The Big Nowhere (37 page)

The day was warming up; heat that felt all the worse for coming after heavy rain. Danny sat in the car and sweated out last night’s drunk; he thought elimination, thought that the day labor joints kept no records in order to dodge taxes, that the high school employment offices were long shots he had to try anyway. He drove to Belmont High, talked to the employment counselor, learned that her records only went back to ’45 and checked the Joredco referrals—twenty-seven of them—all Mexes and Japs. Even though he knew the age range was wrong, he repeated the process at Lincoln: Mexes, Japs and a mentally deficient white boy hired because he was strong enough to haul two deer carcasses at a time. Gooser. But the rightness kept nagging him.

Danny drove to a bar in Chinatown. After two shots of house bonded, he knew this was his last day as Homicide brass: when he told Considine Ted Krugman was shot, he’d be shot back to the West Hollywood Squad, packing some large blame if Ellis Loew thought he’d jeopardized the chance for a successful grand jury. He could keep looking for HIM on his off-hours—but there was a good chance Felix Gordean would talk to his golf buddies Sheriff Biscailuz and Al Dietrich and he’d get dumped back into uniform or jail duty. He’d made an enemy of Gene Niles and pissed off Dudley Smith and Mike Breuning; Karen Hiltscher wouldn’t play pratgirl for him anymore; if Niles could prove he B&E’d 2307, he’d be in real trouble.

Two more shots; warm wisps edging out the gloom. He had a friend with rank and juice—if he could make up for blowing his decoy job, he could still ride Considine’s coattails. A last shot; HIM again, HIM pure and abstract, like there was never a time when he didn’t exist, even though they’d been together only a few weeks. He thought of HIM free of Reynolds Loftis and last night with Claire, taking it back chronologically, stopping at Augie Duarte dead on a stainless steel slab.

The facial cuts. Jump forward to last night’s file work. His instinct: the killer knew Marty Goines’ pal—the youth with the bandaged face—and drew sexual inspiration from him. Jump to Thomas Cormier, whose wolverines were overfed—worshiped?—during the summer of ’42, Sleepy Lagoon summer, when zoot sticks were most in use. Cormier’s interpretation: a neighborhood kid. Jump to Joredco. They hired youths, maybe youths out of skid row day labor, where they didn’t keep records. The burn boy was white; all the high school referrals were Mex and Jap, except for the non-play retard. Maybe the workers he talked to never met the kid because he only worked there briefly, maybe they forgot about him, maybe they just didn’t notice him. Jump forward to now. The burned-face boy was a burglar—Listerine Chester Brown tagged him as burglarizing with Goines circa ’43 to ’44, his face bandaged. If he was the one who stole Thomas Cormier’s wolverine some eighteen months after his summer of ’42 worship, and he was a local kid, he might have committed other burglaries in the Bunker Hill area during that time period.

Danny drove to Rampart Station, the LAPD division that handled Bunker Hill felonies. Mal Considine’s name got him the squad lieutenant’s attention; a few minutes later he was in a musty storeroom checking boxes of discarded occurrence reports.

The boxes were marked according to year; Danny found two grocery cartons stencilled “1942.” The reports inside were loose, the multi-page jobs stapled together with no carbons in between. There was no rhyme or reason to the order they were filed in—purse snatchings, muggings, petty thefts, burglaries, indecent exposures and loiterings were all lumped together. Danny sat down on a box of ’48 reports and dug in.

He scanned upper right corners for penal code numbers—Burglary, 459.1. The two boxes for ’42 yielded thirty-one; location was his next breakdown step. He carried the reports into the squadroom, sat at an empty desk facing a wall map of Rampart Division and looked for Bunker Hill street names to match. Four reports in, he got one; six reports in, three more. He memorized the ten north-south and eight east-west blocks of the Hill, tore through the rest of the pages and ended with eleven burglaries, unsolved occurrences, on Bunker Hill in the year 1942. And the eleven addresses were all within walking distance of Thomas Cormier’s house and the Joredco Dental Lab.

Next was dates.

Danny flipped through the reports again quickly; the time and date of occurrence were typed at the bottom of each first page. May 16, 1942; July 1, 1942; May 27, 1942; May 9, 1942; June 16, 1942, and six more to make eleven: an unsolved burglary spree, May 9 to August 1, 1942. His head buzzing, he read “Items Stolen”—and saw why Rampart didn’t put out beaucoup men to catch the burglar:

Trinkets, family portraits, costume jewelry, cash out of purses and wallets. A deco wall clock. A cedar cigar humidor. A collection of glass figurines. A stuffed ringneck pheasant, a stuffed bobcat mounted on rosewood.

