The Big Nowhere

After the thing with Celeste, he’d driven around directionless until his hand started swelling, the pain brutal, blunting all his frantic plans to make it up to his son. He hauled to Central Receiving, flashed his badge and got special treatment: an injection of something that sent him higher than ten kites, teeth fragments pulled out of his fingers, cleansing and suturing and bandaging. He called the house and talked to Stefan, rambling about why he did it, how Celeste had hurt him worse, how she wanted to separate the two of them forever. The boy had seemed shocked, dumbfounded, stuttering details about Celeste’s bloodied face—but he’d ended the conversation calling him “Dad” and saying, “I love you.”

And that little injection of hope made him think like a policeman. He called Ellis Loew, told him what happened, that lawyers and a custody battle were coming, don’t let Celeste file charges and gain an advantage. Loew took the reins, driving to the house and shepherding Celeste to Hollywood Presbyterian, where her lawyer was waiting. The man took photographs of her bruised and bloody face; Loew convinced him not to let Celeste file criminal charges on a ranking DA’s Bureau investigator, threatening reprisals if he did, promising not to intercede in the custody case if he agreed. The attorney did agree; Celeste’s broken nose was set and two dental surgeons worked on her nearly destroyed gums and bridgework. Loew, enraged, called the pay phone where he was waiting and said, “You’re on your own with the kid. Never ask me for another favor.”

He drove back to the house then, finding Stefan asleep, breathing Celeste’s old country sedative—schnapps and hot milk. He kissed the boy’s cheek, moved a suitcase full of clothes and Lesnick’s files to a motel on Olympic and Normandie, made arrangements for a woman cop he knew to check on Stefan once a day, slept off the painkiller on a strange bed and woke up thinking of Franz Kempflerr.

He couldn’t stop thinking about him, and he couldn’t put together any rationalizations that said Celeste was a liar. He did put together a series of phone calls that got him a lawyer: Jake Kellerman, a pragmatist who said continuances were the smart money, postpone the custody trial until Captain Considine was a grand jury hero. Kellerman advised him to stay away from Celeste and Stefan, said he’d call him for a strategy meeting soon—and left him with a Demerol hangover, aching knuckles and the certainty he should take the day off and stay away from his boss.

He still couldn’t shake Kempflerr.

Going over Lesnick’s files was just a distraction. He was getting a case on Claire De Haven, every notation on her tweaked him; he knew direct questioning was out for now, that finding an operative should be his main priority. Still, putting together the woman’s past was enticing, and when he hit a piece of information he’d overlooked—Mondo Lopez bragging to the shrink about a dress he’d shoplifted for Claire’s thirty-third birthday in May of ‘43, making her exactly his age—he took the woman and the Nazi down to the main public library for research.

He sca

Buchenwald liberated, the Nuremberg trials, the biggest Nazis stating they just followed orders. The incredible mechanized brutality. Sleepy Lagoon a just cause championed by bad people. A hunch that Claire De Haven made the society pages as a debutante; confirmation in summer 1929: nineteen-year-old Claire at the Las Madrinas Ball—blurred black and white that only hinted at who she was.

With Kempflerr eclipsed by Goring, Ribbentrop, Dönitz and Keitel, the woman came on that much stronger. He called the DMV and got her driver’s license stats, drove to Beverly Hills and kept her Spanish manse under surveillance. Two hours in, Claire left the house—her picture a prophecy of beauty fulfilled. She was trim, auburn-haired with just a few streaks of gray, and wore a face that was natural beauty and the best that money could buy—but strong. He followed her Cadillac down to the Villa Frascati; she met Reynolds Loftis there for lunch—the Mr. Dignity type he’d seen in a dozen movies. He had a drink at the bar and watched the two: the switch-hitter actor and the Red Queen held hands and kissed across the table every few minutes; they were undoubtedly lovers. He remembered Loftis to Lesnick: “Claire is the only woman I’ve ever loved”—and felt jealous.

Glasses and ashtrays hit the table; Mal glanced up from his doodling—swastikas and hangman’s nooses—and saw his fellow Red chasers looking at him. Dudley slid a clean glass and the bottle down. Mal slid it back and said, “Lieutenant, you blew it for us with the Mexicans. This is for the record. I say no direct interrogations until Meeks gets us some hard criminal stuff that we can use, like indictment threats. I say we hit lefties outside UAES exclusively, turn them as friendly witnesses, get them to inform and plant a decoy as soon as we find one. I say we cover ourselves on the Mexicans by planting some lines in the political columns. Ed Satterlee’s pals with Victor Reisel and Walter Winchell, they hate Commies, the UAES probably reads them. Something like this: ‘LA City grand jury team slated to investigate Red influence in Hollywood scotched due to lack of funds and political infighting.’ Every Pinko in the UAES knows what happened at Variety International the other day, and I say we put a lid on it and lull them to sleep.”

All eyes were on the Irishman; Mal wondered how he’d field the gauntlet—two witnesses to irrefutable logic. Dudley said, “I can only apologize for my actions, Malcolm. You were circumspect, I was bull-headed, and I was wrong. But I think we should squeeze Claire De Haven before we pull back and go sub rosa. She’s the fulcrum to snitch the whole brain trust, she’s a virgin as far as grand juries go, breaking her would demoralize all those sad excuses for men in love with her. She’s never been braced by the police, and I think she damn well might fold.”

Mal laughed. “You’re underestimating her. And I suppose you want to be the one to do the bracing?”

“No, lad, I think you should be the one. Of all of us here, you’re the only one who comes off as even remotely idealistic. A kid gloves cop you are, kid gloves with a cruel streak. You’ll nail her with that great right hook I’ve heard you’ve got.”

Ellis Loew mouthed the words, “Not me,” hard eyes on Mal’s end of the table. Buzz Meeks sipped Scotch. Mal winced, wondering exactly how much Dudley knew. “It’s a sucker play, Lieutenant. You screwed up once, now you’re asking me to compound it. Ellis, a direct approach is bullshit. Tell him that.”

Loew said, “Mal, control your language, because I agree with Dudley. Claire De Haven is a promiscuous woman, women like that are unbalanced, and I think we should risk the approach. In the meantime, Ed Satterlee is trying to co-opt a man for us, a man he knew in the seminary who’s infiltrated Communist cells in Cleveland. He’s a pro, but he doesn’t work cheap. Even if the approach with De Haven fails and the UAES is alerted to us, he’ll be able to get next to them so subtly that they’ll never know it in a million years. And I’m sure we can get the money for our decoy from Mr. Hughes. Right, Buzz?”

Buzz Meeks winked at Mal. “Ellis, if this babe is a roundheels, I wouldn’t be sendin’ in a seminary boy to work her. Howard himself might do the trick. He likes poon, so maybe you could send him in in disguise.”

Loew rolled his eyes; Dudley Smith laughed, like he’d heard a real knee-slapper at the Elks Club smoker. Meeks winked again, testing the water—were you the one who got me shot to shit back in ‘46? Mal thought of his custody juice riding with a cracker buffoon, hatchet cop and hard-on lawyer. It wasn’t until Loew banged the table to dismiss them that he realized he would be meeting the Red Queen face to face, his own pawn to operate.