The Big Nowhere (43 page)

Mal gave Buzz a soft punch in the arm. “Lad, I think people are starting to get your number.”

“Say what?”

“I figured out something today.”

“What?”

“You killed Gene Niles.”

Mal’s take on Johnny Stompanato: two parts olive-oil charm, two parts hepcat, six parts plug-ugly. His take on the whole situation: Buzz was doomed, and his voice talking to Audrey on the phone said he knew it. Coleman arrested for four sex murders plus grand jury indictments added up to Stefan dropped on his doorstep like a Christmas bundle. The
Herald
and
Mirror
were playing up the Gordean killing, no suspects, puff pieces on the victim as a straight-arrow talent agent, no mention of the bank money—the catching officers probably got fat. The papers made UAES the instigators of the riot the Teamsters started; Buzz was impressed with his shot in the dark on Gene Niles and believed his promise not to spill on it. The fat man was going to brace Dudley’s niece while he and Stompanato braced Chaz Minear, and when they had Coleman placed, he’d call his newspaper contacts so they could be in on the capture: first interviews with Captain Malcolm E. Considine, captor of the Wolverine Monster. And then Dudley Smith.

They were sitting in Stompanato’s car, 8:00 A.M., a cop-crook stakeout. Mal knew his scenario; Buzz had filled Johnny in on his and had greased the doorman of Minear’s building. The man told him Chaz left for breakfast every morning at 8:10 or so, walked over Mariposa to the Wilshire Derby and returned with the newspaper around 9:30. Buzz gave him a C-note to be gone from 9:30 to 10:00; during that half hour they’d have a wide-open shot.

Mal watched the door; Stompanato gave himself a pocketknife manicure and hummed opera. At 8:09 a small man in tennis sweater and slacks walked out the entrance of the Conquistador Apartments; the doorman gave them the high sign. Stompanato sliced a cuticle and smiled; Mal jacked his plug-ugly quotient way up.

They waited.

At 9:30, the doorman tipped his cap, got into a car and drove off; at 9:33 Chaz Minear walked into the building holding a newspaper. Stompanato put his knife away; Mal said, “Now.”

They quick-marched into the lobby. Minear was checking his mail slot; Johnny Stomp strode ahead to the elevator and opened the door. Mal dawdled by a wall mirror, straightening his necktie, getting a reverse view of Minear grabbing letters, Stompanato keeping the elevator door open with his foot, smiling like a good neighbor. Little Chaz walked over and into the trap; Mal came up behind him, nudged Johnny’s foot away and let the door close.

Minear pushed the button for three. Mal saw his door key already in his hand, grabbed it and rabbit-punched him. Minear dropped his newspaper and mail and doubled over; Johnny pinned him to the wall, a hand on his neck. Minear went purply blue; it looked like his eyes were about to pop out. Mal talked to him, a mimic of Dudley Smith. “We know you killed Felix Gordean. We were his partners on the Loftis job, and you’re going to tell us allll about Reynolds and his son. Allll about it.
Lad
.”

The door slid open; Mal saw “311” on the key and an empty hallway. He walked out, located the apartment four doorways over, unlocked the door and stood back. Stompanato forced Minear inside and released his neck; Chaz fell down rasping for breath. Mal said, “You know what to ask him. Do it while I toss for the files.”

Minear coughed words; Johnny stepped on his neck. Mal took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and tossed.

The apartment had five rooms: living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, study. Mal hit the study first—it was the furthest from Stompanato and the nance. A radio went on, the dial skimming across jazz, commercial jingles and the news, stopping at an opera, a baritone and a soprano going at each other over a thunderous orchestra. Mal thought he heard Minear scream; the music was turned up.

Mal worked.

The study—desk, filing cabinets and a chest of drawers—yielded stacks of movie scripts, carbons of Minear’s political letters, correspondence to him, miscellaneous memoranda and a .32 revolver, the cylinder empty, a cordited barrel. The bedroom was pastel-appointed and filled with piles of books; there was a wardrobe closet crammed with expensive clothes and rows of shoes arrayed in trees. An antique cabinet featured drawers spilling propaganda tracts; there was nothing but more shoes under the bed.

