some Mexican boyfriend of hers got beat up in the zoot suit riots and she wanted to work more efficaciously for the People’s Revolt. In ’47 the Red hearings back east sent her around the twist—some pal of hers got his you-know-what in the wringer. HUAC was good for business, Buzz. Lots of remorse, ODs, suicide attempts. Commies with money are the best Commies, don’t you agree?”

Buzz ran the rest of the target list through his head. “Who got his dick in the wringer, some bimbo of Claire’s?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Morton Ziffkin?”

“No.”

“One of her spics? Benavides, Lopez, Duarte?”

“No, it wasn’t a Mex.”

“Chaz Minear, Reynolds Loftis?”

Bingo on “Loftis”—Lux’s face muscles tensing, coming together around a phony smile. “No, not them.”

Buzz said, “Horseshit. You give on that.
Now
.”

Lux shrugged—phony. “I had a case on Claire, and so did Loftis. I was jealous. When you mentioned him, that brought it all back.”

Buzz laughed—his patented shitkicker job. “Horse pucky. You’ve only got a case on money, so you fuckin’ give me better than that.”

The doctor got out his scalpel and tapped it against his leg. “Okay, let’s try this. Loftis used to buy heroin for Claire, and I didn’t like it—I wanted her beholden to me. Satisfied?”

A good morning’s work: the woman as a hophead/Mex fucker, Benavides a maybe kiddie raper, Loftis copping H for a fellow Red. “Who’d he glom from?”

“I don’t know.
Really
.”

“You got anything else good?”

“No. You have any fine young Howard rejects to spice up the ward?”

“See you in church, Doc.”

A stack of messages was waiting back at the office, partial results from his secretary’s phone queries. Buzz leafed through them.

Traffic ticket rebop predominated, along with some stale bread on the spics: unlawful assembly, nonfelony assault and battery resulting in Mickey Mouse juvie time. No sex shit on Samuel Tomás Ignacio Benavides, the “devil incarnate”; no political dirt on any of the three ex–White Fencers. Buzz turned to the last message slip—his secretary’s call back from the Santa Monica PD.

419 South Rimpau was Hancock Park, pheasant under glass acres, old LA money; Reynolds Loftis had a case on Claire De Haven—and now it looked like he addressed the ball from both sides of the plate. Buzz ran an electric shaver over his face, squirted cologne at his armpits and brushed a chunk of pie crust off his necktie. Filthy rich always made him nervous; filthy rich and fruit was a combo he’d never worked before.

Audrey Anders stuck with him on the ride over; he pretended his Old Spice was her Chanel #5 in just the right places. 419 South Rimpau was a Spanish mansion fronted by a huge expanse of grass dotted with rose gardens; Buzz parked and rang the bell, hoping for a single-o play: no witnesses if it got ugly.

A peephole opened, then the door. A peaches-and-cream blonde about twenty-five had her hand on the knob, wholesome pulchritude in a tartan skirt and pink button-down shirt. “Hello. Are you the insurance man here to see Daddy?”

Buzz pulled his jacket over the butt of his .38. “Yes, I am. In private, please. No man likes to discuss such grave matters in the presence of his family.”

The girl nodded, led Buzz through the foyer to a book-lined study and left him there with the door ajar. He noticed a liquor sideboard and thought about a quick one—a mid-afternoon bracer might give him some extra charm. Then “Phil, what’s this in-private stuff?” took it out of his hands.

A short pudgy man, bald with a fringe, had pushed the door open. Buzz held out his badge; the man said, “What is this?”

“DA’s Bureau, Mr. Hartshorn. I just wanted to keep your family out of it.”

Charles Hartshorn closed the door and leaned against it. “Is this about Duane Lindenaur?”

Buzz drew a blank on the name, then remembered it from yesterday’s late-edition
Tattler
: Lindenaur was a victim in the homo killings Dudley Smith told him about—the job the Sheriff’s dick they just co-opted was set to run. “No, sir. I’m with the Grand Jury Division, and we’re investigating the Santa Monica Police. We need to know if they abused you when they raided the Knight in Armor back in ’44.”

Veins throbbed in Hartshorn’s forehead; his voice was board-room-lawyer cold. “I don’t believe you. Duane Lindenaur attempted to extort money from me nine years ago—spurious allegations that he threatened to leak to my family. I dealt with the man legally then, and a few days ago I read that he had been murdered. I’ve been expecting the police at my door, and now you show up. Am I a suspect in Lindenaur’s death?”

Buzz said, “I don’t know and I don’t care. This is about the Santa Monica Police.”

“No, it is not. This pertains to the spurious allegations Duane Lindenaur made against me and the non sequitur of my happening to be in a cocktail lounge frequented by certain not respectable people when a police raid occurred. I have an alibi for the newspapers’ estimated time of Duane Lindenaur’s and the other man’s deaths, and I want you to corroborate it without involving my family. If you so much as breathe a word to my wife and daughter, I will have your badge and your head. Do you understand?”

The lawyer’s tone had gotten calmer; his face was one massive contortion. Buzz tried diplomacy again. “Reynolds Loftis, Mr. Hartshorn. He was rousted with you. Tell me what you know about him, and I’ll tell the Sheriff’s detective who’s workin’ the Lindenaur case to leave you alone, that you’re alibied up. That sound nice to you?”

Hartshorn folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t know any Reynolds Loftis and I don’t make deals with grubby little policemen who reek of cheap cologne. Leave my home now.”

Hartshorn’s “Reynolds” was all wrong. Buzz moved to the sideboard, filled a glass with whiskey and walked up to the lawyer with it. “For your nerves, Charlie. I don’t want you kickin’ off a heart attack on me.”

“Get out of my home, you grubby little worm.”

Buzz dropped the glass, grabbed Hartshorn’s neck and slammed him against the wall. “You’re humpin’ the wrong boy, counselor.
The
last boy around here you want to fuck with. Now here’s the drill: you and Reynolds Loftis or I go into the living room and tell your little girl that daddy sucks cock at the Westlake Park men’s room and takes it up the ass on Selma and Las Palmas. And you breathe a word to anybody that I leaned on you, and I’ll have you in Confidential Magazine porkin’ nigger drag queens.
Do you understand?”

Hartshorn was beet red and spilling tears. Buzz let go of his neck, saw the imprint of a big ham hand and made that hand a fist. Hartshorn tremble-walked to the sideboard and picked up the whiskey decanter. Buzz swung at the wall, pulling the punch at the last second. “Spill on Loftis, goddamnit. Make it easy so I can get the fuck out of here.”

Glass on glass chimed, followed by hard breathing and silence. Buzz stared at the wall. Hartshorn spoke, his voice dead hollow. “Reynolds and I were just a…fling. We met at a party a Belgian man, a movie director, threw. The man was very au courant, and he threw lots of parties at clubs for our…his kind. It never got serious with Reynolds because there was a screenwriter he had been seeing, and some third man they were disturbed over. I was the odd man…so it never…”