The Big Nowhere (33 page)

The hall window scraping, three soft footsteps on the bedroom floor.

Buzz stirred, rolled away from Audrey, reached under the pillow and palmed his .38, camouflaging the movement with a sleep sigh. Two more footsteps, Audrey snoring, light through a crack in the curtains eclipsed. A shape coming around his side of the bed; the sound of a hammer being cocked; “Mickey, you’re dead.”

Buzz stiff-armed Audrey to the floor, away from the voice; a silencer snicked and muzzle flash lit up a big man in a dark overcoat. Audrey screamed; Buzz felt the mattress rip an inch from his legs. In one swipe, he grabbed his billy club off the nightstand and swung it at the man’s knees; wood-encased steel cracked bone; the man stumbled toward the bed. Audrey shrieked, “Meeks!”; a shot ripped the far wall; another half second of muzzle light gave Buzz a sighting. He grabbed the man’s coat and pulled him to the bed, smothered his head with a pillow and shot him twice in the face point-blank.

The explosions were muffled; Audrey screeching was siren loud. Buzz moved around the bed and bear-hugged her, killing her tremors with his own shakes. He whispered, “Go into the bathroom, keep the light off and your head down. This was for Mickey, and if there’s a back-up man outside, he’s comin’. Stay fuckin’ down and stay fuckin’ calm.”

Audrey retreated on her knees; Buzz went into the living room, parted the front curtains and looked out. There was a sedan parked directly across the street that wasn’t there when he walked in; no other cars were stationed curbside. He did a run-through on what probably happened:

He
looked like Mickey from a distance;
he
drove a green ’48 Eldo. Mickey’s house was bombed yesterday; Mickey, wife and pet bulldog survived.
He
parked his car the standard three blocks away; half-assed surveillance convinced the gunman
he
was Mickey, a short fat okie subbing for a short fat Jew.

Buzz kept eyeballing the sedan; it stayed still, no tell-tale cigarette glow. Five minutes went by; no cops or backup men appeared. Buzz took it as a single-o play, walked back to the bedroom and flicked on the overhead light.

The room reeked of cordite; the bed was soaked in blood; the pillow was solid saturated crimson. Buzz lifted it off and propped up the dead man’s head. It had no face, there were no exit wounds, all the red was leaking out his ears. He rifled his pockets—and the wicked bad willies came on.

An LAPD badge and ID buzzer: Detective Sergeant Eugene J. Niles, Hollywood Squad. An Automobile Club card, vehicle dope in the lower left corner—maroon ’46 Ford Crown Victoria Sedan, Cal ’49 JS 1497. A California driver’s license made out to Eugene Niles, residence 3987 Melbourne Avenue, Hollywood. Car keys and other keys and pieces of paper with Audrey’s address and an architectural floor plan for a house that looked like Mickey’s pad in Brentwood.

Old rumors, new facts, killer shakes.

The LAPD was behind the shootout at Sherry’s; Jack D. and Mickey had buried the hatchet; Niles worked Hollywood Division, the eye of the Brenda Allen storm. Buzz ran across the street on fear overdrive, saw that the sedan was ’46 Vicky JS 1497, unlocked the trunk and ran back. He hauled out a big bed quilt, wrapped Niles and his gun up in it, shoulder-slung him up and over to the Vicky and locked him in the trunk, folding him double next to the spare tire. Panting, sweat-soaked and shaky, he walked back and braced Audrey.

She was sitting on the toilet, naked, smoking. A half dozen butts littered the floor; the bathroom was a tobacco cloud. She looked like the woman from Mars: tears had melted her makeup and her lipstick was still smudged from their lovemaking.

Buzz knelt in front of her. “Honey, I’ll take care of it. This was for Mickey, so I think we’re okay. But I should stay away from you for a while, just in case this guy had partners—we don’t want them figurin’ out it was you and me instead of you and Mickey.”

Audrey dropped her cigarette on the floor and snuffed it with her bare feet, no pain registering. She said, “All right,” a hoarse smoker’s croak.

Buzz said, “You strip the bed and burn it in the incinerator. There’s bullets in the mattress and the wall, you dig ’em out and toss ’em. And you don’t tell
nobody
.”

Audrey said, “Tell me it’ll be all right.” Buzz kissed the part in her hair, seeing the two of them strapped down in the gas chamber. “Honey, this will surely be all right.”