More HIM, more not Loftis HIM. It had to be.

Danny tingled, like he was being dangled on electric strings. He went back to the storeroom, found the ’43 and ’44 boxes, looked through them and got zero Bunker Hill trinket jobs—the only burglary occurrence reports for those years denoted
real
459.1’s, real valuables taken; burglary reports resulting in arrest had already been checked City- and Countywide. Danny finished and kicked at the boxes; two facts kicked him.

The killer was ID’d as middle-aged; he had to be connected to the wolverine-worshiping burglar—a youth—who was emerging from today’s work. Chester Brown told him that Marty Goines and his burned-face accomplice B&E’d in the San Fernando Valley ’43 to ’44; station houses out there might have occurrence reports—he could roll there after he muscled a certain Commie stagehand. And summer ’42 was the height of the wartime blackout, curfew was rigidly enforced and field interrogation cards were written up on people caught out after 10:00 P.M.—when the wolverine lover was most likely prowling. If the cards were saved—

Danny tore the storeroom apart, throwing empty boxes; he sweated out his booze lunch, got sprayed with cobwebs, mildew and mouse turds. He found a box marked “FI’s ’41–’43,” thumbed back the first few cards and saw that they were–amazingly—in chronological order. He kept flipping; the late spring and summer of ’42 yielded eight names: eight white men aged nineteen to forty-seven stopped for being out after curfew, questioned and released.

The cards were filled out slapdash: all had the name, race and date of birth of the interrogee; only half had home addresses listed—in most cases downtown hotels. Five of the men would now be middle-aged and possibles for HIM; the other three were youths who could be the burned-face boy pre-burns—or—if
he
was tangential to the case—Thomas Cormier’s neighborhood kid wolverine lover.

Danny pocketed the cards, drove to a pay phone and called Jack Shortell at the Hollywood squadroom. The squad lieutenant put the call through; Shortell came on the line sounding harried. “Yeah? Danny?”

“It’s me. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, except I’m getting the fisheye from every City bull in the place, like all of a sudden I’m
worse
than worse than poison. What have you got?”

“Names, maybe a hot one right in the middle. I talked to that Cormier guy and hit Joredco, and I couldn’t put them straight together, but I’m damn sure our guy got kissing close to Cormier’s wolverines. You remember that old burglary accomplice of Marty Goines I told you about?”

“Yeah.”

“I think I’ve got a line on him, and I just about think he plays. There was a bunch of unsolved burglaries on Bunker Hill, May to August of ’42. Mickey Mouse stuff clouted, right near Cormier and Joredco. LAPD was enforcing curfew then, and I picked out eight possible FI cards from the area—May through August. I’ve got a hunch the killings stem from then—the Sleepy Lagoon killing and the SLDC time—and I need you to do eliminations—current address, blood type, dental tech background, criminal record and the rest.”

“Go, I’m writing it down.”

Danny got out his cards. “Some have addresses, some don’t. One, James George Whitacre, DOB 10/5/03, Havana Hotel, Ninth and Olive. Two, Ronald NMI Dennison, 6/30/20, no address. Three, Coleman Masskie, 5/9/23, 236 South Beaudry. Four, Lawrence Thomas Waznicki with a K-1, 11/29/08, 641 1/4 Bunker Hill Avenue. Five, Leland NMI Hardell, 6/4/24, American Eagle Hotel, 4th and Hill Streets. Six, Loren Harold Nadick, 3/2/02, no address. Seven, David NMI Villers, 1/15/04, no address. And Bruno Andrew Gaffney, 7/29/06, no address.”

Shortell said, “All down. Son, are you getting close?”

Another electric jolt: the Bunker Hill burglaries ended on August 1, 1942; the Sleepy Lagoon murder—
the victim’s clothes zoot stick slashed
—occurred on August 2. “Almost, Jack. Some right answers and luck and that fucker is mine.”

Danny got to Variety International Pictures just as dusk was falling and the picket lines were breaking up for the day. He parked in plain view, put an “Official Police Vehicle” sign on his windshield and pinned his badge to his coat front; he walked to the guard hut, no familiar faces, pissed that he was ignored. The gate man buzzed him in; he walked straight back to Set 23.

The sign on the wall had
Tomahawk Massacre
still in production; the door was open. Danny heard gunfire, looked in and saw a cowboy and an Indian exchange shots across papier-mâché foothills. Lights were shining down on them; cameras were rolling; the Mexican guy he’d seen outside the morgue was sweeping up fake snow in front of another backdrop: grazing buffalos painted on cardboard.