The opera kept wailing; Mal checked his watch, saw 10:25, an hour down and two rooms clean. He gave the bathroom a cursory toss; the music stopped; Stompanato popped his head in the doorway. He said, “The pansy spilled. Tell Meeks he better stay alive to get me my money.”

The hard boy looked green at the gills. Mal said, “I’ll do the kitchen and talk to him.”

“Forget it. Loftis and Claire what’s her face got the files. Come on, you’ve gotta hear this.”

Mal followed Johnny into the living room. Chaz Minear was sitting prim and proper in a rattan chair; there were welts on his cheeks and blood had congealed below his nostrils. His tennis whites were still spotless, his eyes were unfocused, he was wearing an exhausted, almost slaphappy grin. Mal looked at Stompanato; Johnny said, “I poured half a pint of Beefeater’s into him.” He tapped the sap hooked into his belt. “In vino veritas, capiche?”

Danny Upshaw had said the same thing to him—the one time they drank together. Mal took a chair facing Minear. “Why did you kill Gordean? Tell me.”

Minear, an easy mid-Atlantic accent. “Pride.”

He sounded proud. Mal said, “What do you mean?”

“Pride. Gordean was tormenting Reynolds.”

“He started tormenting him back in ’44. It took you a while to get around to revenge.”

Minear focused on Mal. “The police told Reynolds and Claire that I informed on Reynolds to the House Committee. I don’t know how they knew, but they did. They confronted me about it, and I could tell Reynolds’ poor heart was broken. I knew Gordean was blackmailing him again, so I did penance. Claire and Reynolds and I had gotten so close again, and I imagine you could present a case for me acting in my own self-interest. It was good having friends, and it was awful when they started hating me.”

The rap was falling on him—he was the one who snitched the snitch. “Why didn’t you take the money?”

“Oh Lord, I couldn’t. It would have destroyed the gesture. And Claire has all the money in the world. She shares so generously with Reynolds…and with all her friends. You’re not really a criminal, are you? You look more like an attorney or an accountant.”

Mal laughed—a kamikaze queer romantic had his number. “I’m a policeman.”

“Are you going to arrest me?”

“No. Do you want to be arrested?”

“I want everyone to know what I did for Reynolds, but…”

“But you don’t want them to know why? Why Gordean was blackmailing Loftis?”

“Yes. That’s true.”

Mal threw a switcheroo. “Why did Reynolds and Claire steal Upshaw’s files? To protect all of you from the grand jury?”

“No.”

“Because of Reynolds’ kid brother?
His son?
Was it Upshaw’s
homicide
file they were most interested in?”

Minear sat mute; Mal waved Stompanato toward the back of the apartment. “Chaz, you’ve said it once. Now you have to say it to me.”

No answer.

“Chaz, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll make sure everyone knows you killed Gordean, but I won’t let Reynolds get hurt anymore. All you’ll get is what you want. Reynolds will know you had courage and you paid him back. He’ll love you again. He’ll forgive you.”

“Love you” and “forgive you” made Minear cry, sputters of tears that he dried with his sweater sleeves. He said, “Reynolds left me for him. That’s why I informed to HUAC.”

Mal leaned closer. “Left you for who?”

“For
him
.”

“Who’s ‘him’?”

Minear said, “Reynolds’ little brother was really his son. His mother was a crazy religious woman Reynolds had an affair with. She got money from him and kept the boy. When Coleman was nineteen, he ran away from the woman and found Reynolds. Reynolds took him in and became his lover. He left me to be with his own son.”

Mal pushed his chair back, the confession a horror movie he wanted to run screaming from. He said, “All of it,” before he bolted for real.