Buzz drove Niles’ car to the Hollywood Hills. He found gardening tools in the back seat, a level patch of hardscrabble off the access road to the Hollywood Sign and buried Mickey Cohen’s would-be assassin in a plot about 4 by 4 by 4, working with an earth spade and grub hoe. He packed the dirt hard and tight so coyotes wouldn’t smell flesh rot and get hungry; he put branches atop the spot and pissed on it: an epitaph for a fellow bad cop who’d put him in the biggest trouble of his trouble-prone life. He buried Niles’ gun under a thornbush, drove the car out to the Valley, wiped it down, yanked the distributor and left it in an abandoned garage atop Suicide Hill—a youth gang fuck turf near the Sepulveda VA Hospital. Undrivable, the Vicky would be spare parts inside twenty-four hours.

It was 4:30 A.M.

Buzz walked down to Victory Boulevard, caught a cab to Hollywood and Vermont, walked the remaining half mile to Melbourne Avenue. He found a pay phone, glommed “Eugene Niles” from the White Pages, dialed the number and let it ring twenty times—no answer. He located 3987—the bottom left apartment of a pink stucco four-flat—and let himself in with Niles’ keys, set to prowl for one thing: evidence that other men were in on the Mickey hit.

It was a typical bachelor flop: sitting/sleeping room with Murphy bed, bathroom, kitchenette. There was a desk facing a boarded-up window; Buzz went straight for it, handling everything he touched with his shirttails. Ten minutes in, he had solid circumstantial evidence:

A certificate from the U.S. Army Demolition School, Camp Polk, Louisiana, stating that Corporal Eugene Niles successfully completed explosives training in December 1931—make the fucker for the bomb under Mickey’s house.

Letters from Niles’ ex-wife, condemning him for trucking with Brenda Allen’s hookers. She’d read the grand jury transcript and knew her husband did his share of porking in the Hollywood Station felony tank—Niles’ motive to want Mickey dead.

An address book that included the names and phone numbers of four ranking Jack Dragna strongarms, listings for three other Dragna bagmen—cops he knew when he was LAPD—and a weird listing: “Karen Hiltscher, W. Hollywood Sheriff’s,” with “!!!!” in bright red doodles. That aside, more verification of Niles hating Mickey before the truce with Jack D. All told, it looked like a poorly planned single-o play, Niles desperate when his bomb didn’t blow the Mick to shit.

Buzz killed the lights and wiped both sides of the doorknob on his way out. He walked to Sunset and Vermont, dropped Niles’ house and car keys down a sewer grate and started laughing, wildly, stitches in his side. He’d just saved the life of the most dangerous, most generous man he’d ever met, and there was no way in the world he could tell him. The laughter got worse, until he doubled over and had to sit down on a bus bench. He laughed until the punch line sucker-punched him—then he froze.

Danny Upshaw beat up Gene Niles. The City cops hated the County cops. When Niles was tagged as missing, LAPD would be like flies over shit on a green kid already in shit up to his knees.

Danny was trying to get Felix Gordean alone.

He’d begun his stakeout in the Chateau Marmont parking lot; Gordean foiled him by driving to his office with Pretty Boy Christopher in tow. Rain had been pouring down the whole three hours he’d been eyeing the agency’s front door; no cars had hit the carport, the street was flooded and he was parked in a towaway zone with his ID, badge and .45 at home because he was really Red Ted Krugman. Ted’s leather jacket and Considine’s sanction kept him warm and dry with the window cracked; Danny decided that if Gordean didn’t leave the office by 1:00, he’d lean on him then and there.

At 12:35, the door opened. Gordean walked out, popped an umbrella and skipped across Sunset. Danny turned on his wiper blades and watched him duck into Cyrano’s, the doorman fussing over him like he was the joint’s most popular customer. He gave Gordean thirty seconds to get seated, turned up his collar and ran over, ducking rain.

The doorman looked at him funny, but let him in; Danny blinked water, saw gilt and red velvet walls, a long oak bar and Felix Gordean sipping a martini at a side table. He threaded his way past a clutch of businessman types and sat down across from him; Gordean almost swallowed the toothpick he was nibbling.

Danny said, “I want to know what you know. I want you to tell me everything about the men you’ve brought out, and I want a report on all your customers and clients. I want it now.”

Gordean toyed with the toothpick. “Have Lieutenant Matthews call me. Perhaps he and I can effect a compromise.”

“Fuck Lieutenant Matthews. Are you going to tell me what I want to know?
Now?
”

“No, I am not.”

