The Big Nowhere (25 page)

Mal took the cue. “Most likely deposition. We’ll start with—”

Dudley, his voice raised for the first time. “Let me have this witness, counselor. Would you mind?”

Mal shook his head and turned his chair around, steno pad braced on the top slat. Dudley said, “You know why we’re here, so let’s get to it. Communist influence in the motion picture business. Names, dates, places and seditious words spoken. Since I’m sure he’s much on your mind, we’ll start with Reynolds Loftis. Have you ever heard him advocate the armed overthrow of the United States government?”

“No, but—”

“Feel free to volunteer information, unless I state otherwise. Have you some grand tidbits on Loftis?”

Rolff’s tone seethed. “He tailored his policeman roles to make the police look bad. He said he was doing his part to undermine the American system of jurisprudence.” A pause, then, “If I testify in court, will he get the chance to tell about Sarah and me?”

Mal answered, half truth/half lies. “It’s very unlikely he’ll stand as a witness, and if he tries to volunteer that information the judge won’t let him get two seconds in. You’re covered.”

“But outside of court—”

Dudley said, “Outside of court you’re on your own, and you’ll have to rely on the fact that repeating the story makes Loftis appear loathsome.”

Rolff said, “If Loftis told you that, then he must have been cooperative in general. Why do you need information to use against him?”

Dudley, not missing a trick. “Loftis informed on you months ago, when we thought our investigation was going to be centered outside the UAES. Frankly, what with the recent labor troubles, the UAES presents a much nicer target. And frankly, you and the others were too ineffectual to bother with.”

Mal looked over and saw that Rolff bought it: his squared shoulders had relaxed and his hands had quit clenching. His follow-up question was dead on target: “How do I know you won’t do the same thing with me?”

Mal said, “This grand jury is officially on, and you’ll be given immunity from prosecution, something we never offered Loftis. What Lieutenant Smith said about the labor trouble is true. It’s now or never, and we’re here to make hay now.”

Rolff stared at him. “You acknowledge your opportunism so openly that it gives you an awful credibility.”

Dudley ha’ ha’d. “There is one difference between our factions—we’re right, you’re wrong. Now, concerning Reynolds Loftis. He deliberately portrayed American policemen as misanthropic, correct?”

Mal went back to transcribing; Rolff said, “Yes.”

“Can you recall when he said that?”

“At a party somewhere, I think.”

“Oh? A party for
the
Party?”

“No. No, I think it was a party back during the war, a summertime party.”

“Were any of these people also present and making seditious comments: Claire De Haven, Chaz Minear, Mort Ziffkin, Sammy Benavides, Juan Duarte and Mondo Lopez?”

“I think Claire and Mort were there, but Sammy and Juan and Mondo were busy with SLDC around that time, so they weren’t.”

Mal said, “So this was summer of ’43, around the time the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee was going strongest?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so.”

Dudley said, “Think, comrade. Minear was Loftis’ bedmate. Was he there and acting vociferous?”

Mal caught up on his note-taking, shorthanding Dudley’s flair down to simple questions; Rolff ended a long pause. “What I remember about that party is that it was my last social contact with the people you mentioned until I became friendly with Reynolds again in Europe a few years ago. I recall that Chaz and Reynolds had been spatting and that Reynolds did not bring him to that party. After the party I saw Reynolds out by his car talking to a young man with a bandaged face. I also recall that my circle of political friends had become involved in the Sleepy Lagoon defense and were angry when I took a job in New York that precluded my joining them.”

Dudley said, “Let’s talk about Sleepy Lagoon.” Mal thought of his memo to Loew: nothing on the case should hit the grand jury—it was political poison that made the Pinkos look good. Rolff said, “I thought you wanted me to talk about Reynolds.”

“Digress a little. Sleepy Lagoon. Quite an event, wasn’t it?”

“The boys your police department arrested were innocent. Concerned apolitical citizens joined the Southern California left and secured their release.
That
made it quite an event, yes.”

“That’s your interpretation, comrade. Mine differs, but that’s what makes for horse races.”

Rolff sighed. “What do you want to know?”

“Give me your recollections of the time.”

“I was in Europe for the trial and appeals and release of the boys. I remember the actual murder from the previous summer—’42, I think. I remember the police investigation and the arrest of the boys and Claire De Haven becoming outraged and holding fund-raisers. I remember thinking that she was currying favor with her many Latin suitors, that that was one reason she was so carried away with the cause.”