Minear raised his voice, like he was afraid of his confessor running; he speeded up, like he was anxious to be absolved or punished. “Felix Gordean was blackmailing Reynolds back in ’44 or so. Somehow he figured out about him and Coleman, and he threatened to tell Herman Gerstein about it. Gerstein hates men like us, and he would have ruined Reynolds. When that policeman came around questioning Felix about the first three killings, Felix put things together. George Wiltsie had been with Reynolds, Marty Goines and Coleman were both jazz men. Then Augie Duarte was killed, and more details had been in the newspapers. The policeman had let some things slip and Felix knew Coleman had to be the killer. He renewed his blackmail demands, and Reynolds gave him another ten thousand.

“Claire and Reynolds confided in me, and I knew I could make up for informing. They knew after the first three killings that it had to be Coleman—they read a tabloid that had details on the mutilations, and they knew from the names of the victims. They knew about it before the policeman tried to infiltrate UAES, and they were looking for Coleman to try to stop him. Juan Duarte saw Upshaw at the morgue when Augie was there, and recognized him from a picture Norm Kostenz took. He told Claire and Reynolds who Upshaw really was, and they got scared. They had read that the police were looking for a man who resembled Reynolds, and they thought Coleman must be trying to frame his father. They left out clues to exonerate Reynolds, and I followed Upshaw home from Claire’s house. The next day, Claire got Mondo Lopez to pick the lock on his apartment and look for things on the killings—things that would help them find Coleman. Mondo found his files and brought them to Claire. She and Reynolds were desperate to stop Coleman and keep the…”

Keep the whole horror epic from ruining Reynolds Loftis worse than the grand jury ever could
.

Mal thought of Claire—terrified of a harmless Sleepy Lagoon remark the first time they talked; he thought of Coleman’s burn face, put it aside and went straight for the woman. “Claire and Coleman. What’s between them?”

The queer redeemer glowed. “Claire nurtured Coleman back in the SLDC days. He was in love with her, and he told her he always thought about her when he was with Reynolds. She heard out all his ugly, violent fantasies. She forgave them for being together. She was always so strong and accepting. The killings started a few weeks after the papers ran the wedding announcements. When Coleman learned that Reynolds was getting Claire forever, it must have made him crazy. Are you going to arrest me now?”

Mal couldn’t make himself say no and break the rest of Chaz Minear. He couldn’t say anything, because Johnny Stompanato had just walked into the room with his olive-oil charm back in place, and all he could think of was that he could never keep Stefan safe from the horror.

Mary Margaret Conroy was coming across as a major league Mexophile.

Buzz had tailed her from her sorority house to a hand-holding kaffeeklatch at the UCLA Student Union; she was a simpering frail in the presence of a handsome taco bender named Ricardo. Their conversation was all in Spanish, and all he recognized were words like “corazon” and “felicidad,” love stuff he knew from the juke box music at Mexican restaurants. From there, Dudley Smith’s dough-faced niece went to a meeting of the Pan American Students’ League, a class in Argentine history, lunch and more fondling with Ricardo. She’d been sequestered in a classroom with “Art of the Mayans” for over an hour now, and when she walked out he’d pop the question—shit or get off the pot time.

He kept checking his flank, seeing bad guys everywhere, like Mickey with the Commies. Only his were real: Mickey himself, Cohen goons armed with icepicks and saps and garottes and silencered heaters that could leave you dead in a crowd, a heart attack victim, squarejohns summoning an ambulance while the triggerman walked away. He kept checking faces and kept trying not to cut odds, because he was too good an oddsmaker to give himself and Audrey much of a chance.

And he had a monster hangover.

And his back ached from boozy catnaps on Mal Considine’s floor.