Danny smiled. “You’ve got forty-eight hours to change your mind.”

“Or?”

“Or I’m taking everything I know about you to the papers.”

Gordean snapped his fingers; a waiter came over; Danny walked out of the restaurant and into the rain. He remembered his promise to call Jack Shortell, hit the phone booth across from the agency, dialed the Hollywood Station squadroom and heard, “Yes?,” Shortell himself speaking, his voice strained.

“It’s Upshaw, Jack. What have you got on—”

“What we’ve got is another one. LAPD found him last night, on an embankment up from the LA River. Doc Layman’s doing him now, so—”

Danny left the receiver dangling and Shortell shouting, “Upshaw!”; he highballed it downtown, parked in front of the City Morgue loading dock and almost tripped over a stiff on a gurney running in. Jack Shortell was already there, sweating, his badge pinned to his coat front; he saw Danny, blocked the path to Layman’s examination room and said, “Brace yourself.”

Danny got his breath. “For what?”

Shortell said, “It’s Augie Luis Duarte, one of the guys on your tailing list. The bluesuits who found him ID’d him from his driver’s license. LAPD’s had the stiff since 12:30 last night—the squad guy who caught didn’t know about our team. Breuning was here and just left, and he was making noises that Duarte blew
his
tail last night. Danny, I know that’s horseshit. I was calling around last night looking for you, to tell you our car thief and zoot stick queries were bust. I talked to a clerk at Wilshire Station, and she told me Breuning was there all evening with Dudley Smith. I called back later, and the clerk said they were still there. Breuning said the other three men are still under surveillance, but I don’t believe him.”

Danny’s head boomed; morgue effluvia turned his stomach and stung his razor burns. He beelined for a door marked “Norton Layman MD,” pushed it open and saw the country’s premier forensic pathologist writing on a clipboard. A nude shape was slab-prone behind him; Layman stepped aside as if to say, “Feast your eyes.”

Augie Duarte, the handsome Mex who’d walked out the Gordean Agency door two nights ago, was supine on a stainless steel tray. He was blood-free; bite wounds extruding intestinal tubes covered his stomach; bite marks ran up his torso in a pattern free of overlaps. His cheeks were slashed down to the gums and jawbone and his penis had been cut off, inserted into the deepest of the cuts and hooked around so that the head extended out his mouth, teeth clamped on the foreskin, rigor mortis holding the obscenity intact. Danny blurted, “Oh God fuck no”; Layman said, “The rain drained the body and kept the cuts fresh. I found a tooth chip in one of them and made a wet cast of it. It’s unmistakably animal, and I had an attendant run it down to a forensic orthodontist at the Natural History Museum. It’s being examined now.”

Danny tore his eyes off the corpse; he walked out to the dock looking for Jack Shortell, gagging on the stench of formaldehyde, his lungs heaving for fresh air. A group of Mexicans with a bereaved-family look was standing by the loading ramp staring in; a pachuco type stared at him extra hard. Danny strained to see Shortell, then felt a hand on his shoulder.

It was Norton Layman. He said, “I just talked to the man at the Museum, and he identified my specimen. The killer wears wolverine teeth.”

Danny saw a blood W on cheap wallpaper. He saw W’s in black and white, W’s burned into Felix Gordean’s face, W’s all over the rosary-clutching wetbacks huddled together grieving. He saw W’s until Jack Shortell walked up the dock and grabbed his arm and he heard himself say, “Get Breuning. I don’t trust myself on it.”

Then he saw plain blood.

A stakeout for his own son.

Mal sat on the steps outside Division 32, Los Angeles Civil Court. He was flanked by lawyers smoking; keeping his back to them kept light conversation away while he scanned for Stefan, Celeste and her shyster. When he saw them, it would be a quick men’s room confab: don’t believe the bad things you hear about me; when my man gets ugly about your mother, try not to listen.

Ten of the hour; no Stefan, Celeste and lawyer. Mal heard an animated burst of talk behind him.

“You know Charlie Hartshorn?”

“Sure. A nice guy, if a bit of a bleeding heart. He worked the Sleepy Lagoon defense for free.”

“Well, he’s dead. Suicide. Hung himself at his house last night. Beautiful house, right off Wilshire and Rimpau. It was on the radio. I went to a party at that house once.”

“Poor Charlie. What a goddamn shame.”

