The Big Nowhere

Mal felt his overview sink in as solid: good evidence, good thoughts on what to use, what to hold back. He killed his coffee and went to the individuals—the half dozen of the twenty-two most ripe for interrogation and operation.

His first was a maybe. Morton Ziffkin: UAES member, CP member, member of eleven other organizations classified as Commie fronts. Family man—a wife and two grown daughters. A highly paid screenwriter—100 thou a year until he told HUAC to fuck off—now working for peanuts as a film splicer. Underwent analysis with Doc Lesnick out of a stated desire to “explore Freudian thought” and allay his impulses to cheat on his wife with an onslaught of CP women “out for my gelt—not my body.” A rabid, bad-tempered Marxist ideologue—a good man to bait on the witness stand—but he’d probably never snitch on his fellow Pinks. He sounded intelligent enough to make Ellis Loew seem like a fool, and his HUAC stint gave him an air of martyrdom. A maybe.

Mondo Lopez, Juan Duarte and Sammy Benavides, former Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee bigshots, recruited out of the Sinarquistas—a zoot suit gang given to sporting Nazi regalia—by CP bosses. Now token ethnics in the UAES hierarchy, the three spent the ‘40s throwing it to condescending white lefty women— enraged over their airs, but grateful for the action; more enraged at being told by their “puto” cell leader to “explore” that rage by seeing a psychiatrist. Benavides, Duarte and Lopez were currently working at Variety International Pictures, half the time as stagehands, half the time playing Indians in cheapy cowboy pictures. They were also serving as picket bosses on Gower Gulch—the closest thing the UAES had to muscle—pitiful when compared to the Mickey Cohen goons the Teamsters were employing. Mal pegged them as pussy hounds who fell into clover, the Sleepy Lagoon job their only real political concern. The three probably had criminal records and co

Now the brain trust got ugly.

Reynolds Loftis, movie character actor, snitched to HUAC by his former homo lover Chaz Minear, a Hollywood script hack. Loftis did not suspect that Minear ratted him, and in no way reciprocated the finking. Both men were still with the UAES, still friendly at their meetings and at other political functions they attended. Minear, guilt-crazed over his fink duty, had said to Doc Lesnick: “If you knew who he left me for, you’d understand why I did it.” Mal had sca

And finally the Red Queen.

Claire De Haven did not possess a file, and several of the men had described her as too smart, strong and good to need a psychiatrist. She also screwed half her CP cell and all the SLDC bigwigs, including Benavides, Lopez and Duarte, who worshiped her. Chaz Minear was in her thrall, despite his homosexuality; Reynolds Loftis spoke of her as the “only woman I’ve ever really loved.” Mal picked up on her smarts secondhand: Claire moved behind the scenes, tended not to shout slogans and retained the Political and legal co

Mal turned off his light, reminding himself to write Doc Lesnick a memo: all the files ended in the summer of ‘49—five months ago. Why? Walking out to the elevator, he wondered what Claire De Haven looked like, where he could get a picture, if he could get his decoy to operate her out of her lust—politics and sex to nail the woman as a friendly witness, the Red Queen squeezed like a Chinatown whore, captain’s bars dancing his way at the end of a stag movie.

Chapter Nine

Bagman time.

His first stop was Variety International, where Herman Gerstein gave him a five-minute lecture on the evils of Communism and handed him a fat envelope stuffed with C-notes; stop two was a short stroll through the Teamster and UAES picket lines over to Hollywood Prestige National Pictures, where Wally Voldrich, the head of Security, kicked loose with a doughnut box full of fifties dusted with powdered sugar and chocolate sprinkles. Howard’s ten thou was already in his pocket; Mickey C.’s contribution to the Friends of the American Way in Motion Pictures would be his last pickup of the morning.

Buzz took Sunset out to Santa Monica Canyon, to the bungalow hideaway where Mickey palled with his stooges, entertained poon and hid out from his wife. The money in his pocket had him feeling brash: if Mal Considine was around when he dropped the bag with Ellis Loew, he’d rattle his cage to see what the four years since Laura had done to his balls. If it felt right, he’d tell Howard he’d sign on to fight Communism—Leotis Dineen was pressing him for a grand and a half, and he was a bad jigaboo to fuck with.

Cohen’s bungalow was a bamboo job surrounded by specially landscaped tropical foliage, camouflage for his triggermen when the Mick and Jack Dragna were skirmishing. Buzz parked in the driveway behind a white Packard ragtop, wondering where Mickey’s bulletproofed Caddy was and who’d be around to hand him his envelope. He walked up to the door and rang the buzzer; a woman’s deep-South voice drifted out a window screen. “Come in.”

Buzz opened the door and saw Audrey Anders sitting at a living room table, hitting the keys of an adding machine. No makeup, dungarees and one of Mickey’s monogrammed dress shirts didn’t dent her beauty at all; she actually looked better than she did New Year’s morning, pink party dress and high heels, kicking Tommy Sifakis in the balls. “Hello, Miss Anders.”

Audrey pointed to a Chinese lacquered coffee table; a roll of bills secured by a rubber band was resting smack in the middle. “Mickey said to tell you mazel tov, which I guess means he’s glad you’re in with this grand jury thing.”

Buzz sat down in an easy chair and put his feet up, his signal that he meant to stay and look awhile. “Mickey takin’ advantage of that master’s degree of yours?”

Audrey tapped out a transaction, checked the paper the machine expelled and wrote on a pad, all very slowly. She said, “You believe the program notes at the El Rancho Burlesque?”

“No, I just made you for the brains.”

“The brains to keep books for a lending operation?”

“Loan shark’s more the word, but I meant brains in general.”

Audrey pointed to Buzz’s feet. “Pla

“Not long. You really got a master’s degree?”

“Jesus, we keep asking each other these questions. No, I do not have a master’s degree, but I do have a certificate in accounting from a second-rate teachers college in Jackson, Mississippi. Satisfied?”

Buzz didn’t know if the woman wanted him out the door pronto or if she welcomed the interruption—totalling shark vig on a fine winter day was his idea of hunger. He played his only ace, his one opening to see what she thought of him. “Lucy Whitehall okay?”

Audrey lit a cigarette and blew two perfect smoke rings. “Yes. Sol Gelfman has her tucked away at his place in Palm Springs, and Mickey had some friend of his on the Sheriff’s Department issue something called a restraining order. If Tommy bothers Lucy, the police will arrest him. She told me she’s grateful for what you did. I didn’t tell her you did it for money.”