They’d been up most of the night, planning. He called Dave Kleckner in Ventura—Audrey was safely tucked in at his pad. He’d called Johnny Stomp with details on the Minear squeeze and gave Mal the lowdown on Gene Niles. Mal said he’d tagged him as the killer on a hunch—that payback for Danny was so antithetical to his style that he knew the debt had to be huge. Mal got weepy on the kid, then went loony on Dudley Smith—Dudley made for José Diaz, Charles Hartshorn, suppression of evidence and a fuckload of conspiracy raps, Dudley sucking gas up at Q. He never made the next jump: the powers that be would never let Dudley Smith stand trial for anything—his rank, juice and reputation were diplomatic immunity.

They talked escape routes next. Buzz held back on his idea—it would have sounded as crazy as Mal taking down Dudley. They talked East Coast hideouts, slow boats to China, soldier of fortune gigs in Central America, where the local strongmen paid gringos good pesos to keep the Red Menace in check. They talked the pros and cons of taking Audrey, leaving Audrey, the lioness stashed someplace safe for a couple of years. They came to one conclusion: he’d give payback another forty-eight hours tops, then go in a hole somewhere.

A classroom bell sounded; Buzz got pissed: Mary Margaret Conroy would never blab, only confirm by her actions—all he was doing was humoring Mal’s hump on Dudley. “Art of the Mayans” adjourned in a swirl of students, Mary Margaret the oldest by a good ten years. Buzz followed her outside, tapped her shoulder and said, “Miss Conroy, could I talk to you for a second?”

Mary Margaret turned around, hugging her armload of books. She eyed Buzz with distaste and said, “You’re not with the faculty, are you?”

Buzz forced himself not to laugh. “No, I’m not. Sweetie, wouldn’t you say Uncle Dudley went a bit too far warnin’ José Diaz away from you?”

Mary Margaret went sheet white and passed out on the grass.

Dudley for Diaz.

Buzz left Mary Margaret on the grass with a firm pulse and fellow students hovering. He got off the campus quick and drove to Ellis Loew’s house to play a hunch: Doc Lesnick’s absence while UAESer lunacy raged on all fronts was too pat. The four Bureau dicks trying to find the man were filing reports at the house, and there might be something in them to give him a spark atop the hunch and the flicker that caused it: all the psych files ended in the summer of ’49, even though the brain trusters were still seeing Lesnick. That fact reeked of wrong.

Buzz parked on Loew’s front lawn, already crowded with cars. He heard voices coming from the back yard, walked around and saw Ellis holding court on the patio. Champagne was cooling on an ice cart; Loew, Herman Gerstein, Ed Satterlee and Mickey Cohen were hoisting glasses. Two Cohen boys were standing sentry with their backs to him; nobody had seen him yet. He ducked behind a trellis and listened.

Gerstein was exulting: yesterday’s picket brawl was blamed on the UAES; the Teamster film crew leaked their version of the riot to Movietone News, who’d be captioning it “Red Rampage Rocks Hollywood” and shoving it into theaters nationwide. Ellis came on with his good news: the grand jury members being appointed by the City Council looked mucho simpatico, his house was packed with great evidence, mucho indictments seemed imminent. Satterlee kept talking about the climate being perfect, the grand jury a sweetheart deal that was preordained by God for this time and place only, a deal that would never come again. The geek looked about two seconds away from asking them to kneel in prayer; Mickey shut him up and not too subtly started asking questions about the whereabouts of Special Investigator Turner “Buzz” Meeks.

Buzz walked to the front of the house and let himself in. Typists were typing; clerks were filing; there was enough documentation in the living room to make confetti for a thousand ticker tape parades. He moved to the report board and saw that it had been replaced by a whole wall of photographs.

Federal evidence stamps were attached to the borders; Buzz saw “SLDC” a dozen times over and looked closer. The pics were obviously the surveillance shots Ed Satterlee was trying to buy off a rival clearance group; another scope and he noticed
every
photo was marked SLDC, with ’43 and ’44 dates tagged at the bottom, the pictures arranged chronologically, probably waiting for some artwork: circling the faces of known Commies. Buzz thought: Coleman, and started looking for a face swathed in bandages.

