The Big Nowhere

Claire laughed. “Artful. Are you an attorney, Mr. Considine?”

Mal turned around. The Red Queen was holding a glass filled with clear liquid and ice. He couldn’t smell gin and bet vodka—more elegant, no booze breath. “No, I’m an investigator with the Grand Jury Division. May I sit down?”

Claire pointed to two chairs facing each other across a chess table. “I’m warming to this. Would you like coffee or a drink?”

Mal said, “No,” and sat down. The chair was upholstered in leather; the orchids were embroidered silk. Claire De Haven took the opposite seat and crossed her legs. “You’re crazy to think I’d ever inform. I won’t, my friends won’t, and we’ll have the best legal talent money can buy.”

Mal played off the three Mexicans. “Miss De Haven, this is a mop-up interview at best. My partner and I approached your friends at Variety International the wrong way, our boss is very angry and our funding has been cut. When we got our initial paperwork on the UAES—old HUAC stuff—we didn’t find your name mentioned, and all your friends seemed… well… rather doctrinaire. I decided to play a hunch and present my case to you, hoping you’d keep an open mind and find aspects of what I’m going to tell you reasonable.”

Claire De Haven smiled and sipped her drink. “You speak very well for a policeman.”

Mal thought: and you blast vodka in the morning and fuck pachuco hoodlums. “I went to Stanford, and I was a major with the MPs in Europe. I was involved in processing evidence to convict Nazi war criminals, so you see I’m not entirely unsympathetic to those posters on your walls.”

“You display empathy well, too. And now you’ve been employed by the studios, because it’s easier to see Red than pay decent wages. You’ll divide, conquer, get people to inform and bring in specialists. And you’ll cause nothing but grief.”

From banter to cool outrage in a half second flat. Mal tried to look hangdog, thinking he could take the woman if he gave her a tough fight, but let her win. “Miss De Haven, why doesn’t the UAES strike in order to achieve its contract demands?”

Claire took a slow drink. “The Teamsters would get in and stay in on a temporary payroll stipulation.”

A good opening; a last chance to play nice guy before they pulled back, planted newspaper dope and went decoy. “I’m glad you mentioned the Teamsters, because they worry me. Should this grand jury succeed—and I doubt that it will—a racketeering force against the Teamsters would be a logical next step. They are very heavily infiltrated with criminal elements, much the way the American left is infiltrated by Communists.”

Claire De Haven sat still, not taking the bait. She looked at Mal, eyes lingering on the automatic strapped to his belt. “You’re an intelligent man, so state your case. Thesis sentence style, like you learned in your freshman comp class at Stanford.”

Mal thought of Celeste—juice for some indignation. “Miss De Haven, I saw Buchenwald, and I know what Stalin is doing is just as bad. We want to get to the bottom of totalitarian Communist influence in the movie industry and inside the UAES, end it, prevent the Teamsters from kicking the shit out of you on the picket line and establish through testimony some sort of demarcation line between hard Communist propaganda aggression and legitimate leftist political activity.” A pause, a shrug, hands raised in mock frustration. “Miss De Haven, I’m a policeman. I collect evidence to put robbers and killers away. I don’t like this job, but I think it needs to be done and I’m damn well going to do it as best I can. Can’t you see my point?”

Claire took cigarettes and a lighter from the table and lit up. She smoked while Mal darted his eyes around the room, mock chagrin at blowing his calm. Finally she said, “You’re either a very good actor or in way over your head with some very bad men. Which is it? I honestly don’t know.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“All right, I’m not.”

Mal got up and paced the room, advance man for his decoy. He noticed a bookcase lined with picture frames, examined a shelf of them and saw a string of handsome young men. About half were Latin lover types—but Lopez, Duarte and Benavides were absent. He remembered Lopez’ comment to Lesnick: Claire was the only gringa he’d met who’d suck him, and he felt guilty about it because only whores did that, and she was his Communista mado

“My past and future. Wild oats lumped together and my fiancé all by himself.”

Chaz Minear had gotten explicit on Loftis—what they did, the feel of his weight downstairs. Mal wondered how much the woman knew about them, if she even guessed Minear finked her future husband to HUAC. “He’s a lucky man.”

“Thank you.”

“Isn’t he an actor? I think I took my son to a movie he was in.”

Claire stubbed out her cigarette, lit another one and smoothed her skirt. “Yes, Reynolds is an actor. When did you and your son see the movie?”

Mal sat down, juggling blacklist dates. “Right after the war, I think. Why?”

“A point that I’d like to make, as long as we’re talking in a civil ma

Mal hooked a thumb back at Loftis’ picture. “With your fiancé?”

“Yes. You see, you probably saw the movie at a revival house. Reynolds was a very successful character actor in the ‘30s, but the California State Un-American Activities Committee hurt him when he refused to testify back in ‘40. Many studios wouldn’t touch him because of his politics, and the only work he could get was on Poverty Row—toadying to an awful man named Herman Gerstein.”

Mal played dumb. “It could have been worse. People were blacklisted outright by HUAC in ‘47. Your fiancé could have been.”

Claire shouted, “He was blacklisted, and I bet you know it!”

Mal jerked back in his chair; he thought he’d had her convinced he wasn’t wise to Loftis. Claire lowered her voice. “Maybe you knew it. Reynolds Loftis, Mr. Considine. Surely you know that he’s in the UAES.”

Mal shrugged, smokescreening a lie. “When you said Reynolds, I guessed that it was Loftis. I knew he was an actor, but I’ve never seen his photograph. Look, I’ll tell you why I was surprised. An old lefty told my partner and me that Loftis was a homosexual. Now you tell me he’s your fiancé.”

Claire’s eyes narrowed; for a half second she looked like a shrew in waiting. “Who told you that?”

Mal shrugged again. “Some guy who used to hang out and chase girls at the Sleepy Lagoon Committee picnics. I forget his name.”

Shrew in waiting to nervous wreck; Claire’s hands shaking, her legs twitching, grazing the table. Mal homed in on her eyes and thought he saw them pi

Mal thought: no it didn’t—it was Sleepy Lagoon. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said it.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because he’s a lucky man.”

The Red Queen smiled. “And not just because of me. Will you let me finish that point I wanted to make?”

“Sure.”

Claire said, “In ‘47 someone informed on Reynolds to the House Committee—hearsay and i