Mal butted in, thinking of culling facts from Dudley’s bum tangent, wondering
why
the tangent. “At these fund-raisers, were there CP bigshots present?”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to be getting some SLDC surveillance pictures. You’ll be required to help identify the people in them.”

“Then there’s more of this?”

Dudley lit a cigarette and motioned Mal to quit writing. “This is a preliminary interview. A City marshal and court reporter will be by in a few days with a long list of specific questions on specific people. Lieutenant Considine and I will prepare the questions, and if we’re satisfied with your answers we’ll mail you an official immunity waiver.”

“Are you finished now, then?”

“Not quite. Let’s return to Sleepy Lagoon for a moment.”

“But I told you I was in New York then. I was gone for most of the protests.”

“But you did know many of the SLDC principals. Duarte, Benavides and Lopez, for instance.”

“Yes. And?”

“And they were the ones who most loudly contended that the poor persecuted Mex boys got the railroad, were they not?”

“Yes. Sleepy Lagoon sparked the zoot suit riots,
your
police department running amok. A number of Mexicans were practically beaten to death, and Sammy and Juan and Mondo were anxious to express their solidarity through the Committee.”

Mal swiveled his chair around and watched. Dudley was on a big fishing expedition, soaking up a
big
dose of rhetoric in the process—not the man’s style. Rolff said, “If that sounds doctrinaire to you, I’m sorry. It’s simply the truth.”

Dudley made a little pooh-pooh noise. “It always surprised me that the Commies and your so-called concerned citizens never proferred a suitable killer or killers of their own to take the fall on José Diaz. You people are masters of the scapegoat. Lopez, Duarte and Benavides were gang members who probably knew plenty of white punks to put the onus on. Was that ever discussed?”

“No. What you say is incomprehensible.”

Dudley shot Mal a little wink. “My colleague and I know otherwise. Let’s try this. Did the three Mexes or any other SLDC members proffer sincerely believed theories as to who killed José Diaz?”

Gritting his teeth, Rolff said, “No.”

“What about the CP itself? Did it advance any potential scapegoats?”

“I
told
you no, I
told
you I was in New York for the bulk of the SLDC time.”

Dudley, straightening his necktie knot with one finger pointed to the street: “Malcolm, any last questions for Mr. Rolff?”

Mal said, “No.”

“Oh? Nothing on our fair Claire?”

Rolff stood up and was running a hand inside his collar like he couldn’t wait to ditch his inquisitors and take a bath; Mal knocked his chair over getting to his feet. He dug for cracks to throw and came up empty. “No.”

Dudley stayed seated, smiling. “Mr. Rolff, I need the names of five fellow travelers, people who are well acquainted with the UAES brain trust.”

Rolff said, “No. Unequivocally
no
.”

Dudley said, “I’ll settle for the names now, whatever intimate personal recollections you can supply us with in a few days, after a colleague of ours conducts background checks. The names, please.”

Rolff dug his feet in the grass, balled fists at his sides. “Tell Judith about Sarah and me. She won’t believe you.”

Dudley took a piece of paper from his inside jacket pocket. “May 11, 1948. ‘My Dearest Lenny. I miss you and want you in me despite what you carried with you. I keep thinking that of course you didn’t know you had it and you met that prostitute before we became involved. The treatments hurt, but they still make me think of you, and if not for the fear of Judith finding out about us, I would be talking about you my every waking moment.’ Armbuster 304’s are the cheapest wall safes in the world, comrade. A man in your position should not be so frugal.”

Lenny Rolff hit the grass on his knees. Dudley knelt beside him and coaxed out a barely audible string of names. The last name, sobbed, was “Nate Eisler.” Mal double-timed it to the car, looking back once. Dudley was watching his friendly witness hurl typewriter and manuscript, table and chairs helter-skelter.

Dudley drove Mal back to his motel, no talk the whole time, Mal keeping the radio glued to a classical station: bombastic stuff played loud. Dudley’s goodbye was, “You’ve more stomach for this work than I expected”; Mal went inside and spent an hour in the shower, until the hot water for the entire dump was used up and the manager came knocking on the door to complain. Mal calmed him down with his badge and a ten-spot, put on his last clean suit and drove downtown to see his lawyer.

Jake Kellerman’s office was in the Oviatt Tower at Sixth and Olive. Mal arrived five minutes early, scanning the bare-bones reception room, wondering if Jake sacrificed a secretary for rental freight in one of LA’s ritziest buildings. Their first confab had been overview; this one had to be meat and potatoes.