Mal turned around; the two men were gone. He remembered Meeks telling him Reynolds Loftis was connected to Hartshorn via a queer-bar roust, but he didn’t mention the man being associated with the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee at all. There was no mention of Hartshorn in any of the psychiatric or other grand jury files, and Meeks had also said that the lawyer had turned up—as a non-suspect—in Danny Upshaw’s homicide investigation.

The Hartshorn coincidence simmered; Mal wondered how Meeks would take his suicide—he said he’d gut-shot the man with his queerness. Looking streetside, he saw Celeste, Stefan and a young guy with a briefcase get out of a cab; his boy glanced up, lit up and took off running.

Mal met him halfway down the steps, scooped him up laughing and pinwheeled him upside down and over. Stefan squealed; Celeste and briefcase double-timed; Mal whipped his son over his shoulder, quick-marched inside and turned hard into the men’s room. Out of breath, he put Stefan down and said, “Your dad’s a captain,” dug in his pockets and pulled out one of the insignia Buzz gave him. “You’re a captain, too. Remember that. Remember that if your mother’s lawyer starts talking me down.”

Stefan squeezed the silver bars; Mal saw that he had that bewildered fat-kid look he got when Celeste stuffed him with starchy Czech food. “How have you been? How’s your mother been treating you?”

Stefan spoke hesitantly, like he’d been force-fed old country talk since the breakup. “Mutti…wants that we should move out. She said we…we must move away before she decides to marry Rich-Richard.”

Richard.

“I—I don’t like Richard. He’s nice to Mutti, but he’s n-nasty to his d-d-dog.”

Mal put his arms around the boy. “I won’t let it happen. She’s a crazy woman, and I won’t let her take you away.”

“Malcolm—”

“
Dad
, Stefan.”

“Dad, please not to don’t hit Mutti again.
Please
.”

Mal held Stefan tighter, trying to squeeze the bad words out and make him say, “I love you.” The boy felt wrong, flabby, like he was too skinny wrong as a kid. “Sssh. I’ll never hit her again and I’ll never let her take you away from me. Sssh.”

The door opened behind them; Mal heard the voice of an old City bailiff who’d been working Division 32 forever. “Lieutenant Considine, court’s convening and I’m supposed to bring the boy into chambers.”

Mal gave Stefan a last hug. “I’m a captain now. Stefan, you go with this man and I’ll see you inside.”

Stefan hugged back—hard.

Court convened ten minutes later. Mal sat with Jake Kellerman at a table facing the judge’s bench; Celeste, her attorney and Stefan were seated in chairs stationed diagonally across from the witness stand. The old bailiff intoned, “Hear ye, hear ye, court is now in session, the Honorable Arthur F. Hardesty presiding.”

Mal stood up. Jake Kellerman whispered, “In a second the old fart’ll say, ‘Counsel will approach the bench.’ I’ll hit him for a first continuance for a month from now, citing your grand jury duties. Then, we’ll get another stay until the jury convenes and you’re gold.
Then
we’ll get you Greenberg.”

Mal gripped Kellerman’s arm. “Jake, make this happen.”

Kellerman whispered extra low, “It will. Just pray a rumor I heard isn’t true.”

Judge Arthur F. Hardesty banged his gavel. “Counsel will approach the bench.”

Jake Kellerman and Celeste’s lawyer approached, huddling around Hardesty; Mal strained to hear and picked up nothing but garbles—Jake sounding agitated. The huddle ended with a gavel slam; Kellerman walked back, fuming.

Hardesty said, “Mr. Considine, your counsel’s request for a one-month continuance has been denied. Despite your police duties, I’m sure you can find enough time to consult with Mr. Kellerman. All parties will meet here in my chambers ten days hence, Monday, January 22. Both contestants should be ready to testify. Mr. Kellerman, Mr. Castleberry, make sure your witnesses are informed of the date and bring whatever documents you wish to be considered as evidence. This preliminary is dismissed.”

The judge banged his gavel; Castleberry led Celeste and Stefan outside. The boy turned around and waved; Mal flashed him the V for victory sign, tried to smile and couldn’t. His son was gone in a breath; Kellerman said, “I heard Castleberry heard about your promotion and went batshit. I heard he leaked the hospital pictures to one of Hardesty’s clerks, who told the judge. Mal, I’m sorry and I’m angry. I’m going to tell Ellis what Castleberry did and make sure that punk gets reamed for it.”

Mal stared at the spot where his son waved goodbye. “Ream her. Pull out all the stops. If Stefan has to hear, he has to hear. Just fucking take her down.”