The Big Nowhere

Mal leafed through the journal; the De Haven entries dwindled as he hit ‘44 and ‘45. He picked at his food and backtracked through a glut of pages that made Eisler look intelligent, analytical, a do-goodnik led down the primrose path by Pinko college professors and the spectre of Hitler looming over Germany. So far, zero hard evidence—if the diary were introduced to the grand jury it would actually make Eisler appear oddly heroic. Remembering the man as a Reynolds Loftis friend/Chaz Minear co-worker, Mal sca

Minear came off as weak, the nance of the two, the clinging vine. Mal read through accounts of Chaz and Eisler scripting Eastern Front and Storm Over Leningrad together circa 1942— 1943, Eisler pissed at Minear’s sloppy work habits, pissed at his mooning over Loftis, pissed at himself for despising his friends’ homosexuality—tolerable in Reynolds because at least he wasn’t a swish. You could see Minear’s impotent rage building back in the Sleepy Lagoon days—his crying on Eisler’s shoulder over some fling Loftis was having—”My God, Nate, he’s just a boy, and he’s been disfigured”—then refusing to go any further on the topic. Hindsight: in ‘47, Chaz Minear hit back at his faithless lover—the snitch to HUAC that got Reynolds Loftis blacklisted. Mal made a mental note: if Da

The rest of the diary was a bore: meetings, committees, gatherings and names for Buzz Meeks to check out along with the names Dudley coerced from Le

The ground held a thick layer of spent shells; dousing his headbeams, Mal saw that the other cop generations had blasted the sagebrushes to smithereens and had gone to work on the scrub pines: the trees were stripped of bark and covered with entry holes. He got out of the car, drew his service revolver and squeezed off six rounds into the darkness; the echo hurt his ears and the cordite stink smelled good. He reloaded and emptied the .38 again; over the hill in South Pasadena skid other guns went off, like a chain of dogs barking at the moon. Mal reloaded, fired, reloaded and fired until his box of Remingtons was empty; he heard cheers, howls, shrieks and then nothing.

The canyon rustled with a warm wind. Mal leaned against the car and thought about Ad Vice, operations, turning down the Hat Squad, where you went in the door gun first and cops like Dudley Smith respected you. In Ad Vice he busted a string of Chinatown whorehouses deemed inoperable—sending in fresh-scrubbed recruits for blow jobs, followed five minutes later by door-kicking harness bulls and lab techs with cameras. The girls were all straight off the boat and living at home with mama-san and papa-san, who thought they were working double shifts at the Shun-Wong Shirt Factory; he had a cordon of muscle cops accompany him to the storefront office of Uncle Ace Kwan, LA’s number-one boss chink pimp. He informed Uncle Ace that unless he took his whores over the line to the County, he would show the pictures to the papa-sans—many of them Tong-co

Him.

Desmond.

Big Des.

Desmond Confrey Considine, who coerced him into dark houses and made him a cop, an operator.

Three years older. Three inches taller. An athlete, good at faking piety to impress the Reverend. The Reverend caught him boosting a pack of gum at the local Pig and Whistle and flayed his ass so bad that Big Des popped a bunch of tendons trying to get free of his bonds and was sidelined for the rest of the football season, a first-string linebacker with a third-string brain and a first-class case of kleptomania that he was now terrified to run with: no legs and no balls, courtesy of Liam Considine, first-string Calvinist.

So Desmond recruited his gangly kid brother, figuring his whippet thi

So he stole, afraid of Desmond, afraid of the Reverend, afraid to confide in Mother for fear she’d tell her husband and he’d kill Des, then go to the gallows and leave them to the mercy of the cheapshit Presbyterian Charity Board. Six feet and barely one-ten, he became the San Francisco Phantom, shi

Because Joe Stinson had a snazzy sister named Cloris, and he liked being alone in her room. Because Dan Klein had a parrot who’d eat crackers out of your mouth. Because Jimmy Harris’ roundheels sister caught him raiding the pantry on his way out, took his cherry and said his thing was big. Because en route to swipe Buff Rice’s National Geographics he found Biff’s baby brother out of his crib, chewing on an electrical cord—and he put him back, fed him condensed milk and maybe saved his life, pretending it was his kid brother and he was saving him from Des and the Reverend. Because being the San Francisco Phantom was a respite from being a stick-thin, scaredy-cat school grind with a crackpot father, doormat mother and idiot brother.

Until October 1, 1924.

Desmond had sent him on a second run to Jimmy Harris’ place; he squeezed in through the woodbox opening, knowing roundheels A