Danny hugged the wall going over; the Mex looked up, dropped his broom and took off running, right in front of the cameras. Danny ran after him, sliding on soap flakes; the moviemaking stopped; someone yelled, “Juan, goddamn you! Cut! Cut!”

Juan ran out a side exit, slamming the door; Danny ran across the set, slowed and eased the door open. It was slammed against him, reinforced steel knocking him back; he slid on phony snow, hauled outside and saw Duarte racing down an alley toward a chain-link fence.

Danny ran full out; Juan Duarte hit the fence and started climbing. He snagged his trouser legs; he kicked, pulled and twisted to get free. Danny caught up, yanked him down by his waistband and caught a hard right hand in the face. Stunned, he let go; Duarte collapsed on top of him.

Danny kneed upward, a jerky shot; Duarte hit down, missing, smashing his fist on the pavement. Danny rolled away, came up behind him and pinned him with his weight; the Mex gasped, “Puto fascist shitfuck fascist cop fascist shitfuck.” Danny fumbled out his cuffs, ratcheted Duarte’s left hand and attached the spare bracelet to a fence link. The Mex flopped on his stomach and tried to tear the fence down, spitting epithets in Spanish; Danny got his breath, let Duarte shake and shout himself out, them knelt beside him. “I know you saw my picture, and you saw me at the morgue and you snitched me to Claire. I don’t care and I give a fuck about UAES and the fucking Red Menace. I want to get Augie’s killer and I’ve got a hunch it goes back to Sleepy Lagoon. Now you can talk to me, or I’ll nail you for Assault on a Police Officer right here. Call it now.”

Duarte shook his cuff chain; Danny said, “Two to five minimum, and I don’t give a shit about the UAES.” A crowd was forming in the alley; Danny waved them back; they retreated with sidelong looks and slow head shakes. Duarte said, “Take these things off me and
maybe
I’ll talk to you.”

Danny unlocked the cuffs. Duarte rubbed his wrist, stood up, got rubber-legged and slid down to a sitting position, his back against the fence. He said, “Why’s a hired gun for the studios give a damn about my dead fag cousin?”

Danny said, “Get up, Duarte.”

“I talk better on my ass. Answer me. How come you care about a maricón who wanted to be a puto movie star like every other puto in this puto town?”

“I don’t know. But I want the guy who killed Augie nailed.”

“And what’s that got to do with you trying to get next to Claire De Haven?”

“I told you I don’t care about that.”

“Norm Kostenz said you sure care. When I told him you were the fucking law, he said you should get a fucking Oscar for your bonaroo portrayal of Ted Krug—”

Danny squatted by Duarte, holding the fence. “Are you going to spill or not?”

Duarte said, “I’ll spill, pendejo. You said you thought Augie’s snuff went back to Sleepy Lagoon, and that got my interest. Charlie Hartshorn thought that too, so—”

Danny’s hand shook the fence; he braced his whole body into it to stay steady. “What did you say?”

“I said Charlie Hartshorn thought the same thing maybe, so maybe talking to a puto cop ain’t all poison.”

Danny slid down the fence so he could eyeball Duarte close. “Tell me all of it, slow and easy. You know Hartshorn killed himself, don’t you?”

Duarte said, “Maybe he did. You tell me.”

“No. You tell me, because I don’t know and I’ve got to know.”

Duarte stared at Danny, squinty-eyed, like he couldn’t figure him out. “Charlie was a lawyer. He was a maricón, but he wasn’t a swish or nothing. He worked Sleepy Lagoon, filing briefs and shit for free.”

“I know that.”

“Okay, here’s what you don’t know, and here’s the kind of guy he was. When you saw me at the morgue it was my second time there. I got a call from a buddy who works there, maybe one in the morning, and he told me about Augie—the zoot cuts, all of it. I went to Charlie’s house. He had legal juice, and I wanted to see if he’d goose the cops so they’d give Augie’s snuff a good investigation. He told me he’d been goosed by some cop about the death of a guy named Duane Lindenaur, even though the cop pretended he didn’t care about that. Charlie read this scandal rag that said Lindenaur and some clown named Wiltsie got cut up by a zoot stick, and my morgue buddy said Augie got chopped like that, too. I told Charlie, and he got the idea all three snuffs went back to Sleepy Lagoon. He called the cops and spoke to some guy named Sergeant Bruner or something—”

Danny cut in. “Breuning? Sergeant Mike Breuning?”

“Yeah, that’s him. Charlie told Breuning what I just told you and Breuning said he’d come to see him at his crib right away to talk to him about it. I took off then. So if Charlie thought there was something to this Sleepy Lagoon theory, maybe you ain’t such a cabrón.”