Kellerman opened his inner office door at 3:00 on the dot; Mal walked in and sat down in a plain brown leather chair. Kellerman shook his hand, then stood behind a plain brown wooden desk. He said, “Preliminary day after tomorrow, Civil Court 32. Greenberg’s on vacation, and we’ve got some goyishe stiff named Hardesty. I’m sorry about that, Mal. I wanted to get you a Jew who’d be impressed by your MP work overseas.”

Mal shrugged, thinking of Eisler and Rolff; Kellerman smiled. “Care to enlighten me on a rumor?”

“Sure.”

“I heard you coldcocked some Nazi bastard in Poland.”

“That’s true.”

“You killed him?”

The bare little office was getting stuffy. “Yes.”

Kellerman said, “Mazel tov,” checked his court calendar and some papers on the desk. “At preliminary I’ll start stalling for continuances and try to work out an angle to get you switched to Greenberg’s docket. He’ll fucking love you. How’s the grand jury gig going?”

“It’s going well.”

“Then why are you looking so glum? Look, is there any chance you’ll get your promotion before the grand jury convenes?”

Mal said, “No. Jake, what’s your strategy past the continuances?”

Kellerman hooked two thumbs in his vest pockets. “Mal, it’s a hatchet job on Celeste. She deserted the boy—”

“She didn’t desert him, the fucking Nazis picked up her and her husband and threw them in fucking Buchenwald.”

“Sssh. Easy, pal. You told me the boy was molested as a direct result of being deserted by his mother. She peddled it inside to stay alive. Your MP battalion has got her liberation interview pictures—she looks like Betty Grable compared to the other women who came out alive. I’ll kill her in court with that—Greenberg or no Greenberg.”

Mal took off his jacket and loosened his tie. “Jake, I don’t want Stefan to hear that stuff. I want you to get a writ barring him from hearing testimony. An exclusion order. You can do it.”

Kellerman laughed. “No wonder you dropped out of law school. Writs excluding minor children from overhearing testimony in custody cases cannot be legally sanctioned unless the counsel of both parents approve it—which Celeste’s lawyer will never go for. If I break her down in court—and I will—he’ll want Stefan there on the off-chance he runs to mommy, not daddy. It’s out of our hands.”

Mal saw Stefan Heisteke, Prague ’45, coming off a three-year jag of canned dog food and rape. “You swing it, or you find stuff that happened after the war to hit Celeste with.”

“Like her dutifully schooling Stefan in Czech? Mal, she doesn’t drink or sleep around or hit the boy. You don’t wrest custody from the natural mother because the woman lives in the past.”

Mal got up, his head throbbing. “Then you make me the biggest fucking hero since Lucky Lindy. You make me look so fucking good I make motherhood look like shit.”

Jake Kellerman pointed to the door. “Go get me a big load of Commies and I’ll do my best.”

Mal rolled to the Pacific Dining Car. The general idea was a feast to pamper himself away from Eisler, Rolff and Dudley Smith—the purging that an hour of scalding hot water didn’t accomplish. But as soon as his food arrived he lost interest, grabbed Eisler’s diary and flipped to 1938–1939, the writer’s time with Claire De Haven.

No explicitness, just analysis.

The woman hated her father, screwed Mexicans to earn his wrath, had a crush on her father and got her white lefty consorts to dress stuffed-shirt traditional like him—so she could tear off their clothes and make a game out of humiliating paternal surrogates. She hated her father’s money and political connections, raped his bank accounts to lavish gifts on men whose politics the old man despised; she went to tether’s end on booze, opiates and sex, found causes to do penance with and fashioned herself into an exemplary leftist Joan of Arc: organizing, planning, recruiting, financing with her own money and donations often secured with her own body. The woman’s political efficacy was so formidable that she was never dismissed as a camp follower or dilettante; at worst, only her psyche and motives were viewed as spurious. Eisler’s fascination with Claire continued after their affair ended; he remained her friend through-out her liaisons with pachuco thugs, dryouts at Terry Lux’s clinic, her big penance number over Sleepy Lagoon: a Mex boyfriend beat up in the zoot riots, a boilout at Doc Terry’s and then a full social season, stone cold sober, with the SLDC. Impressive. Dudley’s Smith’s lunatic fixation aside, the seventeen kids accused of snuffing José Diaz were by all accounts innocent. And Claire Katherine De Haven—Commie rich girl slut—was a major force behind getting them sprung.