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Da
Weightlifter charged, straight for Da
Da
Da
“Lad.”
Da
Small talk with a murderer. Da
Dudley Smith smiled. “I never doubted your intelligence, lad. Your courage, yes. Your intelligence, never. And I’ll admit I underestimated your persistence. I’m only human, you know.”
“Oh, no you’re not.”
“I’m skin and bone, lad. Eros and dust like all us frail mortals. Like you, lad. Crawling in sewers for answers you’d be better off without.”
“You’re finished.”
“No, lad. You are. I’ve been talking to my old friend Felix Gordean, and he painted me a vivid picture of your emergence. Lad, next to myself Felix has the finest eye for weakness I’ve ever encountered. He knows, and when you take that lie detector test tomorrow, the whole world will know.”
Da
Dudley Smith said, “Yes,” kissed him full on the lips and walked away whistling a love song.
Machines that know.
Drugs that don’t let you lie.
Da
Da
And he knew he knew. And tomorrow they would all know.
Blackmail bait.
His name in sex files.
His name bandied in queer chitchat at the Chateau Marmont.
Machines that know.
Drugs that don’t let you lie.
Polygraph needles fluttering off the paper every time they asked him why he cared so much about a string of queer fag homo fruit snuffs.
No reprieve.
Da
Weapons galore.
Da
Part Three.
Wolverine
Chapter Thirty-Two
A week later Buzz went by the grave, his fourth visit since LASD hustled the kid into the ground. The plot was a low-rent number in an East LA cemetery; the stone read:
No beloved whatever of.
No son of whoever.
No crucifix cut into the tablet and no RIP. Nothing juicy to catch a passerby’s interest, like “Cop Killer” or “Almost DA’s Bureau Brass.” Nothing to spell it out true to whoever read the half-column hush job on the kid’s accidental death—a slip off a chair, a nose dive onto a kitchen cutlery rack.
Fall Guy.
Buzz bent down and pulled out a clump of crabgrass; the butt of the gun he’d killed Gene Niles with dug into his side. He stood up and kicked the marker; he thought that “Free Ride” and “Gravy Train” and “Dumb Okie Luck” might look good too, followed by a soliloquy on Deputy Da
Mal had called him with the word. The rain dug up Niles’ body, LAPD grabbed Da
LASD double-timed the kid graveside; four people attended the funeral: Layman, Mal, a County cop named Jack Shortell and himself. The homo investigation was immediately disbanded and Shortell took off for a vacation in the Montana boonies; LAPD closed the book on Gene Niles, Upshaw’s suicide their confession and trip to the gas chamber. City-County police relations were all-time bad—and he skated, thin-icing it, trying to fix an angle to save both their asses, no luck, too late to do the kid any good.
Free Ride.
What kept nagging at him was that he fixed Audrey’s skim spree first. Petey Skouras paid Mickey back the dough the lioness bilked; Mickey was generous and let him off with a beating: Joh
Dumb Okie Luck.