Most of the photos were overhead group shots; some were enlarged sections where faces were reproduced more clearly. The quality on all of them was excellent—the Feds knew their stuff. Buzz saw some blurry, too white faces in the earlier pics, crowd shots from the spring of ’43; he followed the pictures across the wall, hoping for Coleman sans gauze and dressings, an aid to ID the rat killer in person. He got bandage glimpses through the summer of ’43; little looks at Claire De Haven and Reynolds Loftis along the way. Then—blam!—a Reynolds Loftis view that was way off; the handsome queer too, too short in the tooth, with too much hair.

Buzz checked the date—8/17/43—rechecked the Loftis glimpses, rechecked the clothes on the bandaged man. Reynolds had noticeably thinning hair throughout; the too young Reynolds sported a full head of thick stuff. In three of the overhead shots, bandage man was wearing a striped skivvy shirt; in the close-up, too young Reynolds was wearing the same thing. Juan Duarte had told Mal that Reynolds’ “kid brother” looked just like him—but
this man
was Reynolds in every respect except the hair, every facial plane and angle exactly like his father—a mirror image of Daddy twenty years younger.

Buzz thought semantics, thought “just like” might be an uneducated greaseball’s synonym for “identical twin”; Delores Masskie called the resemblance “rather close.” He grabbed a magnifying glass off a typist’s desk; he followed the pictures, looking for more Coleman. Three over he got a close shot of the boy with a man and a woman; he put the lens up to it and squinted for all he was worth.

No burn scars of any kind; no pocked and shiny skin; no uneven patches where flesh was grafted.

Two photos over, one row down. November 10, 1943. The boy standing sideways facing Claire De Haven, shirtless. Deep, perfectly straight scars on his right arm, a row of them, scars identical to scars he saw on the arm of an RKO actor who’d had his face reconstructed after an auto wreck, scars that actor had pointed to with pride, telling him that only Doctor Terry Lux did arm grafts, the skin there was the best, so good that it was worth upper body tissue removal. The actor said that Terry made him look
exactly
like he did before the accident—when he looked at himself even he couldn’t tell the difference.

Terry Lux dried Claire De Haven out at his clinic three times.

Terry Lux had workers who slaughtered chickens with zoot sticks.

Terry Lux told him Loftis used to cop H for Claire; Marty Goines was snuffed by a heroin overjolt. Terry Lux diluted the morphine for his dope cures on the premises at his clinic.

Buzz kept the magnifying glass to the wall, kept scanning. He got a back view of Coleman shirtless, saw a patchwork of perfectly straight scars that made him think of zoot stick wounds; he found another set of group shots that looked like Coleman fawning all over Claire De Haven. Hard evidence: Coleman Masskie Loftis was plastic surgery altered to look more like his father. He resembled his father enough to ID him from Delores’ pictures before; now he
was
him. His “special protection” from Dudley Smith was being disguised as Loftis.

Buzz ripped the best Coleman pic off the wall, pocketed it and found a table stacked with reports from the Bureau men. He quick-skimmed the latest update; all the officers had accomplished was a shakedown of Lesnick’s parolee daughter—she said the old man was just about gone from his lung cancer and was thinking about checking into a rest home to check out. He was about to pocket a list of local sanitariums when he heard “Traitor,” and saw Mickey and Herman Gerstein standing a few feet away.

Cohen with a clean shot, but a half dozen witnesses spoiling his chance. Buzz said, “I suppose this means my guard gig’s kaput. Huh, Mick?”

The man looked hurt as much as he looked mad. “Goyishe shitheel traitor. Cocksucker. Communist. How much money did I give you? How much money did I set up for you that you should do me like you did?”

Buzz said, “Too much, Mick.”

“That is no smart answer, you fuck. You should beg. You should beg that I don’t do you slow.”

“Would it help?”

“No.”

“There you go, boss.”

Mickey said, “Herman, leave this room”; Gerstein exited. The typers kept typing and the clerks kept clerking. Buzz gave the little hump’s cage a rattle. “No hard feelin’s, huh?”

