The Big Nowhere

Round one blown to hell.

Mal drove home, thinking of captain’s bars snatched away from him, smothered in Dudley Smith’s huge fists. And he had been partly at fault, going too easy when the Mexicans came on too smart, thinking he could reason with them, wheedle and draw them into logical traps. He’d thought of submitting a memo to Ellis Loew—lay off Sleepy Lagoon, it’s too sympathetic—then he tossed it into the pot for empathy, hit a nerve with the Mexes and upset Dudley’s bee in the bo

All debits, but on the plus side Dudley’s ranting didn’t put out information restricted to Lesnick’s files, leaving that avenue of manipulation still open. What was troubling was a cop as smart as the Irishman taking a nondirect attack so personally, then hitting his “brother officer” below the belt.

Pendejo.

Scared.

And Dudley Smith knows it.

At home, Mal took advantage of the empty house, dumping his sweaty clothes, showering, changing to a sport shirt and khakis and settling into the den to write a long memo to Loew—heavily stressing that there should be no further direct questioning of UAES members until their decoy was planted—a decoy now being a necessity. He was a page in when he realized that it had to be partly a gloss job—there was no way to accurately describe what happened at Variety International without portraying himself as a weakling or a fool. So he did gloss it, and filled up another page with warnings on the Loew choice for troubleshooter—Buzz Meeks—the man who held the possible distinction of being the single most crooked cop in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department—heroin skimmer, shakedown artist, bagman and now a glorified pimp for Howard Hughes. After that page, he knew it was futile; if Meeks wanted in he was in— Hughes was the heaviest contributor to the grand jury bankroll and Meeks’ bossman—what he said would go. After two pages he knew why the tack wasn’t worth pursuing: Meeks was absolutely the best man for the job. And the best man for the job was afraid of him, just like he was afraid of Dudley Smith. Even though there was no reason for the fear.

Mal threw the Meeks memo in the wastebasket and started thinking decoy. The LAPD Academy was already out—straight arrow youths with no spark for impersonation. The Sheriff’s Academy was unlikely—the Brenda Allen mess and the LASD sheltering Mickey Cohen made it unlikely that they would lend the City a smart young recruit. Their best bet was a rank-and-file City officer, smart, good-looking, adaptable and ambitious, mid to late twenties, a malleable young man without a hard-edged cop quality.

Where?

Hollywood Division was out—half the men had been implicated over Brenda Allen, had had their pictures in the paper, were ru

And Central was packed with unqualified rookies who made the Department because of their war records; 77th Street, Newton and University featured outsized crackers hired on to keep the Negro citizenry in line. Hollenbeck might be a good place to look—but East LA was Mex, Benavides, Lopez and Duarte still had ties there, and that might blow their decoy’s cover. The various detective divisions were a possible stalking ground—if they could find a man who didn’t come off as irredeemably jaded.

Mal grabbed his LAPD station directory and started sca

It was Celeste. She looked at Mal’s open arms until he dropped them; she said, “I told Stefan to stay late after school in order that I should talk to you.”

“Yes?”

“The look on your face does not to make this easy.”

“Spill it, goddamn you.”

Celeste clutched her beaded opera purse, a favored relic of Prague, 1935. “I am going to divorce you. I have met a nice man, a man who is cultured and will make Stefan and me a better home.”

Mal thought: perfect calm, she knows her effects. He said, “I won’t let you. Don’t hurt my boy or I’ll hurt you.”

“You ca

Maim her, let her know he is the law. “Is he rich, Celeste? If you have to fuck to survive, you should fuck rich men. Right, Fräulein? Or powerful men, like Kempflerr.”

“You always return to that because it is so ugly and because it excites you so.”

Match point; Mal felt his sense of gamesmanship go blooey. “I saved your wretched rich-girl ass. I killed the man who made you a whore. I gave you a home.”

Celeste smiled, her standard parting of thin lips over perfect teeth. “You killed Kempflerr to prove yourself not a coward. You wanted to be like a real policeman, and you were willing to destroy yourself to do it. Only your dumb luck saved you. And you keep your secrets so badly.”

Mal stood up on punch-drunk legs. “I killed someone who deserved to die.”

Celeste fondled her purse, fingers over beadwork embroidery. Mal saw it as stage business, the buildup to a punch line. “No comeback for that one?”

Celeste put on her deepest iceberg smile. “Herr Kempflerr was very kind to me, and I only made up his nasty sexuality to excite you. He was a gentle lover, and when the war was almost over, he sabotaged the ovens and saved thousands of lives. You are lucky that military governor liked you, Malcolm. Kempflerr was going to help the Americans look for other Nazis. And I only married you because I felt very bad about the lies I seduced you with.”

Mal tried to say “No,” but couldn’t form the word; Celeste broadened her smile. Mal saw it as a target and ran to her. He grabbed her neck, held her to the doorway and aimed hard right hands at her mouth, teeth splintering up through her lips, cutting his knuckles. He hit her and hit her and hit her; he would have gone on hitting her, but “Mutti!” and tiny fists pummeling his legs made him stop and run out of the house, afraid of a little boy—his own.

Chapter Twelve

The phone wouldn’t quit ringing.

First it was Leotis Dineen, calling to tell him that Art Aragon knocked out Lupe Pimentel in the second round, raising his debt to twenty-one hundred even, with a vig payment due tomorrow. Next was the real estate man up in Ventura County. His glad tidings: the top offer for Buzz’s dry-rotted, shadeless, rock-laden, non-irrigable, poorly located and generally misanthropic farmland was fourteen dollars an acre, the offerer, the pastor of First Pentecostal Divine Eminence Church, who wanted to turn it into a cemetery for the sanctified pets of members of his congregation. Buzz said twenty per, minimum; ten minutes later the phone rang again. No salutation, just, “I didn’t tell Mickey, because you’re not worth going to the gas chamber for.” He suggested a romantic drink somewhere; Audrey Anders replied, “Fuck you.”

Skating on the stupidest stupid move of his life made him feel cocky, despite Dineen’s implied warning: my money or your kneecaps. Buzz thought of cash shakedowns—him against fences and hotel crawlers he’d leaned on as a cop, then nixed the notion—he’d gotten older and flabbier, while they’d probably gotten meaner and better armed. There was just himself against 50-50 Mal Considine, who held a mean stare but otherwise looked pretty withered. He picked up the phone and dialed his boss’s private number at the Bel-Air Hotel.