Mickey said, “I will make you a deal, because when I say “deal,” it is always to trust. Right?”

“Trust” and “deal” were the man’s bond—it was why he went with him instead of Siegel or Dragna. “Sure, Mick.”

“Send Audrey back to me and I will not hurt a hair on her head and I will not do you slow. Do you trust my word?”

“Yes.”

“Do you trust I’ll get you?”

“You’re the odds-on favorite, boss.”

“Then be smart and do it.”

“No deal. Take care, Jewboy. I’ll miss you. I really will.”

Pacific Sanitarium—fast.

Buzz turned off PCH and beeped his horn at the gate; the squawk box barked, “Yes?”

“Turner Meeks to see Dr. Lux.”

Static sounds for a good ten seconds, then: “Park off to your left by the door marked ‘Visiting,’ go through the lounge and take the elevator up to the second floor. Doctor will meet you in his office.”

Buzz did it, parking, walking through the lounge. The elevator was in use; he took stairs up to the second floor, saw the connecting door open, heard, “Okie baboon” and stopped just short of the last step.

Terry Lux’s voice: “…but I have to talk to him, he’s a pipeline to Howard Hughes. Listen, there should be something in the papers today I’m interested in—a guy I used to do business with was murdered. I just heard about it on the radio, so go get me all the LA dailies while I talk to this clown.”

Odds on Lux-Gordean business: six to one in favor of. Buzz retraced his steps to the car, grabbed his billy club, stuck it down the back of his pants and took his time walking inside. The elevator was empty; he pushed the button for 2 and glided up thinking how much Terry loved money, how little he cared where it came from. The door opened; the dope doc himself was there to greet him. “Buzzy, long time no see.”

The administrative corridor looked nice and deserted—no nurses or orderlies around. Buzz said, “Terry, how are you?”

“Is this business, Buzz?”

“Sure is, boss. And on the extra QT. You got a place where we can talk?”

Lux led Buzz down the hall, to a little room with filing cabinets and facial reconstruction charts. He closed the door; Buzz locked it and leaned on it. Lux said, “What the hell are you doing?”

Buzz felt the billy club tickling his spine. “Spring of ’43 you did a plastic job on Reynolds Loftis’ son. Tell me about it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Check my ’43 files if you like.”

“This ain’t negotiable, Terry. This is you spill all, Gordean included.”

“There’s nothing to negotiate, because I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Buzz pulled out his baton and hit Lux behind the knees. The blow sent Lux pitching into the wall; Buzz grabbed a fistful of his hair and banged his face against the door jamb. Lux slid to the floor, trailing blood on polished mahogany, sputtering, “Don’t hit me. Don’t hit me.”

Buzz backed up a step. “Stay there, the floor looks good on you. Why’d you cut the boy to look like his old man? Who told you to do that?”

Lux tilted his head back, gurgled and shook himself like a dog shedding water. “You scarred me. You…you scarred me.”

“Give yourself a plastic. And answer me.”

“Loftis had me do it. He paid me a lot, and he paid me never to tell anybody about it. Loftis and the psycho had essentially the same bone structure, and I did it.”

“Why’d Loftis want it done?”

Lux moved into a sitting position and massaged his knees. His eyes darted to an intercom phone atop a filing cabinet just out of reach; Buzz smashed the contraption with his stick. “Why? And don’t tell me Loftis wanted the boy to look like him so he could be a movie star.”

“He did tell me that!”

Buzz tapped the baton against his leg. “Why’d you call Coleman a psycho?”

“He did his post-op here, and I caught him raiding the hatchery! He was cutting up the chickens with one of those zoot sticks my men use! He was drinking their goddamn blood!”

Buzz said, “That’s a psycho, all right”; he thought Terry
had
to be clean on snuff knowledge: the fool thought chickens were as bad as it got. “Boss, what kind of business did you do with Felix Gordean?”